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The plan adopted in this volume for spelling Siamese and Lāo words is intended to make possible, and even easy, a real approximation to the native pronunciation. Only the tonal inflections of native speech and the varieties of aspiration are ignored, as wholly foreign to our usage and, therefore, unmanageable.

The consonant-letters used and the digraphs ch and ng have their common English values.

The vowels are as follows:

Long ā as in father

ē as in they

ī as in pique

ō as in rode

ū as in rude, rood

aw as in lawn

ê as in there (without the r)

ô as in world (without the r)

û is the high-mixed vowel, not found in English.

It may be pronounced as u.

Short a as in about (German Mann)—not as in hat.

e as in set

i as in sit

o as in obey (N. Eng. coat)—not as in cot.

u as in pull, foot—not as in but.

The last four long vowels have also their corresponding shorts, but since these rarely occur, it has not been thought worth while to burden the scheme with extra characters to represent them.

The diphthongs are combinations of one of these vowels, heavily stressed, and nearly always long in quantity—which makes it seem to us exaggerated or drawled—with a “vanish” of short i, o, (for u), or a. ai (= English long i, y) and ao (= English ow) are the only diphthongs with short initial element, and are to be distinguished from āi and āo. In deference to long established usage in maps and the like, ie is used in this volume where ia would be the consistent spelling, and oi for awi.