Frankly this whole thread is doomed if we write in English because readers won't know the tones, so vital; perhaps we could persuade the Thai government to include Thai language in the visa fee, or perhaps the moderators of Thai Visa, the best website in Asia, could arrange Thai language,(writing and reading), for its loyal and faithful readers.

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Why don't you Isaan speakers sort out a tone marking system. The maximum complexity is given by the tone split-merger diagram (the third diagram) at the North East Dialect page - dashed lines are the distinctions that are present in some but not all dialects. Sample words to go in the boxes are given in the tone box diagram of theDialects page. I've discussed the box labelling before, but to re-iterate using the exact scheme used here:

Row 1 = high class consonant

Row 2 = mid class consonant, excpet in Northern Thai

Row 3 = mid class consonant, all dialects

Row 4 = low class consonant

Column A = live, no tone mark

Column B = mai ek (1)

Column C = mai tho (2)

Column DL = dead, long vowel

Column DS = dead, short vowel

The correspondence with Standard Thai is:

Live:

• R = A1
  
• M = either A2+A3 (call it A23?) or A4
  
• L = B1+B2+B3 (call it B123?)
  
• F = B4 or C1 or part of C234 (This is a messy area - the spelling often suggests B4 when it should be C1)
  
• H = Part of C234
  

Dead Long

• L = DL123 (same as C1 - unlike Central Thai)
  
• F = DL4 (same as C4 - unlike Central Thai)
  

Dead Short

• L = DS123
  
• H = DS4
  

There are some dialects with the full 7 tones on live syllables.

You guys might be interested in the summary of Tone Change: a Case Study of the Lao Language to get tone-tagging kick started.

We could write Issan using Thai letters, like all the songbooks of morlam and luk tung,on the whole it works.

bannork.

And http://www.phrasebook.thai-isan-lao.com/ (suggested by Hua Nguu some time back) gives a good idea on how to do it. (It numbers the rows 1 to 3, which wouldn't suffice for Northern Tai a.k.a. 'Western Lao'.) Looks like it's only the Roi-et guys who need the seventh tone and therefore need to choose between low and high consonants for use with mai ek. I'm not sure about using ร for /h/, though - I'd have thought ฮ would have been better.