The basic Lao alphabet has about 27 consonants and 28 common vowel sounds (although nearly double that in various symbols for writing). The consonants are arranged in order of tones. The ones on the left and middle left are low and the right middle and right are high. This is only a general rule though, because the tones can change with tone markers or when the high tone consonants are next to the low vowel marker.
The Consonants:
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| From The Lao Language |
The vowels are arranged in pairs of short and long (with four at the end that are dipthongs, or combined vowel sounds ... like 'ei' in eight). The vowels have similar comparisons to English except for a couple that make us move our lips into a smile (or a grimacing face when you've tried saying it 500 times).
The Vowels:
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| From The Lao Language |
Overall, the Lao alphabet is actually more systematic when sounding out than English! Even with the tones! For example, the English words 'like' and 'lick' have two different sounding 'i' vowels. Now, we know the difference immediately, but its not based on a regular system of pronunciation that is easy to define.
The real difficulty with the Lao language for English speakers is twofold: first, there are several sounds we are just not used to distinguishing. They have two letters that are extremely similar to our letter 'd'; the only difference between the two is that one is harder or more enunciated than the other (while you might say the other is a bit more slurred, but that is only a limited description of it). There is a similar instance with two letters similar to our 'b' consonant (one's hard and one is slurred).
The second difficulty is the tones. The difference between 'friend' and 'pig' is whether your voice is raised at the end of the word or not. The sound 'sew-a' can mean 'tiger', 'shirt', 'mattress', 'believe', 'family', 'fuel', 'infection', or 'agent' depending on how you use the tones or context.
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