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Lao Script

Abugidas
Origin from 1350

An abugida used to write Lao, standardized as Laos consolidated as the kingdom of Lan Xang in the fourteenth century CE. It developed from the Fakkham script tradition of the Tai peoples of the region, itself shaped by the older Khmer and Mon scripts, and shares close structural kinship with the Thai script through this common Tai-script ancestry even though the two diverged into visually distinct letter shapes. Modern Lao script was simplified in the twentieth century, dropping many of the consonant letters retained in Thai purely for spelling Sanskrit and Pali loanwords, leaving a more phonetically regular, smaller consonant inventory.

Facts
Script Type
Abugida 1
Directionality
left-to-right 1
In Use Since (Year)
from 1350 1
Connections

Descends From

Khmer Script, Scripts
Source Wikipedia: Lao Language

Script Of

Lao, Languages
Source Wikipedia: Lao Language
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Lao Language
Wikimedia FoundationView the Source

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