The Lanna culture arose in the region of northern Thailand which includes the modern-day provinces of Chiangmai, Chiangrai, Lamphun, Lampang, Phayao, Phrae, Nan and Maehongson. At its largest configuration it also included parts of Myanmar, southern China and Laos. Its official beginning coincides with the building of Chiangmai city in 1396 AD by King Mengrai.
A number of writing systems were adopted for representing the Northern Thai language, primarily evolving from ancient Mon and Khom (which both came from Pallava), but the most popular and enduring one was the Lanna Tham script, described here. Others were the Sukhothai script of King Ramkhamhaeng, the Fak Kham script, and the Thai Nithet script. Lanna is pronounced /lá:n na:/ and written ล้านนา in Standard Thai.
(This has taken me a while, getting to a fairly complete stage. You’ll notice, among other things, how many details there are to this fascinating script. And hence the slow progress.)
1 Consonants
1.1 Indic series consonants
The letters originally derive from Indic forms, and are still ordered according to the ancient Brahmi layout. Each letter is assigned a tone class: high, middle or low. Each series (or row) is named after the letter in the first column. A series is called /wák/, from Sanskrit varga. The first series is thus called /kàʔ wák/.
1.2 Indic non-series consonants
The non-series is called /àwák/ (from Sanskrit avarga).
1.3 Special consonants
The other consonants (called /phjancháná phísè:t/) evolved for use with Lanna and standard Thai, and include some letters for words coming from Sanskrit. For the writing of Pali, only the Indic consonants listed above are necessary.
1.4 Nasalizing suffixes, and silencer
2 Vowels
2.1 Initial vowels
2.2 Simple diacritic vowels
These vowel-letters may be used with a closed syllable (medial) or open syllable (final). If open, short vowels end with an inherent glottal stop /-ʔ/. Here and below, grey + stands in for the consonant.
2.3 Medial-only vowels
2.4 Nonfinal vowel shortener
A symbol similar to nonfinal vowel /a/ is added above certain nonfinal vowels to make their sound short.
2.5 Final vowels
The rather complex spelling of many final (open syllable) vowels is similar to some other scripts of the region, such as Dehong Dai and Shan.
2.6 Shortened final vowels, and other vowel symbols
A suffix (re-use of final vowel /a/) is written after a final vowel to make it short and abrupt:
These may be found in old documents:
3 Subscripts and syllables
3.1 Common subscript letters
If a closed syllable’s vowel does not take up space below the initial consonant, a subscript version of the final can be printed there. A subscript letter is called /tua sàkòt/. The subscript version can also be used as the second of a doubled consonant or where it follows another consonant directly (as in consonant clusters). The most common syllabic-final consonants are:
3.2 Other subscript letters
The /r/ subscript letter is the only one printed before its consonant:
The following are fairly common but appear in words coming from Pali or Sanskrit:
3.3 Less common subscript letters
These other subscripts are not really part of the Tai sound system, and will usually only appear in Pali and Sanskrit words:
3.4 Family of Lanna syllables
4 Tones
4.1 A tonal prefix
Some letters have no high-class equivalent, but can be promoted to high class by printing their subscript form after a silent high-class /h/:
4.2 Interpreting tones
Each syllable takes the tonal class of its initial consonant, and the tone of the syllable is derived from the Tone Rules, shown here. There are two tone-marks available, /mái è:k/ and /mái tho:/. Lanna differs from Standard Thai in having many more rising tone syllables. It also lacks the /tri:/ and /càttàwa:/ tone-marks (3rd and 4th), but this is made up for by having high and low class varieties of all relevant consonants.
This is a Tone Rules chart I cobbled together from listening mainly to Chiangrai and Phayao speakers:
This is a Tone Rules chart as defined by Alif Silpachai, for a Chiangmai dialect:
You could do worse than using the Standard Thai rules:
5 Numerals and other things
5.1 Numerals
The upper series /lê:k tham/ is reserved for use in religious (Dhamma) texts, the lower series /lê:k hǒ:ra:/ is for common use and resemble Mon-Burmese numerals. Beware, some numerals resemble Lanna consonant letters.
5.2 Abbreviations
In Lanna texts, there is a huge number of abbreviations used. In addition, there are many little “tricks” played by the scribe, which are like challenges for the reader. For example there is vowel-sharing, where a vowel is written once but it belongs to more than one of the consonants in the syllable group. Or vice-versa, a consonant is written once but several vowels are added, to indicate repeated syllables differing only by vowel.
Here are a couple of symbols, or special letters, used to abbreviate common syllables:
6 Reading Pali
A large amount of hand-written literature contains, or is devoted to, Pali sutras. Here is a chart showing the standard mapping of Lanna to (Romanized) Pali:
Here is short example of Pali written in Lanna script:
7 A stylistic point
(This is a piece of original research, but I thought I could share it here.) In the very common font used in the tables above you may notice a small fold at the end of some strokes, a bit like a serif – for example at the bottom right of /k/. I thought this was rather a fussy detail, but I saw it used consistently on public buildings around Chiangmai. Then I noticed these lying around everywhere:
, the stamen of the Ratchaphreuk flower:
.
Ton Ratchaphreuk is otherwise known as the Golden Shower Tree, or Cassia fistula, bearing also the official national flower of Thailand and the King of Thailand. This may not be a coincidence.
8 Sample text(s)
This is a poem in the Lanna script (source unknown) about appreciation of the Lanna script, here with a transliteration in Standard Thai.
See also my new variation on Lanna for another rendition of this text.
9 Resources
Lanna font “Cr-Paitoon by Berm” used in the charts is based on the hand of Charintr Jaemjitt
& was modified for general use by Berm of Wiwek Temple, Mae Jo, Chiangmai.