Talk:Lao language

Untitled
I've edited the article to distinguish Lao from Isan language, as there are substantial differences between the two.

Pasaa, shmasaa
technically, there should probably a 'pasaa' before &#3749;&#3762;&#3751; .. if anyone can input it, go for your life! -- prat.


 * Don't worry about it. Phasa Lao is only Phasa Lao in Phasa Lao. In English it's just plain Lao.
 * --Mrrhum 22:21, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To be clear, I was referring to the name for Lao in Lao script, not the romanized form. prat 05:14, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Done. Markalexander100 05:16, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Pali is a language, not a script. Babelfisch 07:04, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * The romanisation seems a bit of a mixture, The old BGN form is phasa lao. The style with double aa would usually go with the w to produce phaasaa laaw. --Gareth Hughes 15:05, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Lao Font
Where is a site that will allow me to install the Lao font so I can read the Laotian Wikipedia, and not just the standard boxes? Kaiser matias 21:58, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Here is the site:. -- Phillip J, 21:07 Friday 31 March 2006 (UTC).

Wrong Lao character in omniglot?
At http://www.omniglot.com/writing/lao.htm there is a character which should be pronounced [k] or [kh] (the third from the left) which I don't find in http://www.seasite.niu.edu/lao/lao3.htm (nor in a book on Lao writing), but looks like a Thai character which is pronounced the same way. Apokrif 03:45, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


 * It's certainly not one of the current letters; I suspect that it's an obsolete letter, removed during the simplification process. The old system had more of a Thai influence. Markyour words 11:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


 * That letter is "káw" like in kwáai (water-buffalo). It is being written in the Thai style, but the form is similar to the Lao letter and you will notice that the "káw" we all know and love is missing. Omniglot seems to be using a handwritten style font which I find quite difficult to read having learned from reading machine-type Bluesleeper 17:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

language request
Would someone please put this text into the organization name on the article Scouting in Laos? I am just spitballing with ສກຖຈາລ as the transliteration, I honestly don't know and need help before the rabid deletionists remove the image this week. Thanks Chris 02:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Not about the language
Cut the following:


 * Many Laotians immigrated to the United States during the Vietnam War, as Laos was undergoing its own war over Communism. Laos is the most bombed country in the world.  Bomb craters can be found in northern remote parts of the country.  Many Laotians who tried to escape by crossing the Mekong River that borders Laos and Thailand drowned or were killed by Communist soldiers.  Refugee camps were set up in Laos and Thailand where refugees waited years before immigrating to countries, such as the United States, France, and Australia.  The Tai Dam are an ethnic group from Laos that escaped the country as a group.  After thousands of years of political oppression, the Tai Dam people vowed to unite as one group and find a country they could call their own.  The Tai Dam are known as "the people without a country."  More than 90 percent of Tai Dam refugees immigrated to the state of Iowa after the governor agreed to take the Tai Dam as a group and have organizations sponsor families.

..because it's clearly not about Lao language. If anyone thinks it's worth keeping, please put it into the correct article. It's not brilliantly written but looks relevant to History of Laos. Whoever inserted it, please don't be offended, but this really isn't the right content for this article. Leushenko 15:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Lao vs. Isan
Isan people are descended from ethnic Lao people, some villages were only recently settled by Lao migrants as late as a century ago, on territory that used to be part of Lan Xang. Considering that the Thai government considered Isan people an ethnic Lao people who speak the Lao language well into the 20th century, I see no reason why there should be such hooplah over how different they are. The differences between Isan and Lao can be no greater than the dialects of the north of Laos (with five tones) vs. those of the south (with six), not to mention the shared cultural traditions and vocabulary. It seems more political than linguistic. Nintala (talk) 09:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've edited this page, introduced some grammar notes and Lao font everywhere. I think it does better for the Lao language page. Nintala (talk) 04:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Need Lao script
Need Lao script at Lao Loum and Lao Lom. Badagnani (talk) 16:32, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Still need Lao script at Lao Lom. Badagnani (talk) 01:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Need Lao script
Need Lao script for "Hapkhanasouane" in the lead of Ravana. Badagnani (talk) 01:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Questions and Answers
The bit about English indicating questions by a rising tone and Spanish by changing "sentence order" is wrong. English questions often use "wh" questions words; who, what, where... or by add the word "do" in the case of yes or no questions (not in all instances, but more so than not.) Spanish on the other relies heavily on the rising tone eg. "Quieres venir con nosotros?" which would require no change of WORD order (not sentence order) to be turned into a statement. I am going to delete that whole part, unless somebody wants to polish it up.68.9.180.20 (talk) 16:49, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Lao compatibile software
I thought some readers without text Lao support might come here as well as the Lao script page so I wanted to mention how Lao, was compatible with Windows. I hope this will help out a few people if they don't know where to go and need this info.

