--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Patrick Chew <patchew@...> wrote:

> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Presumably your Lao is like vocalized Hebrew/Arabic/Syriac -- or

better,

> > Yiddish, where the "vocalizations" are not optional and are in

fact

> > separate letters?
>
> Actually, no.
>
> Modern ("reformed") Lao, especially, is basically an alphabet.

Doesn't the difference in order merit a distinction? My experience
is with Thai, where the challenge of guessing the syllabification may
make vowels that precede the consonants more of an issue.

> Unlike Thai, which has an "inherent vowel" when no "vocalization"

is

> overt (in an open-syllable, it's [O] "open-o"; in a closed-syllable

it's

> [o])

In Thai words of two or more phonetic syllables, the inherent vowel
in phonetically open syllables is usually [a]. [O] as an inherent
vowel seems almost to be restricted to open monosyllables and cases
where the following consonant is <r>. The only counter-example I can
think of is the long form <ba.r:h.asapati:> (¾ÄËÑʺ´Õ) /pha_H rM_H
hat_L sa_L bO_M di:_M/ 'Jupiter', 'Thursday'. (Perhaps I should
write <b.r:h.aspti:> as Thai doesn't *use* anything like a virama,
but I think it's more considerate to put some vowels in just as the
Egyptologists do when transliteerating Ancinet Egyptian.)

Richard.