Alifshinobi

Hi, we do have interwiki bots, so there's no need to add them manually (they'll get added when we get our next XML dump). I'm not telling you to stop, because it does no harm - but it's a bit pointless. Yours Conrad.Irwin 19:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

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Having said that, we welcome Wikipedians, who have useful skills and experience to offer. The following are a couple of the most jarring differences between our projects that Wikipedians may want to learn up front, so things go smoothly for everyone. Changing policy pages on Wiktionary is very strongly discouraged. If you think something needs changing, please discuss it at the beer parlour, after which we may formally vote on the issue. You should also note that Wiktionary has very different user-space policies, we are here to build a dictionary and your user-page exists only to facilitate that. In particular we have voted to explicitly ban all userboxes with the exception of {{Babel}}; please do not create or use them.

We hope you enjoy editing Wiktionary and being a Wiktionarian. Conrad.Irwin 19:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki

Hi!

For your information, we have a bot Interwicket that reads indexes of all Wiktionaries and adds interwiki periodically in automated way. This is not like Wikipedia, where article names differ on different projects; since the entry names are the same on all wiktionaries, adding interwiki is 100% automatable. You might wanna spend your time here in a more productive way (like adding translations etc.) ^_^ Cheers! --Ivan Štambuk 19:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thai etymologies

First of all, let me say thank you for the Thai entries. A couple of tips: First, {{etyl}} adds some nice formatting to entries when used. Simply put the ISO code of the etymon language as the first parameter and that of the recipient language as the second. It does the linking and adds the entry to the appropriate category. Also, {{term}} also does some convenient things, such as including a script template, a language specific link, and a standardized ordering of translation and transliteration. Finally, I believe we're following IAST, and so using diacritics in the transliterations instead of capitalized letters (you'd have to talk to Ivan Štambuk about that to be sure, he's doing most of our Sanskrit). If you would like some examples, take a look at some of your recent edits (you'll find me fresh on your heels). Any questions, feel free to ask, and thanks again. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

First off, your etymology format is perfect (there are few who can pick up all of our syntax so quickly). However, I had a question about some of your definitions not matching up with the given POS's. For example, ความสุข is marked as a noun, but is given two adjectival definitions, and นิทรา is also marked as a noun with adjectival definitions. May I ask what's up with those? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello,

Thank you very much. Your previous comment on my page, apparently, had helped me a whole lot. To answer your question, it's quite hard to explain, for adjective words are rarely used in Thai. And yes, the Thai words are actually nouns. Now that you've told me, I will change happiness to joy;blithe to delight. How's that?User:Alifshinobi talk 11:28, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. And yeah, sometimes the syntax of foreign languages doesn't match up to English terribly well. Sometimes it helps to have the definition technically correct, and note how it works in a ====Usage notes==== section. So, perhaps you could have "sleep" as a definition, and then a usage note saying, "usually used in an adjectival sense". A Thai example (with translation) could also be useful. Thanks again for all your good work. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:38, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Transliterations

Hi Alif! :)

Very interesting work you're doing with Thai there, amazing to see that many Sanskrit loanwords!

tr= parameter for various templates such as {{infl}} is supposed to be used for transliteration/romanization purposes, not for pronunciation (as that is I assume is what you're doing now, with those IPA symbols?)

There is ===Pronunciation=== header intended for the purpose of phonemic/phonetic transcription, per WT:ELE, just below the ===Etymology===, so I think that these should go there.

Also, I don't know if you were aware of it, but there is Wiktionary:About Thai where guidelines for Thai are suppose to go. That page needs lots of love at this moment. Feel bold to update it! Cheers --Ivan Štambuk 02:36, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey Ivan Štambuk,

How are you doing? Well, thank you very much for letting me know, before it's too late. I'll probably taking a little break for now. I feel like I'm the only one working on the Thai parts. Aww, I'm going to have to go back to those pages again. :_(

