ລາວ · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in Lao
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
Physical key labels appear above. ລາວ layout labels appear below. These three rows produce 22 of the 31 characters the practice words here use; the rest are reached with a modifier or a dead key.
Learning to type in Lao
Lao is written in its own script, whose marks combine with base letters into single written units — so one keystroke is not one character on screen.
Typing Lao is not a matter of one key, one character. The Lao script combines consonants, vowel signs and modifiers into single written clusters, which means you compose a syllable and watch it assemble itself as you go. The Lao Niyom layout maps 28 characters across the standard key positions to make that composing order predictable.
A frequency count of the bank explains why early progress feels fast and later progress does not. The top ten characters cover about 55% of everything these Lao words contain; past that you are learning characters that turn up once in a paragraph, which takes as long to automate and pays back far less often.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 21 common Lao words — 31 distinct characters in all, averaging 2.3 written units per word. The lessons come at it from the other end. Nothing is generated on the fly and nothing is padded: each drill is a fixed sequence of the keys that stage has introduced, in an order that starts at the two index fingers and works outwards to the keys you reach for least.
Watch what you have written rather than what you are pressing. In Lao a cluster only resolves once the last mark is in, so the screen is the only honest feedback on whether the keystroke order was right. Typists who learn to read their own output catch a mistake on the next character rather than at the end of the line.
- Writing system
- Lao
- Keyboard layout
- Lao Niyom
- Direction
- left to right
- Mapped characters
- 28
- Practice words
- 21
- Distinct characters
- 31
- Average word
- 2.3 units
Characters that come up most in these Lao words
- ນ6
- ້5
- າ5
- ່4
- ີ4
- ໍ3
- ຍ3
- ດ3
- ມ3
- ວ3
- ື3
- ເ3
Counted across the 21 practice words — the ones worth recognising first.
A short bank. Lao has 21 practice words here, which is few enough that a long run will repeat them. That is a gap rather than a decision: adding words to a tool whose whole purpose is that people practise typing them needs certainty about Lao spelling, and a bank with a misspelling in it teaches the misspelling. Corrections are genuinely welcome.
ມືທີ່ສະຫງົບຊອກຫາແຖວຫຼັກໄດ້ງ່າຍClose to Thai, and simpler
Lao and Thai are closely related and their scripts share an origin, but Lao underwent a spelling reform that Thai did not. Lao spelling is largely phonemic — words are written as they sound — while Thai retains etymological spellings from Sanskrit and Pali that no longer match pronunciation.
The practical result for a typist is that Lao has fewer characters to learn: 27 consonants against Thai's 44, because the reform removed the redundant ones. Like Thai, it writes without spaces between words and stacks vowel marks above, below, before and after the consonant.
The Lao Niyom layout is the standard arrangement and, like Thai, uses the number row for letters.
Questions about typing in Lao
Do I need a Lao keyboard?
No. A Lao keyboard is a software setting: add the Lao Niyom layout in your operating system's keyboard settings and your existing keys begin producing Lao characters, with the marks composing as you type them in order.
Which Lao keyboard layout do these lessons use?
Lao Niyom, with 28 characters mapped across the standard key positions. The 21 practice words between them use 31 distinct characters. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the physical key and the character it produces together, so you are never reading a layout diagram in one window while typing in another.
What will I actually be typing in Lao?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — in Lao as the Lao Niyom layout produces it, rather than transliterated into Latin letters. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 21 common Lao words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
Is Lao hard to type?
Harder than a one-key-one-letter language, and for a specific reason rather than a vague one: marks combine, so a written unit takes several presses in a fixed order. The bank here averages 2.3 units per word with a fairly compact inventory of 31 characters across the practice bank. The keystroke count is higher than the visible length suggests, which is what makes early progress feel slower than it is.
Can I skip ahead to a later stage?
Yes, nothing is locked. It is usually a mistake, though, because each stage assumes the keys before it have stopped needing thought — and a stage practised on top of a shaky one tends to embed the shakiness rather than fix it.
Why does a drill need three clean passes?
Because one correct attempt proves you can do it and three prove you can repeat it, which is the thing that eventually becomes automatic. Attempts with mistakes in them do not count towards the three — not as a punishment, but because practising an error is how an error becomes a habit. Three is the default rather than a rule: Settings will take it down to one or up to ten.
Do I need to know Lao to use these lessons?
No. The material here is typing practice rather than a language course — you can work through it without understanding a word, and plenty of people do exactly that when they need to type a script for work. If you do speak Lao, you will simply predict what is coming sooner, and prediction is most of what typing speed is.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Lao: the speed test and typing games.
Other languages whose letters combine as you type: Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Pashto, Persian (Farsi). Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing Khmer and Lao: the largest alphabet, and a simplified oneKhmer holds the record for the largest alphabet and Lao reformed its way to a small one. Two answers to one problem, and what each costs a typist.
- Adding a keyboard layoutThe step before any of this works: turning on the layout in your operating system, switching to it, and what to do about the wrong letters on your keycaps.
- How long learning to touch type takesA few weeks to type without looking, a few months to be genuinely fast. What actually determines the timeline, and why frequency beats hours.