Vientienne or Vianchan?

[iGotNoTime]

My question though was if anyone had heard any official Lao guide say that the new way to pronounce was indeed by the French spelling rather than the former Lao and Thai way of pronouncing?

[billp]

how do the French actually pronounce Vientiane?

Vee-ENN-tee-ANNE

[5tash]

That's right Nam Phyyng, 50,000 hits on Google this morning for เวียงจันทร์

Wouldn't [THAI]เวียนจันทร์[THAI] be a more accurate transcription of Vientiane ?

[5tash]

Wouldn't [THAI]เวียนจันทร์[THAI] be a more accurate transcription of Vientiane ?

Just done a little research; เวียงจันร์ is a transcription of the native name for Vientiane ວຽງຈັນ

[BUCKY]

Just done a little research; เวียงจันร์ is a transcription of the native name for Vientiane ວຽງຈັນ

Then it should be "Wiang Jan". Sound like "When Chan".

[Anatta]

The right spelling in Thai should be "เวียงจันทน์"

But you could found many Thais write it in different ways as เวียงจันทน์, เวียงจันท์, เวียงจันทร์, เวียงจัน

[5tash]

I've just done a bit more research on the origin of the name Vientiane;

The name of the city is derived from Pāli, the literary language of Theravada Buddhism, and its original meaning was "The king's grove of sandalwood", this tree being prized for its fragrance in classical India.

It is also believed that the original name of Vientiane (Viangchan) means "City of the Moon" in the native Lao language.

Modern Lao pronunciation and orthography do not clearly reflect the Pali etymology. However, the name in Thai เวียงจันทน์ still retains the etymologically correct spelling, which clearly indicates "Sandalwood City" as the original meaning.

The romanized spelling "Vientiane" is of French origin, and reflects the difficulty the French had in pronouncing the hard "ch" syllable of the Lao word; a common English-based spelling is "Viangchan", or occasionally "Wiangchan".

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I find it interesting that the Laos language seems to have changed the name of their capital city from the original Pāli "City of the Moon" to "Sandalwood City", but the name in Thai เวียงจันทน์ still retains the etymologically correct spelling.

[5tash]

For those of you who are interested I have found an explanation as to why the Lao meaning of Vientiane has changed.

The Lao alphabet has been reformed several times over the past 50 years. The number of consonant letters was reduced so that words can be read phonetically. This was done so that non-Lao ethnic groups could read the language more easily. The result is that the Lao system doesn't follow Sanskrit as closely as Thai in the spelling of high-level (religious, academic) words, so the Sanskrit origin can't be seen.

Because Lao words are spelled phonetically there are more homonyms than in Thai. An example is jan in the name of the capital Vientiane (or Viang-jan). The word means "sandalwood" but when it's written in Lao it has the same phonetic spelling as "moon". If you look at the spelling of Vientiane in Thailand, though, it has the extra letters at the end which show that it means "sandalwood" rather than "moon" ("sandalwood" has a thaw tha-han and naw-noo after the phonetic jan while "moon" has a thaw tha-han and a raw reua).