Thanks again anyway for your wonderful comment. :)--Alifshinobi 02:40, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Bear in mind that it's really not the end of the world if those entries stay as they are for a little while, so if it's really tedious to do them now, don't. Wiktionary has a lot of formatting conventions, and a lot more areas where we haven't even really figured out how we want to do things. There were a number of things which I could've done better with some of my earlier Ancient Greek entries, so I can sympathize with how irritating it can be to have to go back and re-do a bunch of stuff. What you may want to consider doing, if you're serious about beefing up our Thai section (a task which I would positively love to see happen), is creating a model page. Create an entry and take some time and make it the most complete entry you possibly can. Have some people look it over and give feedback. That'll allow you to iron out some of the formatting issues before they're part of a hundred entries. :-) This is especially important since we don't have any well-established languages related to Thai. It has been my observation that each language family has its own special formatting needs. Indo-European language format is fairly well-established (for obvious reasons) and Sino-Tibetan seems to be fairly standardized at this point, but Semitic languages are still working out just how they want to do things. It can be frustrating to be the only one working on a language, but there are advantages. You get to figure out and decide a lot of things for yourself. Certainly you should get community input, but ultimately, if you're the only one working on a language, you get to call a lot of the shots (bear in mind I'm not granting you carte blanche ;-)). Take the transliteration, for example. Based on some of the things DAVilla (someone you might want to get in touch with, btw) has noted on Wiktionary:About Thai, perhaps an IPA transliteration system is the best that can be done for Thai. However, it is different from how most languages do transliterations, and so definitely needs to get community discussion first. One final thing, while Wiktionary is positively frosty to people who are problematic, you'll find we're quite nice to folks who are putting in a lot of good work. So, if you have questions, or need a template written, or whatever, there are a lot of folks around who would be more than happy to help out. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:37, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

한국어 위키낱말사전에도 바벨이 있어요.

Can you speak to Korean? I'm comtributing in Korean wiktionary. 한국어위키낱말사전에도 바벨이 있어요. See the ko:위키낱말사전:바벨 상자. --61.99.164.37 03:25, 26 June 2008 (UTC

Do you have a Korean Wiktionary password? If you take part in Korean Wiktionary, you should have to use a Babel. You have a babel in English Wiktionary. Me, too. So, You should have a bebel. But this is not responsiblity. --61.99.164.37 02:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Thai restaurant menu terms

Hi there. We have a number of pages linked from Appendix:Menus, but not one for Thai food as yet. Do you think you could hava a go? One problem is that we are not supposed to add transliterations of words in non-Latin scripts - so gai ob chaplu (I think that's what I had yesterday) might not be allowed. Cheers SemperBlotto 10:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

• P.S. A translation of "Baan Thitiya" (as in [1]) would be welcomed. SemperBlotto 10:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:Tai Lü nouns

{{khb}} is the correct template? Either the template needs to be changed or everything should refer to simply Lü. Nadando 20:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikilinks

Hi there. When making an entry, could you please wikilink the important terms using brackets like this: [[impoverished]]. Thanks, Razorflame 05:04, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

You don't need to include periods at the end of the definitions, either. They are translation defintions, so periods aren't used, nor are full sentences unless they are absolutely needed. Razorflame 05:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Thai Headword Templates

Hi, have you ever thought about using the templates {{th-noun}}, {{th-verb}}, and {{th-adj}}? It results in lesser bytes for your entries. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 02:07, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Some Thai audio files

1. สวัสดีครับ.
2. ไฟล์ดังต่อไปนี้, ช่วยอัดเสียงใหม่ให้ถูกต้องและอัปโหลดใหม่ได้ไหมครับ:
   1. File:Th-khwaamrak.ogg;
   2. File:Th-chinese.ogg.
3. ไฟล์ที่มีอยู่เป็นการออกเสียงที่ไม่ถูกต้องดังนี้:
   1. "ก" [k̚] เป็นพยัญชนะกัณฐชอโฆษสิถิล (voiceless unaspirated velar plosive). ออกเสียง "ความรัก" ว่า "ความรัคคคค" จึงไม่ถูก.
   2. "จ" [tɕ] เป็นพยัญชนะตาลุชอโฆษสิถิล (voiceless unaspirated palatal plosive). ออกเสียง "จีน" ว่า "ชชชชญญจีน" จึงไม่ถูก.
4. ถ้าไม่อาจอัปโหลดใหม่ได้, ขอให้คุณแจ้งลบไฟล์เหล่านั้นที่คอมมอนส์ได้ไหมครับ, เพราะ:
   1. บอตจะคอยลงไฟล์ตลอด, และเจ้าของบอตแจ้งว่า ไม่อาจห้ามบอตได้, ต้องลบไฟล์สถานเดียว;
   2. เจ้าของไฟล์แจ้งลบเอง ไม่มีขั้นตอนยุ่งยากเหมือนคนอื่นแจ้งลบ.
5. ขอบพระคุณครับ.

