ศาลาชุมนุม

[Richard Wordingham]

(in Can we use ผู้ as a classifier?) Yes..ไผ ผู้ได๋ both words are being used in Lao. I can neither confirm nor contradict your claim of the root of the word.

By the way, we need to use " ไ " for any word that is not Thai.

- in response to my transliterating Lao as ໃຜ 'who' as ใผ rather than ไผ. Is there truly a rule that non-Thai Tais must be represented as illiterate?

I note that when the corresponding vowel symbol is transliterated from tua mueang, the Maefahluang dictionary also uses mai muan, indeed in this very word ใผ. (The dictionary does note that the commoner spelling is ไผ; this is rather to be expected given that many accounts of the script omit it.)

[Passerby]

(in Can we use ผู้ as a classifier?) Yes..ไผ ผู้ได๋ both words are being used in Lao. I can neither confirm nor contradict your claim of the root of the word.

By the way, we need to use " ไ " for any word that is not Thai.

- in response to my transliterating Lao as ໃຜ 'who' as ใผ rather than ไผ. Is there truly a rule that non-Thai Tais must be represented as illiterate?

I note that when the corresponding vowel symbol is transliterated from tua mueang, the Maefahluang dictionary also uses mai muan, indeed in this very word ใผ. (The dictionary does note that the commoner spelling is ไผ; this is rather to be expected given that many accounts of the script omit it.)

I do not know enough about written language in Lao,
However, if we use Thai characters, then we follow Thai rules.

[R.E.G.]

By the way, we need to use " ไ " for any word that is not Thai.

- in response to my transliterating Lao as ໃຜ 'who' as ใผ rather than ไผ. Is there truly a rule that non-Thai Tais must be represented as illiterate?
[/quote]
It is more a question of a common background; Thai schools teach that there are twenty words which are spelt using ใ .

[Richard Wordingham]

It is more a question of a common background; Thai schools teach that there are twenty words which are spelt using ใ .

Traditional orthographies can freeze a lot of spelling errors - ฆ่า for ข้า 'kill', เฒ่า for เถ้า 'old', and ไร for ใร 'what?' spring immediately to mind, and 'The Thai orthography is spurious' is a common statement in Fangkuei Li's Handbook of Comparative Tai. Now, in a purely Siamese context it doesn't really matter, but when citing words from other languages with their own orthographies, it does matter, especially when the difference represents a difference of pronunciation.

Northern Lao (Luang Prabang?) preserves the phonetic difference between mai muan and mai malaai, and I'm not sure how recent the merger is elsewhere. Some teaching resources for Lao still claim a phonetic difference.

Northern Thai has its own list of words with mai muan, and it's different from the Siamese list.

Now, the RID does have ไผ 'who' as a Northern and Isaan word, but some of us have had it explained to us that people from Isaan (and, less commonly, the North) are fit only to be servants, so who cares about the spelling of a dialect word. (I can't date the contraction well enough relatively to know whether Siamese should have been expected to preserve the ร - proto-SW Tai *phr- yields plain ผ in Siamese.)

[r2d2]

Now, the RID does have ไผ 'who' as a Northern and Isaan word, but some of us have had it explained to us that people from Isaan (and, less commonly, the North) are fit only to be servants, so who cares about the spelling of a dialect word.

ไผ (ถิ่นพายัพ, อีสาน) ส. ใคร.

Hm... seeing all these discussions here and the current/modern Phayansana Lao (+ vowels):

a) It's only a personal preference: I would prefer to see Isan written in Lao but not in Thai letters. But a kind of experience of daily life is, speaking with Isan people, that they are kidding about "Lao letters" at best. So my personal preference is rather irrealistic.
b) The Laotian spelling reform looks rather "radical" (radical fits in the sense of 'cutting the roots'). On the level of consonants/phayansana I'm still confident that the observation "radical" fits. But --- eek --- on the vowel level ... rather radical transforming the ambigous T(h)ai alpha-beta-gamma-abugida into a phonetically unambigous (phonetic) alphabet - in particular due to newly introduced vowel letters: Eek , the communists in the P.R. of Lao have maintained (or overlooked the elimination of) the discrimination in-between mai muan and malai... Is there any phonetic justification for maintaining both vowel letters in the phayansana Lao/Lao language?

Sorry, but a very recent observation (and question).

[Passerby]

Hate to say this; It seems that some of Farangs are trying to rewrite Thai language.

[Richard Wordingham]

Hate to say this; It seems that some of Farangs are trying to rewrite Thai language.

Where do you see that?

[Richard Wordingham]

in particular due to newly introduced vowel letters:

Can you give examples? With dates? To me, the biggest change in Lao vowels seems to be writing /a/ in all open syllables, e.g. ຖນົນ to ຖະໜົນ (roughly ถนน to ถะหนน, or perhaps ถโน็น to ถะโหน็น for those who can't read the Lao).

The communists in the P.R. of Lao have maintained (or overlooked the elimination of) the discrimination in-between mai muan and malai... Is there any phonetic justification for maintaining both vowel letters in the phayansana Lao/Lao language?

Yes, the distinction is maintained in the North of the country, at least, according to Georg Bossong's account. Looking at the Lao forms quoted by Li, it seems that the sound written mai muan is recorded as /əː/ in Theodore Guignard's Lao-French dictionary - or is that Li's misreading?

I'm currently drawing up a comparison of Thai, Lanna (Tua Mueang) and Lao words written with mai muan, and I'm having trouble looking for Lao *ໃຂ່ (transliteratable as ใข่) 'dry'. Li cites it as Lao 'khəə B1' . I can't find it in the Sealang dictionary, but one of the few Google hits I've got seems to match it in sense. (There is no Siamese cognate.)

[r2d2]

Hate to say this; It seems that some of Farangs are trying to rewrite Thai language.

[R.E.G.]

Hate to say this; It seems that some of Farangs are trying to rewrite Thai language.

I think it means that posters are 'rabbiting on' about etymology and other esoteric things which hardly anyone understands, in the 'Reading, Writing, Spelling and Tone Rules' forum.
I know it is not strictly regulated and this could be considered 'spelling' but surely 'spelling' is a matter of fact and once established, when Passerby gave a good reason why ใ should not be used, that should have been the end of the matter should it not?