Both old (below) and new
(above) Lao language posters from Laos.
SYNOPSIS
Lao, or Laotian, is the official language of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. It is a tonal language and is generally, although not entirely, monosyllabic. Lao language has no inflections. Lao (or Laotian)
in its written form evolved from an ancient Southern Indian script
called Pali. However Lao speech and vocabularly had already existed
prior to the introdution of this written script. Buddhism entered
Laos over seven centuries ago and became its principle religion during
the reign of its first king. The importance of this fact is that with
this new religion brought not only a new way of thinking and beliefs,
but also a new written script. Theravada Buddhist monks used this
language to read and write the Dhamma (The Buddha's Teachings) and
from this language modern day written Lao arose. Moreover, there are
many borrowed words from Pali in the Lao language even today.
During the
growth and popularity of Buddhism in Asia two millenia ago, Theravadan
Buddhism spread through Southeast Asia. Many of those countries
also began adopting the associated written script, Pali (Note: The
other Buddhist Indian scipt is Sanskrit). Through the years each
country has made its own adjustments to the written and verbal language
of Pali. To this end, Lao exhibits close similarities to Thai, Cambodian,
and Burmese (Myannmar). While the languages show similarities they
have diverged a great deal. You should not necessarily expect a
Lao speaking person to comprehend Burmese, for example. This would
go the same with not necessarily assuming that an English speaker
is able to comprehend French just because English and French originated
from the same language.
Lao is a part
of the Tai (not to be confused with the word Thai) sub-group of
the Sino-Tibetan language group. While Laotian is under the larger
S-T language group, it shares little similarities with Northern
and Far Eastern Asian languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean
and Japanese, among others. Admittedly there are certain common
vocabulary words across many of the languages however ultimately
the script, syntaxes, and majority of vocabulary are far different
from Lao.
Learning Lao Language.
Learning the language can be easy, that is if you have the inclination
and drive to learn a new language, especially an Asian one.
But for those who can already speak Lao, then you are at an advantage.
Some great things about Lao language, of which also help make it easy
to learn are: i) it conveys not only the word but also
the sound and tone in which it must be spoken, ii) its
phonetic, therefore you spell words the way they are spoken,
iii) it does not have inflections like English but rather additional
separate words used so that you are not having to remember the numerous
grammatical rules and conjugations associated with Western languages.
Attempting to learn
Lao language is really not as hard as it may appear as you scroll
down. In fact one of the main advantages of the Laotian language
(aside from the reasons mentioned above) is that it is unlike Chinese
or Japanese because each sound has a letter/symbol and not a pictograph
or ideograph. In addition, it is simpler than its linguistic cousins
Thai, Khmer and Burmese. A word of warning though for those
who wish to learn Pasa Lao, is that when you scroll down
to view all the parts of this language it may appear to be intimidating
because of some of the rules, all the consonants, vowels and dipthongs.
So, if you learn this language in parts then it will not seem as intimidating
- just keep that in mind.
Remember you can buy
some widely available Laotian language books such as "Lao For
Beginners" by Hoshino and Marcus at most large chain bookstores
including Chapters. Also check out our Advice Archives for updates
on language products.
Best of luck to everyone
who wishes to learn Lao.
Lao: The Language
of Love. Click here to read why we believe Lao is the real language
of love.
CONSONANTS
(Payungsana)
Pasa Lao (Lao
Language) has 20 consonant sounds and one silent consonant.
These can be written with one of 33 consonant letters. (Note:
Lao actually has 27 distinct consonant symbols. Although some
of these symbols combine to form an additional consonant or sound).
Consonants are divided into 3 groups according to the tone in which
they are spoken. Remember that when pronoucing the following
consonants you must say "auw". For example, when "b" is written
under the consonant that would be pronounced as "bauw" and so forth.
This is just like english letters in that the consonants do not
actually really change their sounds until they are put together to
produce words, meanwhile as single consonants they are pronounced
simply as so.
Akson Sooung
(high sounding consonants)
Akson Kang (middle
sounding consonants)
Akson Tum (low sounding
consonants)
VOWELS
(Sala) & DIPTHONGS
In order to fully be
able to speak and read Lao, you must become knowledgeable in, not
only consonants, but the vowels as well. This may seem obvious however
keep in mind that the sala out number the payungsana.
When learning Laotian by books and in school , they will often start
integrating the consonants with vowels almost right away, showing
different combinations and sounds.
The vowels are grouped
into two main groups, short and long vowel sounds. You can further
subgroup them into basic vowels, dipthongs and special vowels.
Note: Dipthongs are two vowel sounds combined together. However
for simplicity we've now created a simple chart listing them all together.
In all there are 39 Lao
written vowel sounds. Strictly speaking in relation to English
there are 28 comparable vowel sounds (of which are shown below). The
vowels shown below are according to the most recent Lao language poster
produced in Laos which accounts for any changes in style of writing
that have now occurred.
Please also realize
that when reading the vowels section, both short and long vowels section
are interrelated. For example, when you see the vowel sound
"a" in the Short-Basic Vowels Section, it also relates to the
"a" sound in the Long-Basic Vowels Section.
TONES
or INTONATION (Vanayud)
The Lao language is a
highly tonal one. Tones are essential for understanding even
the simplist of words. Similarily, having good pronunciation
and tone sounds will ensure that people will understand you when you
speak Lao. Tones, vowel and consonant sounds include:
short and long sounds, high/medium/low, sudden and final sounds, as
already illustrated above in both consonants and vowels sections.
Grammatically speaking though, the only tone marks you will generally
use and see are are the first two shown below. The last two are here
for your reference and rarely used.