Lao was not officially released for Windows until the 'Windows Vista' Microsoft Windows help page. Although user generated fonts are freely avalible online, requiring the user to download the fonts, place them into the "Windows", "Fonts", folder, and then open a "Internet Explorer" window and select the following; "Tools", "Internet Options", and on the 'General' tab, they need to click on the "Fonts" option and then select the font that they downloaded. AMERILAO.org site How to "Setup Internet Explorer to read Lao font". (Floppydog66 (talk) 20:21, 11 October 2009 (UTC))

Number of tones
According to Simmala & Becker's Lao for Beginners (1st ed.), "Some linguists have identified six tones in the Lao language and others say there are five. According to the Lao high school textbooks published by the Ministry of Education of Laos, there are six tones in the northern dialect and five tones in the central and southern regions. The people in the north tend to speak more slowly and draw out words."

They don't quite specify which northern dialect (Luang Prabang or Xiengkhuang), but the statement contradicts what's written in the "Tones" section of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.123.224.190 (talk) 13:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I've added a disclaimer to the Tones section that the experts disagree. See http://www.seasite.niu.edu/lao/LaoLanguage/LaoTones/lao_tones_fp.htm for some interesting charts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.123.224.190 (talk) 14:28, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

meaning what?
"A silent ຫ (/h/) placed before certain consonants will produce place the other proceeding consonant in the high class." The bolded words are not a normal sequence in English. What does it mean? 4.249.63.217 (talk) 19:52, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Tone sandhi
It would be very good if somebody could add some information on tone sandhi in the Lao language, as resources are very difficult to find on the Internet. &mdash; Hippietrail (talk) 16:14, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

