As I am a scientist, I like rules and conventions 😊
As far as I know, there is no official system for rendering Lao words in Latin alphabet published by the Lao authorities – if anyone has any updates on this subject, I would be happy to read them.
There are various romanization schemes however:
The French-based systems in use by both the US Board of Geographic Names and the British Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (BGN/PCGN);
The English-based system in use by the US Library of Congress (LC);
The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) used in Thailand.
What does it mean for our most famous dishes?
For our national dish: lap (BGN/PCGN/RTGS) or lāp(LC) Green papaya salad: tam mak houng (BGN/PCGN) or tam mak hung (LC/RTGS)
In this blog I use BGN/PCGN.
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