... > >(The Thai letters in turn derive from the Khmer letters... > > That's not correct.
Just to check that it is not just *my* imagination that is running wild... ;-) http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Thai%20alphabet says: "History The Thai alphabet is probably derived from the Old Khmer (àààààààààà) script"... and http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Lao+language says: The writing system of Lao is an abugida and is closely related to the writing system used in Thai. http://www.seasite.niu.edu/lao/LaoLanguage/LaoWritingSystem/Introduction_body.htm says: The Lao alphabet is therefore essentially the same as the modern Thai alphabet, the most obvious difference being in the shape or style of the letters. If you can read Lao you can make out the meanings of many Thai words, ... http://www.omniglot.com/writing/khmer.htm says: The Khmer alphabet closely resembles the Thai and Lao alphabets, which were developed from it. Just a final quote on Lao from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/lao.htm: The scholars adapted an early version of the Thai script, which was developed from the Old Khmer script, which was itself based on Mon scripts. So ok, substitute /Khmer/ to /Old Khmer/, and /Thai/ to /early Thai/... Just looking at the scripts, their letters, accents/tone marks, and ordering also reveals their similarities. So I did not grab my statements out of the air... /kent k
