Re: Thai v. Lao (was: Lao Letter Fo Sung and Lao Letter Fo Tam)

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Oct 20 2005 - 17:03:50 CST

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    From: "Edward H. Trager" <ehtrager@umich.edu>
    > As a practical example : There is a Theravada Buddhist temple in Warren,
    > Michigan, about an hour from where I live in Michigan. Some of the monks
    > are
    > from NorthEast Thailand (Isaan) and essentially speak Lao, as well as Thai
    > and of course, in this country, English. The temple produces publications
    > primarily in Thai and English, with a lesser quantity in Lao. If you ask
    > any of them if the Thai and Lao scripts are different, they will tell you
    > that they are different. As I said before, it is quite similar to the
    > situation
    > with Greek and Latin or Cyrillic.

    The killer fact against unification of Thai and Lao is not based on their
    graphic appearance, but on the way the semantics and ordering of letters
    combine to create words. Additionally, the Thai script is encoded visually,
    instead of logically (phonetically). This changes randically the way one can
    create words in Thai and Lao, and so it's impossibleto unify them at least
    for the modern languages.



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