Pali in Thai Script

[Richard Wordingham]

On Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:49:13 +0700
Theppitak Karoonboonyanan <theppitak at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 4:48 AM, Christopher Fynn
> <chris.fynn at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 28/03/2014, Ed Trager <ed.trager at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> * Modern phonetically-based Lao lacks some of the traditional
> >> letters that are still preserved in Thai and other scripts.
> >
> > Are there old Lao characters (once) used for writing Pāḷi?
> 
> Historically no. But there was once an attempt to devise such
> characters by Lao Royal Institute before being dismissed by the
> communist revolution later. The writing principle was to use PHINTU
> in the same manner as Thai script, and the missing characters were
> borrowed from Tham script.

An older form of the Lao script is called the Thai Noi script.  That
script has many of the characters needed.  It has the characters, to
give them their 'standard' Unicode Indic names, GHA, NYA, TTHA, NNA,
DHA, BHA, and even has the Sanskrit-supporting characters SHA, SSA and
Vocalic R.  The lack of CHA, JHA, TTA, DDA, DDHA and LLA may be due to
their rarity, as with the lack of Vocalic L.

Richard.