Reading Lao is similar to reading English in that letters
represent phonetic sounds and sentences are read from left to
right. If you can already read Thai, Lao is very easy to learn
because the original Sanskrit/Pali spellings have been
simplified and words are The Lao alphabet has 26 consonants.
Each consonant has a word associated with it to distinguish
between a few sounds which have more than one letter, such as
"s" and "h" which have two letters each. These words are used
when saying the name of the letter. The associated words are
names of animals or common objects and are the first thing Lao
children study when learning to The name of the letter is
pronounced as a syllable ending with aw (gaw, kaw, etc) followed
by the associated word. With high class consonants the aw
syllable has a rising tone but the associated word may not have
a rising tone because of tone markers included in the spelling.
The relationship between consonants and tones is explained on
the Tone Chart page.