MoH 2020 - Development

Romanisation

Romanization or Romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of writing from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. (Wikipedia)

Background

Clearly standardised and agreed Romanisation is useful especially to the government in managing data in a foreign language (i.e. English) and sharing them with organisations and people who do not read the local script.

• However, there is currently no national Romanisation system for Lao which is the official language in the Lao PDR, and no Romanisation system of Lao has been approved at the United Nations Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names.
• BGN/PCGN 1966 was once used by the Government of the Lao PDR, however it was not clearly endorsed as the national system.
• In the absence of the national standard, different government entities, the private sector and public are using different systems, mixture of them or other unclear and informal methods such as "Karaoke" script.
• The unstandard names used by the Lao Statistics Bureau (LSB) has added more confusions to other sectors such as health.
• Ministry of Health (MoH) identified these problems while working on standardisation of all public health facility names in preparation of its new Health Facility Master List (HFML).
• Since mid-2019, the Department of Planning and Cooperation (DPC) developed a new official Romanisation system called the Ministry of Health 2020 ("MoH 2020") System and applied it for the official use in the health sector.

Situation Analysis

There are 2 internationally recognised Romanisation systems available for Lao - BGN/PCGN 1966 and ALA-LC

1. BGN/PCGN 1966: Based on French, developed by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN)
2. ALA-LC: American Library Association - Library of Congress, used to represent bibliographic information by North American libraries and the British Library and in publications throughout the English-speaking world.

However, none of these systems have been widely used by both the government and public due to lack of a national standard. It is observed that BGN/PCGN has been used although not in an approriate form. For example, there are a variety of the Romanised names of 18 provinces in Lao PDR, which are being used by the government and public.

• Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) used Romanised names that are partly based on BGN/PCGN 1966. However, MoHA names lack consistency and often published only names in the Lao script
• National Geographic Department (NGD) adopted BGN/PCGN 1966 for its topographic maps of generally good quality even though their names have not been used by other government entities and the public.
• Lao Statistics Bureau (LSB) has no clear Romanisation standard and historically LSB data were based on individual staff who used the different "Karaoke" styles to manage the unique names (e.g. village names). LSB has a significant influence on the Romanised names since it published statistics in English and departments and provinces tend to accept them as officially Romanised names, which is not.
• Ministry of Health (MoH) has no clear Romanisation standard on its Health Management Information System (HMIS) and their Romanised names were most likely imported from LSB data.

In such a situation, a single Lao name can be romanised to multiple different spellings in the Roman script, which leads to difficulties in data collection, management and analysis based on geographic or administrative objects. The "Karaoke" styles are particularly challenging since there are so many variations from person to person.

"Karaoke" Script (Phasa Karaoke)

• Informal and unstandardised ways of Romanisation that were originally named after karaoke machines that used to use some sort of transcription for Lao or Thai songs.
• The Lao "Karaoke" styles are heavily influenced by Thai (especially the Isan dialect) due to the popularity of Thai music.
• These styles also include a few features of the French and Vietnamese languages for historical reasons as well as English due to its growing influence.
• In general, the "Karaoke" script is popular among the young generation that opted for the English keypad on their mobile phones to use social media.
• It is observed that more young people start using the English elements for transcipting the Lao language. (e.g. Using 'un', 'ung', 'uk' for 'an', 'ang', 'ak' sound)
• However, the ways the Lao people use the 'Karaoke' script are diverse, and it cannot be considered as one specific Romanisation convention.

Romanisation Principles

Against this complexity, there should be only one unique Romanisation system and a unique Lao name should be romanised to one unque romanised name.

• Romanisation is for both non-Lao and Lao speakers. A Romanisation system should find the best middle ground to make the most sense for most users.
• By nature, Romanisation cannot represent all phonetic features of a target language, and it should not aim at perfect mechanical conversion that might lead to excessive complexity.
• The main focus of the new system is to solve problems caused by informal ways of Romanisation ("Karaoke") which can never be used for standardisation.
• MoH 2020 is based on BGN/PCGN 1966 given that it has been used by the government.
• ALA-LC is not considered due to its complicated diacritics (accents) and historic unpopularity.

Considering that the Lao public is familiar with the Thai language, the Romanisation of Thai was also studied for its potential adoption to Lao. However, it was expected to cause too drastic changes in the current province and district names and thus discarded.
e.g. ບໍ່ແກ້ວ - Bokaew (Thai), Bokeo (MoH 2020) / ​ຊຽງ​ເງິນ - Siangngoen (Thai), Xiangngeun (MoH 2020)

Revision of BGN/PCGN 1966

MoH 2020 revised several features of BGN/PCGN 1966 to adress the problems that have prevented its popular use. The revisions were made by the careful consideration of the Lao scripts and phonetics, IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and research on the current use of different methods as well as foreign examples.

• BGN/PCGN 1966 is based on the French sound and uses diacritics for vowels é, è, ô. However, these diacritics are very often ignored because Lao staff do not know what they means and how to type them. (e.g. on mobiles and computers)
• When diacritics are not used, there are confusions between vowels. This leads people to adopt the "Karaoke" styles to distinguish sounds in different ways, resulting in more confusions.
• This confusion happens mostly when è, o come in the final position of a word. MoH 2020 fixed this issue by adding 'h' to e, o (eh, oh)
  e.g. ນາແລ - Nalè (BGN/PCGN) / Nale (è omitted) & Nalae ("Karaoke" - Thai) / Naleh (MoH 2020) (O)
  e.g. ຊຽງຄໍ້ - Xiangkho (BGN/PCGN) / Xiangkhor ("Karaoke") / Xiangkhoh (MoH 2020) (O)
• It has a French-specific consonant, which is gn for ຍ, ຫຍ (/ɲ/). It was reported that gn is illegible for the majority of Lao and non-Lao speakers except those who have learnt French.
  e.g. ໄຊຍະບູລີ - Xaignabouli (BGN/PCGN) / Xayabury & -boury ("Karaoke" - Thai) / Xainyabouli (MoH 2020) (O)
• As a result, 90% of the province and district names stay almost the same as before (MoHA and NGD) except the diacritics.

MoH 2020 was not developed to be the national Romanisation system for the Lao government. The priority was to mitigate the situation for MoH and its partners and find the most reasonable standard possible to replace very problematic "Karaoke" names. In the long term, it is recommended for the government to develop the national policy so that every government entity uses the one standard.