Editing Lao script (section)

==History==
{{further|Tai Noi script}}
The Lao script ultimately derived from a variant of the [[Khmer script|Old Khmer script]] of [[Khmer Empire|Angkor]], through the [[Sukhothai script]]. By the late 15th century, a form of the Sukhothai script had reached the Mekong River basin, after which the script developed differences between its Thai and Lao variants. In the 1960s, the [[Lao People's Revolutionary Party]] simplified the spelling to be phonemic and omitted extra letters used to write words of Pali-Sanskrit origin.<ref>[[Peter T. Daniels|Daniels, Peter T.]] & [[William Bright|Bright, William]]. (Eds.). (1996). ''The World's Writing Systems'' (pp. 460–461). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.</ref><ref>https://hal.science/hal-02358511/document</ref>

In the 1930s, [[Maha Sila Viravong]], a Buddhist scholar, backed by the Buddhist Institute in Vientiane and the Buddhist Academic Council, added an additional set of Lao characters to support Pali and Sanskrit, thereby filling the missing gaps in the existing script.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Rajan |first=Vinodh |last2=Mitchell |first2=Ben |last3=Jansche |first3=Martin |last4=Brawer |first4=Sascha |title=Proposal to Encode Lao Characters for Pali |url=http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17106-lao-for-pali.pdf}}</ref> While the Buddhist Institute published books that utilised these extended Indic characters, they did not see widespread usage, and fell out of usage by 1975.<ref name=":0" /> In 2019, the extended Indic characters were added to [[Unicode]] 12.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lao Characters for Pali added to Unicode 12 {{!}} Computer Science Blog |url=https://blogs.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/csblog/2019/03/06/lao-characters-for-pali-added-to-unicode-12/ |access-date=2023-03-01 |website=blogs.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk}}</ref>
[[File:Evolution of the Lao Script.png|thumb|250px|Evolution of the Lao Script]]
[[File:WatThatLuang Sign.JPG|thumb|Lao script on a sign at Wat That Luang, Vientiane.]]