--iudexvivorum (talk) 07:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Tai Lue in Lanna / Tai Tham script

Hi Alif.

I take it you are the Alif with the blog and YouTube channel about Tai languages?

I've taken an interest in Tai Lue since my two visits to Yunnan. I've been learning the New Tai Lue script and I've been adding entries to Wiktionary in it.

But I also want to get into the Tai Tham script version of it and I see you've actually created a font for Tai Tham as used in Northern Tai.

There is one major source of Tai Lue in the Tai Tham script, tai12.com. It comes with its own font but after much experimentation I've found that they're using a customized incompatible version of the Tai Tham Unicode encoding. If you try to get that site to use your font or Noto Sans Tai Tham it gets all garbled. Their font also seems to mess up Northern Tai web content that works for proper Tai Tham Unicode fonts, though I don't know any good Northern Thai sites to try that on. It turns out that the website's font uses lots of Unicode Private Use Area characters.

I think their font doesn't implement proper glyph shaping with combining characters for subscripts etc and instead uses their extra characters in the private use area.

I'm also not sure yet whether their font and website actually uses logical order for the Unicode codepoints or visual order. They have a version of the site also in the New Tai Lue script at dw12.com and it was set up for visual order instead of the correct logical order. In fact, last year Unicode actually changed their definition for New Tai Lue to use visual order because this is pretty much the only place the script is used online.

I'm interested in being able to convert from the broken Tai Tham Unicode on their site to correct Tai Tham Unicode for Wiktionary. First I would need to figure out all the ways in which they're deviating from the standard. Then I'd want to find all the correct equivalents to all their private use characters, and then I'd probably write some code to automatically convert text from their website into correct Unicode that works with your font.

Let me know if this interests you and if you can help with it?

By the way, I notice you never seem to mention Zhuang in your blog and YoutTube channel - why is that? (-: — hippietrail (talk) 06:38, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

@Hippietrail: It is GB/T 32637-2016 code. BTW, AFAIK there's currently no font successfully implement Unicode Standard well. Some text in Wiktionary added the tone mark right after the SAKOT stacker, which is apparently illegal in Unicode. --173.68.165.114 04:35, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! I can find this page about the standard but its "preview" button goes to a page requiring flash, which I can't view. Do you know where I can read the standard? — hippietrail (talk) 05:56, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@Hippietrail: The documentation of the proper encoding of Tai Tham is severely lacking. I've put an attempt together at https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nod/%E1%A8%B2%E1%A9%A0%E1%A9%85%E1%A9%AB%E1%A8%BE%E1%A9%AE%E1%A9%AC%E1%A9%A5%E1%A8%A6#ᩀᩪᨶᩥᨣᩰᩫ᩠ᨯ ; reviews and improvements to grammar and intelligibility are welcome, and a review of technical accuracy would be appropriate. (The section also exists in the two Thai script writing systems - automatically generated!) The Unicode Consortium has done a poor job of documenting the encoding as a text as opposed to a character encoding standard; the definition largely resides in the proposals (for which see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_Tham_(Unicode_block) ). It's a shame Andrew Glass's team didn't read them before releasing the USE, which consequently set Tai Tham rendering in Open Source applications back years. HarfBuzz was shaping up nicely before it switched to the USE.

Now, if you apply the principle that Tai Tham is encoded in phonetic order, and accept that tones follow non-spacing vowels, then /lɔːi/ '100' is encoded as <RA, OA BELOW, TONE-2, SAKOT, LOW YA>. However, if you normalize it, then you have to take note that TONE-2 has canonical combining class 230 and SAKOT has canonical class 9. It then gets normalized to <RA, OA BELOW, SAKOT, TONE-2, LOW YA>. The proposals gave SAKOT canonical class 0 to prevent this sort of thing, but Mark Davis silently changed it to 9 and this massive blunder wasn't spotted until after Unicode 5.1 was published. Wikipedia, and I think also Wiktionary, automatically normalise the text of articles.

