A Tai script with Chinese style

Thawi Swangpanyangkoon (2012)

Abstract:

The Tai group of languages collectively form an important family of languages in South East Asia. The area in which they are spoken encompasses Assam in the west to Hainan Island in the east, and from southrn China in the north to the Thai-Malay border in the south.

Each of the Tai languages has its own system of writing and some have outstanding characteristics compared with the others. Of interest, is a Tai script from Quy Chau distric in Nghe An province of central Vietnam. This script, referred to in this article as Quy Chau Tai script, is one of the four Tai scripts used in the area.

In Quy Chau Tai script, text is written from top to bottom rather than from left to right as practiced in other Tai languages. Its consonants ang vowels forming a word are written sequentially in a vertical line and words are also staked vertically from top to bottom. As a column of the text fills up the writing spce, a new column is started to the left of the exiting one in a similar fashion to traditional Chinese language. These characteristics are unique among the Tai languages.

This article will outline the general characteristics of Quy Chau Tai script. In the alphabet section, the standard Thai will be presented for comparison. Each alphabet and word will be accompanied by an IPA phonetic transxription to assist readers in the pronounciation of the script.

A part from standard Thai and English, the alphabets presented in this paper will be based on the computer fonts created by author.

Article

In Vietnam there are about three mollions speakers of the Tai family of languages living along the Vietnam-China and Vietnam-Laos borders. They call themselves by many names such as Thai (same name used by people living in Thailand), Tay, Nung, Yay, Lao, Lue, Sanchay, Bo-y etc… The Thai are sub-divided into Black Tai, White Tai, Red Tai, Tai Thaeng, Tai Muang, Tai Muay etc…

All the Tai speakers in Vietnam have their own written language, compared to the Vietnamese who did not have any one and borrowed the Chinese script.

In Nghe An province, 250 km south of Hanoi, there are about 300,000 Tai speakers. They from four groups called:

1/ Tay Muang

2/ Tay Thaeng who migrated from Muang Thaeng or Dien Bien Phu (and from Thanh Hoa province /Sam Van Binh/).

3/ Thai Muay who had Muang Muay as their original town.

4/ Tai Khang with Muang Khang, Laos, as their original Muang.

Specifically in the Quy Chau (kwii2 caw1) district the Tai people have a unique way of writing their Tai dialect. Thay use consonants and vowels which are written from top tp bottom rather than from left to right as praticed in other languages and the columns are arranged from right to left as in the traditional Chinese writing.

In the past, the district Quy Chau was larger than it is today. It also comprised the current Quy Hop and Que Phong districts.

Studies on Quy Chau script are rare. Eighty years ago, the French scholar Robesquain, in his book "Le Thanh Hoa" gave some information on this strange script. So did Laotian scholar, Houmphanh Rattanavong (Lanxang Heritage Journal, Vientiane, 1996). But the most important study can be found in the book "Khun Chuang Thai Epic" compiled by Prof. Dr. Phan Dang Nhat and Vi Van Ky, Vietnamese researchers (Hanoi 2005), in which a complete Tai epic was handwritten with the Quy Chau Tai alphabet; a phonemic transcription and translation both in Vietnamese have been published.

A Quy Chau Tai primer was edited by Sam Van Binh of Quy Hop distric in 2008, and another Quy Chau scholar Vi Ngoc Chan published published a short monograph on the Quy Chau alphabet. I studied the Quy Chau Tai alphabet from Sam Van Binh and have met him in Chiang Mai in April 2009. I developed my own computer fonts of Quy Chau Tai in early 2009, one to be used with Thai keyboard and the other with English one.

Houmphanh Rattanavong contended that the Quy Chau Tai script was the first attempt to use an Indian alphabet to write a tonal Tai language by Tai which used Chinese, as the Vietnamese did. This suggests the Quy Chau writing system was the origin of the other Tai scripts such as the Black, the White Tai etc… in Vietnam.

The Quy Chau system of writing has the following characteristics:

1/ Most of the characters of the Quy Chau alphabet differ from those of the other Tai characters.