Re: LAO LETTER FO SUNG and LAO LETTER FO TAM

From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sat Oct 22 2005 - 20:02:53 CST

  • Next message: Philippe Verdy: "Re: LAO LETTER FO SUNG and LAO LETTER FO TAM"

    Philippe Verdy wrote:

    > From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com>
    >> Actually, the statement 'Based on TIS 620-2529' in the character chart
    >> reinforces the identity.
    >
    > "Based on" does not mean that it directly maps the standard with a simple
    > code translation. This is not stated anywhere in the standard.
    >
    > Also, how can it come that a Thai standard applies to the Lao script? I
    > did not know that TIS defined a standard for writing Lao as well. I should
    > have noticed and remembered this line at the top of the Lao chart, but I
    > wonder if it is really correct, or if this was a sort of "unification" by
    > Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 they they studied both scripts simultaneously
    > and decided to encode them with the same encoding scheme based on the Thai
    > standard.

    It's a sort of unification. TIS 620 only applies to Thai. This is similar
    to the principle of basing the Indian scripts on Devanagari.

    > If so, this may explain the confusion introduced in Lao: the Lao script
    > was encoded by too many non-experts, that were only expert in Thai.

    You don't know what you're talking about. The naming of the FOs looks wrong
    even if you only know Thai, and LAO LETTER LO LING looking like THAI
    CHARACTER RO RUA rather than THAI CHARACTER LO LING should immediately ring
    alarm bells. However, the statement that LAO LETTER THO TAM is known as
    'tho thung' also rings alarm bells - a false alarm because of the naming
    identity in a toneless script (ASCII) with THAI CHARACTER THO THUNG, and
    another because Lao 'tho thung' is not the same as THAI CHARACTER THO THONG,
    but is the same as THAI CHARACTER THO THAHAN. (The reference glyph for LAO
    LETTER THO TAM is a common glyph variant of THAI CHARACTER THO THAHAN.) The
    lo alarm is reinforced if you are told that 'loot' means 'vehicle' - one
    should immediately think of Thai 'rot', an obvious Indic loanword from its
    spelling THAI CHARACTER RO RUA, THAI CHARACTER THO THUNG.

    The Lao naming problems look like a type of typographical error, and
    definitely not problems due to using a Thai expert when a Lao expert was
    required.

    Richard.

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