As to fonts that use the OpenType rendering mechanism, you can compare a selection at http://wrdingham.co.uk/lanna/renderer_test.htm . For editing on Wikipedia using Firefox, I prefer the outrageously square "Da Lekh Si", which on Firefox shows me what I've typed and what the options from a spell checker are. I believe Lamphun is tolerable for general use, though some layout improvements are *needed*. (The Da Lekh fonts also need some tweaks to avoid clashes between non-spacing marks and glyphs other than their base that impair legibility - probably a dozen new glyphs.) These fonts have swollen GSUB tables just to undo the damage the USE does to rendering. I hope to be able to share a basic Lanna script Northern Thai spell-checker (Firefox, LibreOffice) within the next few weeks. The one I've been using has a copyright issue. I believe I am allowed to take an ordinary book and publish a list of the words it contains.

@Alifshinobi, if your OpenType font has tables for the 'lana' script and you will license me to use and change your font, I will have a go at protecting your font against the USE. The SIL Open font licence is liberal enough. RichardW57m (talk) 12:35, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

@RichardW57m, how do I license you? --A.S. (talk) 18:03, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

@Alifshinobi You can get my email address off https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/ietf-languages/ . An email giving me permissions will do. If I'm successful, I'd like to add before and after versions of your font to my published renderer tests. For that, I will need to generate web fonts, which with with my tool set means creating .woff files. I'll need a pointer to your font - the version of Lanna Alif of 5 March 2010 doesn't have GSUB tables for the 'lana' script. It looks as though it relies on ccmp, which causes major problems with MS Edge. (I didn't have your font to hand when I made the offer.) I may be able to overcome the problems, but it will be more difficult than I had hoped. RichardW57 (talk) 22:13, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

@RichardW57m There's absolutely no reason to ping someone on their own talk page: the system already provides a notification whenever anyone else edits the talk page. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:01, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Descendants

Hi, thanks for adding descendants in the Chinese entries! Other than minor formatting errors (like putting them after the ---- instead of before), there were just a few that were a bit questionable:

• Lao ເຈົ້າ (chao) and Thai เจ้า (jâao) from 主 (zhǔ): the Thai entry compares it to Khmer instead, which means they may not be from Chinese.
• Lao ມ້າ (mā) and Thai ม้า (máa) from 馬／马 (mǎ); Lao ໄກ່ (kai) and Thai ไก่ (gài): although the Chinese is cognate with the Lao and the Thai, it seems like Lao and Thai didn't borrow them from Chinese, but inherited them from Proto-Tai.

Do you have any sources that support your edits? @Wyang, Octahedron80, please take a look. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:08, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you @justin(r)leung. Here's my response.

• "Do you have any sources that support your edits?"

• Yes. 主 and 馬 are from [2] which cites Li, Fang Kuei. 雞 is from [3] which cites Liang and Zhang (Liang, M., & Zhang, J. (1996). Dong-Tai Yuzu Gailun [An Introduction to Kam-Tai Languages]).

• "The Thai entry compares it to Khmer instead, which means they may not be from Chinese."

• It seems like the assumption of your argument is that any Thai entry in which the word is compared to Khmer must not be from Chinese. Is this right?

I will edit the entries, so that the Thai and Lao words are under "Proto-Tai" (i.e., the words in these two languages are descendants of Proto-Tai words, which themselves are descendants of Chinese words).

--A.S. (talk) 05:41, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Nevertheless, please use Pittayaporn's paper (2009) instead of starling.rinet.ru. The rinet is private work and unpublished. Pittayaporn's paper is about Proto-Tai but also mentioned to Chinese in appendix. --Octahedron80 (talk) 05:47, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Octahedron80, I agree that Pittayaporn's dissertation is much more credible, especially when Chinese loans such as 馬 are mentioned therein. Although the sites I mentioned aren't published, the papers that are cited are. --A.S. (talk) 05:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying, Alif. I think we want to stick to Pittayaporn's reconstructions just to be consistent in Wiktionary. Also, I think the etymology sections of the Thai and Lao entries should be updated accordingly, preferably before they are listed as descendants, so that it's clearer. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:41, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Justinrleung,

