Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
LAO
LaobelongstotheTaifamilyoflanguages,whichincludesThai;Shan(TaiYai),spoken
in Myanmar (Burma); Phuan, spoken in Laos and parts of Thailand; and Tai Leu,
spoken by the Dai minority of southern China's Yunnan province. Besides Lao and its
“cousin” languages, such as Tai Leu and Phuan, sundry other languages are spoken
within the borders of Laos. These include tongues belonging to the Mon-Khmer and
Tibeto-Burman families of languages, which are spoken by upland tribal peoples, as
wellasVietnameseandChinese,spokenbyimmigrantsfromLaos'sneighbouringcoun-
tries.
French
was once the second language of the educated and elite classes, and fluent French-
speakers can still be found among older Laotians, usually an indication that they were once
functionaries of the old royal regime. In recent years French has fallen out of favour; since
economic liberalization came into effect,
English
has become the preferred foreign tongue
among the younger generation, who are convinced that learning English is the key to obtain-
ing a high-paying job in the tourism sector. During the 1980s, Lao students were sent to study
abroad in fellow Soviet-bloc countries such as Poland, East Germany and Cuba, and hence it
is sometimes possible to find a rusty Polish-, German- or Spanish-speaking Lao.
Travellers will find that getting around in urban areas can be done using basic English. Once
out in the countryside, however, the situation changes, and visitors will have to make an ef-
fort to learn some Lao phrases to get by. Don't feel too put out - urban Lao sometimes exper-
ience similar problems when travelling in rural areas.
One of the greatest obstacles to building a nation that successive Lao governments have had
to deal with is language. While Lao as it is spoken in Vientiane has official language status,
there are pockets of Laos where no dialect of Lao, much less the Vientiane version, will be
heard. With little money or resources to post qualified teachers to isolated villages,
Vientiane
Lao
is simply not being learned in these areas. The Lao government has experimented with
the somewhat drastic step of relocating tribal children to lowland towns where they live in
huts in the school grounds and where, theoretically, they are exposed to language and life-
styles that will help them assimilate and become more “Lao”. In the meantime, many of the
non-Lao-speaking ethnic groups in rural areas will continue to live as they always have done,
speaking their own tongue among themselves while maintaining a handful of Lao phrases to
conduct trade or other dealings with the lowland Lao.
To fully understand the contemporary state of the Lao language in urban areas, it is neces-
sary to look at how it relates to Thai. The spoken Thai of Bangkok and the spoken Lao of
Vientiane are similar, as akin as Spanish is to Portuguese. As vassals of the Thai, the Lao ab-
sorbed a fair amount of Thai vocabulary, mainly through the Buddhist monkhood and chan-
