Tai Dam alphabet

Origin

The origins of the Tai Dam alphabet are unknown, though the shapes of the letters suggest that they might have been modelled on the Lao and/or Thai alphabets. Alternative writing systems, including some based on the Latin alphabet, are also used to write Tai Dam.

Notable features

Type of writing system: alphabet
Direction of writing: left to write in horizontal lines
Each consonant letter has a high and low form, which combined with the presence or absence of the two tones marks, is used to indicate the six tones of the Tai Dam language.
The high consonants are also used for the syllable final letters: -w, -y, -m, -n and -ng. The syllable final -k is written with the low letter k.
Vowels are indicated using diacritics which appear above, below or to the left and/or right of the consonant letters.
There is no standard order for the consonants, instead each scribe uses his own order.

Used to write:

Tai Dam, or Black Tai/Tai Noir, a Tai-Kadai language closely related to Lao and Thai which is spoken by around half a million people in north-western Vietnam and northern Laos. There are also Tai Dam speakers in Yunnan province of China, and in parts of northeastern and central Thailand, where they are known as Lao Song or Lao Song Dam.