• "I think we want to stick to Pittayaporn's reconstructions just to be consistent in Wiktionary." Did we vote on this? I like Pittayaporn's reconstructions too, but we can't ignore the work by Li Fang Kuei and other published scholars. I agree that we have to be consistent as this will make Wiktionary more reliable. However, there should be a written rule (or is there one?) about which reconstructions to follow or whether we should cite only one source at all. This rule must be one that users working in this area all agree on, so that newer users can follow it.
• "I think the etymology sections of the Thai and Lao entries should be updated accordingly." Good point. Since Wiktionary is a collaborative online dictionary, the responsibility to update all relevant etymology sections should not fall on one user. That said, you can make the changes too. As for me, I will slowly work on this. Thank you, Justin. --A.S. (talk) 14:39, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there's a vote on which reconstruction to use, but I do know @Wyang and @Octahedron80 have agreed here. I'm not so familiar with Proto-Tai and Tai languages, so that's why I'm leaving it to other editors like you who are more knowledgeable in these areas to expand the etymologies. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:51, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think such things should be subject to voting. When there are two or more hypotheses in the etymology of any language we list all credible ones. We only omit known folk etymologies, debunked, ones where the scholarly consensus has shifted, etc. And even then we can sometimes make a note of them. — hippietrail (talk) 03:19, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

"Module error: No such module "nod-headword"."

Why did you add a template to an entry that you knew wasn't functional? Chuck Entz (talk) 03:33, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Are you genuinely curious, or did you actually have a suggestion? --A.S. (talk) 05:12, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I am the creator of nod-headword at thwikt. It does not yet exist here. Please use common "head" in the templates for now. --Octahedron80 (talk) 05:18, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Tai Lü dictionaries

Hi from ບໍ່ເຕ່ນ (bǭ tēn)!

I just spent the last day of my Chinese visa in Jinghong, Xishuangbanna. Even though I'm flat broke I bought two of the three Tai Lü dictionaries sold at the local Xinhua bookstore. Both are Chinese-Tai Lü of course. One was a 10 RMB paperback using the new script with a very odd choice of which words to include. The other was a 55 RMB hardback using the old script and is generally much better all round. They also had a larger version of this. I have all the details if you want to know more.

By the way, are you active on Quora? I think there's a lot of questions over there on Tai-Kadai languages that would interest you and that you'd have answers to.

Also, have you noticed the requests pages and categories here? There are requests for entries in several Tai-Kadai languages and also requests for translations into those languages in the translation tables of various English entries.

I'm expecting to be in Laos and Thailand for up to six weeks as I make my way down to Kuala Lumpur for a cheap flight back home to Australia. — hippietrail (talk) 03:27, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Hippietrail, I'm sorry for the super late reply. I hope your trips went well! I was planning on going to Jinghong this summer, but it looks like this won't happen. --A.S. (talk) 18:05, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

You mean what won't happen? --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 05:54, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

"This" referred to [planning on going to Jinghong...].--A.S. (talk) 13:02, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I found a word book by Webonary. --Apisite (talk) 00:06, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Apisite, Thank you. I have been using the website since its creation. I also have the print version, but it is easier to use the (updated) Webonary edition. --A.S. (talk) 00:48, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

See Category:Pages with module errors

Three pages you created have module errors in Thai romanization. Benwing2 (talk) 02:22, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Benwing2, I know. That is why I created the pages that caused the errors. --A.S. (talk) 02:29, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

It's a good idea to create the words your usexes are made of first but if the gap is not long, it's OK. Thanks for usexes. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

ບ່ວງ

Hey. Can you check the Lao entry ບ່ວງ, please? It was created by a bot over 10 years ago. --Yesyesandmaybe (talk) 18:31, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Yesyesandmaybe, done. --A.S. (talk) 21:52, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Lao Pronunciation

When will a module for the Lao language's pronunciation be made? --Apisite (talk) 05:55, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Apisite, I think @Octahedron80 was working on it. I do not know what happened. We can use the description of the tones in Vientiane Lao on pages 35-36 of Enfield (2007) to create template:lo-pron. I do not think we should wait for "the perfect" description of the tones to exist before we can create the template. We should work with the sources we have now. The template can always be edited later. --A.S. (talk) 06:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Apisite, Isn't it awesome how we now have lo-pron? --A.S. (talk) 18:44, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Now the Chinese edition of Wiktionary ought to have the template. --Apisite (talk) 05:31, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

