Monday, July 11, 2011

Little Cooks

Anniversary of the Lao Vision school

These are pictures that we took in 2nd anniversary of Lao Vision School.
With the Miss Lao Vision School contestest as the main program,
our students and their family had so good time.
Now, we're about to have 3rd anniversary.
Time flies so fast.






Friday, June 24, 2011

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Khmer(Cambodia) Alphabet

Khmer alphabet   


Origin

The Khmer alphabet is descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India by way of the Pallava script, which was used in southern India and South East Asia during the 5th and 6th Centuries AD. The oldest dated inscription in Khmer, found at Angkor Borei in Takev Province south of Phnom Penh, dates from 611 AD.
The Khmer alphabet closely resembles the Thai and Lao alphabets, which were developed from it.

Notable features

  • This is syllabic alphabet in which each consonant has two forms, one with an inherent /a/ (first series) and one with an inherent /o/ (second series)
  • Vowels are indicated using either separate letters or diacritics, which written above, below, in front of, after or around consonants. The pronunciation of the vowels depends on whether a consonant they are attached to is of the first or second series.
  • All consonants have a subscript form which is used to write the second consonant of a cluster.
  • In a Khmer text there are no spaces between words, instead spaces indicate the end of a clause or sentence.
  • Inspite of efforts to standardise written Khmer, many words have more than one accepted spelling.
Used to write:

Khmer (Cambodian), a member of the Mon-Khmer group of Austro-Asiatic languages, spoken by about 8 million people in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, China, France and the USA. Khmer shares many features and much vocabulary with Thai as a result of centuries of two-way borrowing. There are also borrowings from Sanskrit, Pali, French and Chinese in Khmer.

Khmer alphabet

Consonants








Subscript consonants



Independent vowels


Numerals

Lao Alphabet

Lao alphabet 


Origin

After the unification of the Lao principalities (meuang) in the 14th century, the Lan Xang monarchs commissioned their scholars to create a new script to write the Lao language. The scholars probably modelled the alphabet on the the Old Khmer script, which was itself based on Mon scripts.

Notable features

  • Syllables are based around consonants. Vowels are indicated with diacritics which can appear above, below or around the consonant letters. When they occur on their own or at the beginning of a word, vowels are attached to the glottal stop symbol (the final letter in the third row of consonants).
  • Lao is a tonal language with 6 tones. The tone of a syllable is determined by a combination of the class of consonant, the type of syllable (open or closed), the tone marker and the length of the vowel. 
  • For some consonants there are multiple letters. Originally they represented separate sounds, but over the years the distinction between those sounds was lost and the letters were used instead to indicate tones. Various offical reforms of the Lao script have reduced the number of duplicate consonants.
  • There are no spaces between words, instead spaces in a Lao text indicate the end of a clause or sentence.
  • Written Lao is based on the dialect of the Lao capital, Vientiene.
  • There is no official Latin transliteration system for Lao. In Laos, French-based systems are used and there is considerable variation in spelling, particularly of vowels. In Thailand, the Royal Thai General Transcription is used.
Used to write

Lao, a Tai-Kadai language spoken by approximately 15 million people in Laos and Thailand. It is closely related to Thai and speakers of Lao are able to understand spoken Thai without too many difficulties. Thai speakers find it more difficult to understand Lao due to lack of exposure to the language.
The language family is also known as Kradai, Kra-Dai, Daic or Kadai.

Lao alphabet

Consonants
Consonants are divided into three classes which help to determine the tone of a syllable (indicated by the numbers below). The sounds represented by some consonants change when they are used at the end of a syllable (indicated by the letters on the right of the slash below). The consonants can all be used at the beginning of a syllable but only some can be used at the end of a syllable.














 The consonants in the final row are compounds and conjuncts used as alternatives to the basic consonants.

Vowel diacritics (with k)

Numerals







Tone indication

Open syllables
Closed syllables *

unmarked
short vowel
long vowel
Class 1
low
mid
high falling
high
low falling
Class 2
low rising
mid
low falling
high
low falling
Class 3
high
mid
high falling
mid
high falling

* Closed syllables are those ending with p, t or k