Editing Isan language (section)

===Written language usage and vitality===
[[File:Legal text in Isan (Lao) written in Tai Noi.jpg|thumb|center|450px|Portions of an ancient legal text written in the Tai Noi script on a palm-leaf manuscript. The script was banned in the 1930s but survived in Laos as the modern Lao alphabet.]]
The written language is currently at Stage IX, which on the EGIDS scale is a 'language [that] serves as a reminder of heritage identity for an ethnic community, but no one has more than symbolic proficiency'.<ref name="EGIDS"/> This applies to both the ''Tai Noi'' script used for secular literature and the ''Tua Tham'' script previously used for Buddhist texts. Only a handful of people of very advanced age and caretakers of monasteries whose libraries were not destroyed during the Thaification implementation in the 1930s are able to read either script. Evidence for the use of the written language is hard to find, but well-worn murals of very old temples often have small bits of writing in the old script.<ref name="ronn">Ronnakiat, N. (1992). Evidence of the Thai noi alphabet found in inscriptions. ''The third international symposium on language and linguistics.'' Bangkok, Thailand: Chulalongkorn University. (pp. 1326–1334).</ref>

In Laos, the orthography is a direct descendant of ''Tai Noi'' and continues its role as the official written language of the Lao language of the left bank as well as the script used to transcribe minority languages. The Lao written language has unified the dialects to some extent as well, as though the differences between dialects are sharper in Laos than Isan, one common writing system unites them.<ref name="LaoLaw"/><ref name="ronn"/>