And also the Turkish edition. --Apisite (talk) 05:59, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Is it a little rushed? That's very interesting and long overdue. However, I wonder how syllabification is done with Lao? E.g. ມີໂຄລເນຊີ (mī khōn nē sī) should produce "mī khlō nē sī", not "mī khōn nē sī". @Octahedron80, is there an equivalent of Thai ◌ฺ in Lao, e.g. ไมโครนีเซีย (mai-kroo-nii-siia) respelled as "ไม-โคฺร-นี-เซีย"? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:12, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The -ຣ-, -ລ- medials are unpronounced (or it will become two syllables). So they need respelling. ມີ-ໂຄ-ເນ-ຊີ will be. --Octahedron80 (talk) 06:13, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Atitarev, Octahedron80, Deleting a liquid sound in a consonant cluster makes sense because Thai speakers also do it but in colloquial speech. However, if my memory serves me, I've also heard a Lao speaker add a vowel to break up a consonant cluster in a non-Indic loanword even though the added vowel was not spelled. I believe the word may have been ເກຣັກ (from Fr. grec) which was pronounced ກະ ເຣັກ (or probably ກະ ເລັກ) (cf. ກະແລັມ/ກະແລມ which is also from Fr. crème, but the added vowel is spelled out). I'm not sure how common it is to add a vowel to break up a consonant cluster in a recent loanword in Lao though. Maybe I'll try to search for scholarly articles about loanword adaptation in Lao, or maybe one of us can just compile a list of French and English loanwords and ask a group of native speakers of Lao to produce the words. --A.S. (talk) 06:42, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Alifshinobi, Octahedron80: It would be good, thanks. Perhaps, having a way to alternatively respell some words with clusters would be good. It won't be surprising if Lao people can manage some clusters, finals and sound /r/ but it may not be part of the "standard" Lao phonology. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:51, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Octahedron80: Got it, thanks! If /kw/ and /kʰw/ are the only remaining consonant clusters (100%?), what about ຂໍ້ຄວາມ (khǭk wām)? ("khǭ khuām"?) Respell as "ຂໍ້-ຄວາມ"? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:32, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Atitarev: You don't delete -ວ. The liquids (-ລ/-ຼ and -ຣ), if spelled, are usually the ones that go. --A.S. (talk) 06:49, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

All clusters here. --Octahedron80 (talk) 06:47, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

	["ກວ"] = "kʷ", ["ຂວ"] = "kʷʰ", ["ຄວ"] = "kʷʰ", ["ງວ"] = "ŋʷ",
	["ຈວ"] = "t͡ɕʷ", ["ສວ"] = "sʷ", ["ຊວ"] = "sʷ",
	["ຖວ"] = "tʷʰ", ["ທວ"] = "tʷʰ", ["ລວ"] = "lʷ", ["ອວ"] = "ʔʷ",

@Alifshinobi, Octahedron80: Thanks, I see that only -ວ is preserved and not only after /k/ and /kʰ/. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:16, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Dear future readers, what I wrote on 10 August 2021 (UTC) no longer applies. I was able to find scholarly sources for Octahedron80. The sources provided information about the tones not only in Vientiane Lao but also in Luang Prabang Lao. What's crucial here is that the sources provided the tone letters for the tones in these Lao varieties for Octahedron80 to create the lo-pron module. Finding the tone letters and the descriptions of the tones was an exciting moment for me personally because I had also wanted to know the tones for myself to improve my pronunciation (and now I can practice my Luang Prabang accent!). You can look at the tone letters for the two Lao varieties here: [1] and [2]. I've also added links to the sources and page numbers in case you want to read more. --A.S. (talk) 07:21, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Atitarev, Apisite, Octahedron80: I am very grateful for the lo-pron module. I could not have done and still cannot do a better job than Octahedron80 creating the module. However, one problem more urgent than the pronunciation of non-Indic loanwords right now is the incorrect assumption that Cwaa (C = consonant, w = /w/ [or /ʋ/ depending on your view], and aa = /aː/) occurs in the phonology of Vientiane Lao and the phonology of Luang Prabang Lao at the phonological/phonemic level. Examples of Cwaa words are ກວ່າ, ຂວາ, ລວາດ, and ສວາຍ which are pronounced ກົ່ວ, ຂົວ, ລວດ, and ສວຍ respectively. The current lo-pron module incorrectly assumes that Cwaa is allowed by the phonotactics of Vientiane and Luang Prabang Lao.

