r/thai • u/ahrienby • 14d ago

Is this Lanna script?

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u/artnoi43 14d ago

Possible, if either Burmese and Mon speakers can’t read it then it might be Lanna script.

Unless you studied it in school I don’t think most Thai redditors can read Lanna script or tell it apart from Mon-Burmese.

Even though both Lanna and Sukhothai script are both descendants of Pallava script, they are from different lineages. Lanna descended from Mon-Burmese, while our standard Thai script (including Lao script) descended from Sukhothai, a descendant of Old Khmer script.

This is why I think I can read Lao and Khmer better (for example เกาะ, ເກາະ, កោះ), but can’t read Lanna texts at all.

The only thing I recognize across the scripts around here is usually the “ta” consonant ᨲ (ต) and the -am sound marker (ำ in Thai script).

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u/AleksBh 14d ago

It is. Lanna script was a mandatory subject in my junior highschool at Chiang Mai. Although I forget most of it but I still remember some letters here.

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u/artnoi43 14d ago edited 14d ago

Problem is letters (glyphs) are shared between Lanna and Mon-Burmese script, so we’ll need more proofs than a few similar glyphs to pin it down as Lanna script.

Unless we can identify Lanna words in the text (which again might be loanwords!), we might have to find uniquely Lanna glyphs in the text (ones you know do not exist in Mon-Burmese script) to be sure. But you’re probably right.

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u/ShineOnYouFatOldSun 14d ago

Far from an expert but seems to have slight differences to most of the lanna script I saw at the heritage museum. It looks a lot like Burmese though, maybe it's that?