> >The first person to adapt a typewriter to the Thai alphabet found that it
> >wasn't possible to fit all Thai characters onto the English layout. So he
> >omitted 2 consonants which were rarely used, and could be replaced by
> other
> >characters without changing the pronunciation. Those 2 characters have
> since
> >become obsolete.
>
> I seem to recall hearing not too long ago that this is not
> actually true. I
> don't have any references to back that up, though.
> - Peter

I checked this point with a Thai colleague today - and we're both right :-)
She says that she has never encountered the 2 consonants in question, in any printed text. Nor are they printed on her keyboard. Every Thai consonant has an associated word, to distinguish it from similar sounding consonants, like "A Apple", "B Ball", but standardised; however even the representative words for these 2 are now spelt with their replacements.
On the other hand, every Thai learns them when they learn the alphabet. They have an alphabet song, similar to singing the A,B,C in English, so it would ruin the song to omit them :-) Another real life example of their usage is when writing Thai text books for foreigners while explaining they are obsolete... Perhaps "archaic" would be a better word, following the distinction often made in English dictionaries for words that aren't normally used, but which native speakers still widely recognise.

Not surprisingly, Unicode includes these 2 characters. So even if I can't type them, I can insert them with Word2000 Insert Symbol. Which leads to a new question; are there any examples of scripts evolving in the opposite direction, due to Unicode or other technological advances? i.e. a living language re-adopting symbols because technology made it possible? (And no, I don't count Ogham...)

Cormac