science

Tai Viet script

Tai Viet script is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tai Viet script rather than just read about it. In short: The Tai Viet script (Tai Dam: ꪎꪳ ꪼꪕ ("Tai script"), Vietnamese: Chữ Thái Việt, Thai: อักษรไทดำ, RTGS: akson taidam) is a Brahmic script used by the Tai Dam people and various other Thai people in Vietnam and Thailand. History According to Thai authors, the writing system is probably derived from the old Thai writing of the kingdom of Sukhotai.

Key takeaways

Tai Viet script belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tai Viet script to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tai Viet script from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Tai Viet script (Tai Dam: ꪎꪳ ꪼꪕ ("Tai script"), Vietnamese: Chữ Thái Việt, Thai: อักษรไทดำ, RTGS: akson taidam) is a Brahmic script used by the Tai Dam people and various other Thai people in Vietnam and Thailand.

History According to Thai authors, the writing system is probably derived from the old Thai writing of the kingdom of Sukhotai. It has been suggested that the Fakkham script is the source of the Tai Don, Tai Dam and Tai Daeng writing systems found in Jinping (China), northern Laos, and Vietnam. Differences in phonology of the various local Tai languages, the isolation of communities and the fact that the written language has traditionally been passed down from father to son have led to many local variants. In an attempt to reverse this development and establish a standardized system, Vietnam's various Tai people in the former Northwestern Autonomous Region were approached with a proposal that they should agree on a common standard. Together with Vietnamese researchers, a first proposal called Thống Nhất (or Unified Alphabet) was developed, which was published in 1961 and revised in 1966. A unified and standardized version of the script was developed at a UNESCO-sponsored workshop in 2006, named "chữ Thái Việt Nam" (or Vietnamese Tai script). This standardized version was then approved to be included in Unicode. From May 2008, the improved Thai script was put into official use.

Description

The script consists of 31 consonants and 14 vowels. Unlike most other abugidas or brahmic scripts, the consonants do not have an inherent vowel, and every vowel must be specified with a vowel marker. Vowels are marked with diacritic vowel markers that can appear above, below or to the left and/or right of the consonant. Some vowels carry an inherent final consonant, such as /-aj/, /-am/, /-an/ and /-əw/. The script uses Latin script punctuation, and also includes five special characters, one to indicate a person, one for the number "one", one to repeat the previous word, one to mark the beginning of a text and one to mark the end of a text. Traditionally, the script did not use any spacing between words as they were written in a continuous flow, but spacing has become common since the 1980s.

Consonants

Initial consonant letters have both high and low forms, which are used to indicate tones. The high consonants are used for the syllable final letters -w, -y, -m, -n and -ng. The low consonant letter -k is used for final /k/- and /ʔ/-sounds, while low consonant letters -b and -d are used for final /p/ and /t/.

Vowels

The consonant character's position is marked with a circle: ◌.

When /ɔ/ has a final, ◌ꪮ is used instead. Some additional vowels are written with a combination of two vowel characters. The following four combinations are used for Tai Dam:

Some sounds are spelled differently in Tai Dón compared to in Tai Dam:

Tones Traditionally the script used no tone marks and only partially indicated tones with the high/low consonant differentiation. The reader had to guess the tone and thus meaning of a word from context. In the 1970s two tone marks were developed, called mai nueng and mai song. Tone 1 is marked with only a low consonant. Tone 4 is marked with only a high consonant. Tone 2 is marked with the first tone mark and a low consonant form. Tone 5 is marked with the first tone mark and a high consonant form. Tone 3 is marked with the second tone mark and a low consonant form. Tone 6 is marked with the second tone mark and a high consonant form.

Unicode

Proposals to encode Tai Viet script in Unicode go back to 2006. A Unicode subcommittee reviewed a February 6, 2007 proposal submitted by James Brase of SIL International for what was then called Tay Viet script. At the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 meeting on April 24, 2007, a revised proposal for the script, now known as Tai Viet, was accepted "as is", with support from TCVN, the Vietnam Quality & Standards Centre. Tai Viet was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2. The Unicode block for Tai Viet is U+AA80–U+AADF:

Further reading Miyake, Marc. 2014. D-ou-b-led letters in Tai Viet.

References

External links SIL Tai Heritage Pro Font Download Proposal to encode additional Tai Viet characters for the Jinping Dai

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tai Viet script

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tai Viet script claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tai Viet script before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tai Viet script ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tai Viet script

In research: Tai Viet script appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tai Viet script in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tai Viet script is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 16th-century establishments in Vietnam, Brahmic scripts, Languages of Vietnam, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tai Viet script outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tai Viet script in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tai Viet script means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tai Viet script out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tai Viet script in simple terms?

Why does Tai Viet script matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tai Viet script?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tai Viet script.