The rendering of Lao words into the Roman alphabet is a major problem, since many of the Lao sounds, especially certain vowels, do not occur in English. The problem is compounded by the fact that because of Laos's colonial history, transcribed words most commonly seen in Laos are based on the old colonial French system of translit­eration, which bears little relation to the way an English speaker would intuitively write a Lao word.

A prime example is the capital of Laos, Vientiane. The Lao pronunciation, follow­ing a fairly logical English-Roman translit­eration, would be Wieng Chan or Vieng Chan (some might hear it more as Wieng Jan). Since the French don't have a written consonant that corresponds to 'w', they chose to use a V to represent all V sounds, even though the V sound in Lao is closer to an English 'w'. The same goes for 'ch' (or 'j'), which for the French was best rendered; hence Wieng Chan (which means San-dalwood City) finishes up as 'Vientiane' in the French transliteration. The 'e' is added so that the final V sound isn't partially lost, as it is in French words ending with V. This latter phenomenon also happens with words like (million) as in Lan Xang, which most French speakers would write as 'Lane', a spelling that leads most English speakers to incorrectly pronounce this word like the 'lane' in 'Penny Lane'.

Many standard place names in the Roman alphabet use an 'x' for what in English is V. This 'x' represents a Lao letter that histori­cally was pronounced 'ch' but eventually became's' in the Lao sound system. There's no difference in the pronunciation of the two; pronounce all instances of 'x' as's'.

There is no official method of transliter­ating the Lao language (the government is incredibly inconsistent in this respect, though they tend to follow the old French methods). This book use a custom system of transliteration based on the Royal Thai General Transcription system, since Thai and Lao have very similar writing and sound systems. The only exceptions are where there may be confusion with terms that are already in common use (eg Vien­tiane "Wieng Chan', 'Luang Phabang').

The public and private sectors in Laos are gradually moving towards a more inter­nationally recognisable system along the lines of Royal Thai General (which is fairly readable across a large number of language types).