Osatananta (1997), in her dissertation on Vientiane tones, wrote: "Furthermore, I found that native speakers of Vientiane Lao cannot distinguish between the following pairs of citation forms:" (p. 76) She then presented these homophonous pairs:

kʰwǎa ຂວາ "right hand" and kʰǔa ຂົວ "bridge" (both are pronounced kʰǔa ຂົວ)

lwâat ລວາດ "slope" and lûat ລວດ "wire" (both are pronounced lûat ລວດ)

swǎaj ສວາຍ "late" and sǔaj ສວຍ "beautiful" (both are pronounced sǔaj ສວຍ)

(p. 76)

The best and common way for you to know (besides looking at the spelling) that someone says ສວຍ "beautiful," not ສວາຍ "late," is when you put the word ສວຍ in context (e.g., when you put ສວຍ before ງາມ, which also means "beautiful," Osatananta, 1997, p. 76. Note, however, that putting ຂວາ/ຂົວ "right hand"/"bridge" after ວຽງຈັນໄປທາງ, gloss: Vientiane-go-way/towards, still makes it hard for native speakers to distinguish between ຂວາ and ຂົວ, Osatananta, 1997, p. 77). The assumed Cwaa form does not occur anywhere in normal speech. You cannot add an affix to a historically Cwaa word to make the Cwaa form come out. If you assume that Cwaa is in the phonology of Vientiane Lao, you have to explain why it does not get phonetically realized anywhere. You cannot use a historical distinction as evidence to argue for the Cwaa form at the phonemic/phonological level. The distinction is lost just like other historical distinctions (e.g., the distinction between ຖົ່ວ and ທົ່ວ, both of which are pronounced the same, and the distinction between ໃ and ໄ though in Vientiane Lao, not Luang Prabang Lao). Osatananta's (1997) dissertation is about Vientiane Lao, but the Cwaa - Cua distinction is also lost in Luang Prabang Lao. I have presented evidence for this to Octahedron80 on the Thai Wiktionary. The loss is actually widespread in Lao (and Isan).

In other languages, we often do not use an IPA symbol in a phonemic transcription for a sound sequence that is not allowed by the phonotactics of a language. For example, we do not put /k/ before /n/ within a syllable for the word "know" in English and assume that the speakers delete the /k/ at the phonetic level. The sound sequence /kn/- is no longer allowed by the phonotactics of English. This sequence is from Old and Middle English (according to what is written here on Wiktionary). More generally, we do not transcribe sounds that "used to be there in the past." This would be similar to using IPA symbols for silent letters in French at the phonemic/phonological level. Additionally, we do not transcribe historical sound distinctions at the phonemic level. In Latin American Spanish, we do not indicate that there is a distinction between s and z/c (before i and e) because that distinction is lost at the phonemic level (e.g., cazar and casar are both transcribed the same way for Latin American Spanish).

Again I am very grateful for the lo-pron module. I actually tried many times to write the lo-pron module myself but failed and had to ask Octahedron80 for help. I need to work on my programming skills. My professional background is in (theoretical and applied) linguistics (although I know that many linguists are excellent programmers).

Reference

• Osatananda, V. (1997). Tone in Vientiane Lao (Order No. 9801455). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (304347191). https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/tone-vientiane-lao/docview/304347191/se-2?accountid=10906

--A.S. (talk) 16:02, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Update: The Cwaa - Cua problem has been fixed. Many thanks to Octahedron80. --A.S. (talk) 20:53, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Central and Southern Lao

Now that the template {{lo-pron}} has been made, what and how about the Central and Southern varieties of Lao? --Apisite (talk) 06:31, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

@Apisite: given my limited coding skills, it is unfortunately not really up to me. The current lo-pron module itself still needs to be improved. I can mostly help by looking for scholarly articles about other varieties. I have tried looking for the tone letters for the Pakse variety but have not found a good source. --A.S. (talk) 16:53, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

A link on your user page is now a gambling spam site

"thailao.net" is now a gambling spam site. Better not to give them the link? Equinox ◑ 23:40, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

@Equinox, Thank you so much for letting me know. It is unfortunate that that website is gone. I have removed the link. --A.S. (talk) 23:52, 17 October 2022 (UTC)