Laos - Mother of many languages
Did you know there are more than “80 languages” being spoken in Laos? Languages as historical documents: the endangered archive in Laos is a valuable paper for all Laotians to read.
Abstract: This paper reviews current discussion of the issue of just what is lost when a language dies. Special reference is made to the current situation in Laos, a country renowned for its considerable cultural and linguistic diversity. It focuses on the historical, an-thropological and ecological knowledge that a language can encode, and the social and cultural consequences of the loss of such tradi-tional knowledge when a language is no longer passed on. Finally, the article points out the paucity of studies and obstacles to field research on minority languages in Laos, which seriously hamper their documentation.
The existence of modern nations reflects a deep tendency in human nature for structuring social relations and maintaining social identity. As nation-builders know well, this intense sociality so remarkable in our species is effected by the most profound of our species-specific talents: language. Accordingly, most, if not all, nations have at least one official language. In the Lao PDR, that language is Lao, a South-Western Tai language also spoken in parts of Thailand and Cambodia. However, Laos is also home to speakers of languages other than Lao; it is surprising for some to learn that there are not one or two, not 10 or 20, but some 80 or more different languages – in an area smaller than the UK. Laos is in fact the site of one of the highest degrees of linguis-tic diversity in the world, a fact that deserves to affect our view of the nation dramatically.
It's nice to learn
that our country allows ethnic and linguistic diversity. I use to remember an
argument that says that our diverse dialect is responsible for nearly breaking
our nation apart.
Instead of having this type of conflict I want all of us to
learn to speak the official language as a second language or a second dialect.
The official dialect is said to be centered in and around Vientiane, but
this is not without controversy. The Vientiane dialect is the most
economically sound dialect, due to it similarity to Thai, but some will argue
that by speaking the Vientiane dialect their local identity could be lost.
Hi Sim, *it’s picking on Sim today*, I don’t know about the Vientiane accent being closest to the Thai, but I think it’s the Lao Southern accent that is the closest (*cough*cough*), when I was living in Thailand, we easily passed for Issan people, that’s what we told people, that we came from Issan of Thai while living in Thai as Thai citizen. They never questioned that we were Lao people, our Lao Southern accent passed.
lol. You've got a good point… and probably right.
The Lao mid and
southern accent is actually similar to the Thai Issan if we would to view it from
another perspective.
Who ever made the Vientiane accent the official
accent (or I should say "dialect," because the Vientiane residents are nearly
speaking a foreign language to me) should reconsider this "official
accent."
My parents would tell me that the Thai
would force its Issan citizens to speak the Thai official language. That never
worked, even though the punishment is pretty harsh - such as getting buried up
to your neck.
In effect, Thai and Lao should be able to understand each
other without a guideline for an official accent.
Sim, I think that the official dialect is the dialect of the capital city of that country, this is just based on my observation, just like the US, it’s somewhat of the Northerner accent. When I was little, I started out in the first grade in Thailand and was very shy because I couldn’t speak the Thai official language. I remember that I had to speak the Thai official language in class, if don’t then I’d be punished, and the punishment was harsh, I was hit by the bamboo stick a lot. The teacher would also punish me if I were to give the wrong answer on the test. I learned to speak the Thai official language real fast, before you know it, it became second nature to me; language is funny, once you don’t use it, you’d loose it. I’ve been using the Thai official language a lot lately to maintaining it, since I’ve no one to speak Thai to, I often read my Thai books or magazine aloud, crazy eh.