French materials on Lao
Manuel de conversation franco-laotien

https://archive.org/details/ManuelDeConversationFranco-laotien

Dictionnaire français-laotien

https://archive.org/details/DictionnaireFranais-laotien

https://archive.org/details/DictionnaireFranais-laotien_546

Rajmaan (talk) 15:25, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Consonant Clusters
I have grave doubts as to the handling of consonant clusters in the article. - RichardW57 (talk) 09:17, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I have grave doubts that what Erickson termed 'labialised' consonants are in any way phonetically distinct from clusters with /w/. His claim for their status as unitary phonemes appears to be that (1) Lao doesn't have tautosyllabic consonant clusters and (2) if it did, [w] would be the only permitted second element.  Clusters with /w/ are the usual analysis for Northern Thai and Tai Lü, in which all clusters have /w/ as the second element.
 * Whatever they were, they appear to have been eliminated from the spoken language, but instead absorbed into the vowel. For example, Nick Enfield's Grammar of Lao doesn't mention clusters or labialised consonants at all, and transcribes the buffalo word ຄວາຍ (apparently /kʰʷaːj/ from the articles on Lao) as though it were simply written ຄວຍ (implying /kʰuːa̯j/).
 * I have always regarded that paper as dubious. Erickson's claim that Lao has labialized consonants seems just to be a transcription convention used to fit his definition of Lao's syllable structure from which he then argues that they should be treated as unit phonemes. The logic seems backwards. The usual method is to first describe the phonology and then build your analysis around the description. I am most familiar with southern Isan but also with the dialects of Luang Prabang and Vieng Chan. In all three ຄວາຍ would be pronounced as /kʰuːa̯j/ (and probably mis-spelled as ຄວຍ too); I hear no labialization. As you say, Enfield doesn't mention it, neither do any of the authors quoted in this paper. Frankly I believe the Erickson paper only got used in this WP article because it is the first (and really only) freely available paper to appear in a google search for "Lao phonology". It probably should be removed as WP:UNDUE.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 04:30, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I am a linguist, and have been living in Vientiane for the past 8 months. I can tell you for a fact that the "labialized consonants" theory is junk. While the labialization does occur phonetically, it is in no way phonemic. It is always conditional based on the Lao labialized VOWELS (or vowel combinations) that are written into the word. Plain for all to see! I live in Sikhai village, and the "kh" in "Sikhai" uses the khaw-khuai (third letter of the Lao alphabet). This is NOT labialized. There is no u or o, or any combination of vowels using them. Therefore, it is not labialized. The difference between khaw-khai and khai-khua, thaw-thong and thaw-thung, phaw-pheung and phaw-phuu is TONE, NOT LABIALIZATION. The first of the pair usually takes lower tones depending on its environment, while the second takes higher tones. Isn't this textbook phonemics? The labialization ONLY occurs when a rounded/labialized vowel is in the same syllable. I've observed this over and over in my transcription data. Kandjrea (talk) 05:27, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
 * You've misunderstood the concept. The labialisation alleged is represented in writing by ວ, not by a difference in stop consonants. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:57, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

It seems we have a hocus-pocus issue, not very different from the issues of long 'u' in (British) English words like 'tube' (which might be /tʃuːb/, but surfaces as [tjuːb] confusinɡly often). Is Kandjrea's 'labialised vowel' another way of analysing the situation? The clear fact is that the writing has 'medial' ວ, the phonetic fact seems to be that we have a vowel segment [u] which, just like vowel /u/, /u:/ and others, predictably rounds the initial consonant. There is then the phonotactic fact that this vowel segment only occurs between certain initial consonants and certain (main) vowels. Ignoring phonotactics seems to be a Wikipedia tradition, but simply deleting the labialised consonants would be an undesirable deletion of information. Calling /ku/ an initial consonant cluster does not, however, feel right. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:57, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Lao in Cambodia
There is a small group of Lao speakers (mainly in Stung Treng province) in northern Cambodia. In the introduction of the article they are not mentioned. I think they should be named as well. Any ideas? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.1.31.44 (talk) 16:01, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

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Inflating native speakes with Isan speakers
https://www.ethnologue.com/18/language/lao/ does not count Isan language speakers here, so they have few million speakers. But our article counts Isan speakers - and hence we have the 20+ million for the number of speakers. We need to decide which of those two numbers is right for this article. I think we should only list Lao speaker estimate here, with a note that Isan language is closely related. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 16:25, 10 July 2018 (UTC) I disagree. Lao and Isaan are the same language. See article of Britannica Encyclopedia, which explains the difference between isaan and lao is essentialy political. French university for eastern languages INALCO website count 30 million speakers for lao. --Teyvada (talk) 08:46, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Number of native speakers
Article states that number of native lao speakers is "3-5 millions". This is not correct. Figures should include also native speakers of lao in Thailand. French university for eastern languages INCALCO website says Lao has thirty millions native speakers. I change numbers and I add this reference in the article --[--Teyvada (talk) 08:45, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Allophone of /w/
The phoneme /w/ have 1 allophone, that's "[ʋ]". Some dialect can hear "[ʋ]". Juidzi (talk) 03:32, 22 April 2020 (UTC)