are written and pronounced identically as "chan" in modern Lao. However most academic and historic Lao sources claim that the city's name does in fact mean "city of sandalwood". This is reinforced by the fact that the name of the city in Thai, เวียงจันทน์, and Khmer, វៀងចន្ទន៍, both retain the etymological spelling, which indicates "city of sandalwood". The romanized spelling "Vientiane" is of French origin, and reflects the difficulty the French had in pronouncing the hard "ch" sound in of the Lao language. A common English-based spelling is "Viangchan", or occasionally "Wiangchan".