Pali-Lao Dictionary (2004)

To my amazement, I discovered (yesterday) that a Pali-Lao dictionary
exists --and was published in 2004.

As per the simile of the dancing bear, it is not a question of how
well it dances, but the fact that it dances at all, i.e., the quality
of the work is quite irrelevant to the impression it makes upon me
--as I am impressed that the work has been done at all.

Sadly, this lexicon represents an even further step toward simplified
orthography: it uses modern lao with "diacritical dots" beneath the
glyphs --abandoning even the mixed system in use circa 1975, that
employed about a half-dozen Khmeresque glyphs for sounds not found in
modern (Lao) vernacular (e.g., jh, dh, etc.).

The standard followed in this text puts a dot beneath "g" to create
"gh", but has a dot beneath "s" to create "ch", and uses the same dot
to create retroflexes from dentals.  This is likely to throw the state
of Lao phonology and philology into even further confusion.

I can only say that this makes the development of a (Unicode) standard
for computing in classical Lao-Dhamma script all the more urgent;
although classical Burmese or classical Khom will serve as well in the
interim (I have never seen a book in Laos typeset in either of the
latter scripts...).

E.M.