OpenSource VietThai support
VietThai refers to the Thai languages used by Thai people mainly in Vietnam, and also refers to the script used for theses languages. Both the script and the language have the same origin as that of Thai language/script used in Thailand, but now they differ from each other in a significant way (especially the scripts are).
The language name is spelled as 
, and the script name is spelled as 
in the modern form, 
in the traditional form.
We are planning to develop OpenSource tools for VietThai script and language.
About VietThai languages and scripts
What is VietThai? What is Tai?
Tai is a name of a language family. One of its branches, Chiang Saeng Tai includes many languages spoken in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. For writing four of them: Tai Daeng, Tai Dam, Tai Dón and Thai Song, Unified Tai Script is proposed for Unicode. About 1.5 million people use one of the languages and Tai speaking people in Vietnam want to use their language in formal education.
What is Traditional form and Modern form?
Tai speaking communities have their own writings and there are more than eight dialects of the Tai script. Such dialects are "traditional forms". The Vietnamese government has tried to establish a standard for the script. The standard version of the script is "Modern form" and also called as Unified Alphabet. Unified Tai Script proposed for Unicode contains both the traditional and the modern form, because some people have been educated in the traditional form only.
Tai? Thai?
Tai is the name that people speaking Tai Daeng, Tai Dam, Tai Dón refer to themselves, and Thai refers to central Thai.
VietThai tools
- VietThai language environment for Unicode based Emacs
Last Updated : Friday, August 18, 2006
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