A disabled person in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue has successfully studied and applied a software system to transform the script used by Thai ethnic people in Vietnam into Unicode font.

Phan Anh Dung, Head of the Thua Thien-Hue Information Technology Centre’s Department for Research Applications, designed the new software system.

The software is compliant with other international Unicode fonts and helps overcome problems triggered by the previous Thai letter fonts.

Dung has also set up a website to preserve the cultural characteristics and the script of Thai ethnic people. The website provides information related to the history and the development of the Thai language, research on Thai culture and script, and a Thai-Vietnamese dictionary.

Dung’s initiative is said to be comprehensive, methodical and valuable for the education, research and preservation of the ethnic Thai community in Vietnam .

Thai ethnic minority people are the country’s third largest ethnic group after Kinh and Tay people and are one of the ethnic groups to have had their own language from around the 11th century. The Thai language comes from the Brahmic family of scripts and it is influenced by Khmer letters and similar to Thailand ’s and Laos ’ letters.

The Thai language is one of ten languages to be taught at school in a bid to preserve and develop it, as well as highlight its cultural characteristics./.