What ໌ means
It silences a written final consonant. Older Lao spelling used it in borrowed words without adding a syllable; a Vientiane spelling placed it over n after t.
The earliest reported inscription in Laos is a late-5th-century Sanskrit text—an ancient South Asian language—in a script modeled on Pallava, a South Indian script. Lao secular-script stone inscriptions cited from 1497 and 1530 are later.
Should you use ໌ in modern Lao?
Usually no for modern Lao. After 1975, spelling reform made silent-letter spelling obsolete in everyday use. Traditional or Royal Lao readers may recognize it; others may read it as historical.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ໌ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ໌
໌\0ECCCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.