LAO AS A NATIONALLANGUAGE

12N. J. ENFIELD

recurring theme in discussion amongst Lao scholars as to the rightpath for standardization of the Lao language is the equation of a
unified standard national language with a unified national heritage,
and contemporary national and socio-political integrity. In such contexts,
the following proverb is often quoted: 1J'1~'1ugmnf1 JJ'1,,:::U'1f1U,mC1:::l\JJ;(Language reveals one's nationhood, manners reveal one's lineage). The factthat the Lao language does not have a well-applied and codified standard istherefore telling. As a nation, Laos has experienced long years of difficulty
along the road to unification. Many of the political divisions that can betraced across the history of the nation are also reflected in the current
inconsistencies of the language as it is used, and in the decades-old
arguments about the Lao language and its proper form. The pressures on
Lao as a language are many of the same pressures as those on Laos as anation. There is a tension between the older, ornate traditions associatedwith Buddhism and aristocracy on the one hand, and the more recent,austere rationalist traditions associated with socialism and the culture ofmodern technology on the other. In addition, the Lao are keenly aware of
the need to maintain and delineate their nationhood in the face of pressuresfrom outside, most notably those from Thailand. It is these two main
themes which persist throughout the discussion below.

A

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LAO LANGUAGE-VARIATION AND STANDARDIZATIONThe national language of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, as declaredon the establishment of the first government on 2 December 1975, is Lao(Tay 1995: 169).1 As a Southwestern Tai language, Lao is closely related toThai (Li 1960). Lao and Thai share extensive vocabulary, and have very
similar phonological and grammatical systems. Because of the mostly onedirectional flow of cultural exposure, however, Central Thai is wellunderstood by the Lao, while many speakers of Central Thai would havereal difficulry understanding Lao, due essentially to lack of exposure to thelanguage. It is important to understand for much of the discussion belowthat Lao and Thai are for all intents and purposes (i.e. in descriptive/
structural linguistic terms) dialects of a single "language" (but it is especially
important not to interpret this as meaning that "Thai is a dialect of Lao," orvice versa). This is not meant to downplay in any way the differences
between them. For a number of reasons, they should be treated as different
languages, that is, as languages each on their own merits. This avoids
serving the political purposes of either Thai or Lao nationalism. It is usually
the case that Lao is treated by outsiders in terms of how it differs from Thai,and not the other way around, since outsiders are more often familiar withThai first.
While there are many fascinating differences and similarities between Lao
and Thai, the substantive issues related to the establishment of Lao as anational language almost exclusively concern orthography (very often withreference to the orthography of Thai).2 It is thus necessary to begin with abrief digression, and sketch a few points about Lao and Thai orthography
which will be relevant to the discussion below. The two languages use
scripts which are quite similar, and which both derive ultimately (butindirectly) from Indic scripts. There is a robust folk (mis)understandingthat the languages "come from" Pali and/or Sanskrit, including the notionthat Lao and Thai incorporate higher proportions of Pali, and Sanskrit,
respectively.3 The Thai and Lao languages do not "come from" Pali and/or
Sanskrit, in any sense of genetic continuity. They have heavily borrowed
vocabulary from those languages, especially during this century. Pali and/or
Sanskrit have provided for a range of neologisms required in a rapidlychanging political and social world, in a similar way that Greek and/or
Latin have been used creatively in stocking the modern vocabularies ofEuropean languages. Pali in particular is important in religion and religious
studies in Laos and Thailand.
Modern Thai orthography includes the full range of Pali and Sanskrit
characters, while Lao does not. (Lao monasteries use nangsiitt tham (miJJ~
1Ji1), the "dharmic script," not known by those without religious education.)

260

N. J. ENFIELD

This full complement of lndic characters in Thai originated in the
fourteenth century or earlier, and was "patterned closely on Khmer, notdirectly inherited from Indic in India" (Anthony Diller, personalcorrespondence; cf. Diller 1988a). Throughout the following centuries,
there were considerable inconsistencies in the spelling of lndic words due toa range of factors, including the deliberate re-spelling of native words infancy "etymological style," and the mixing up of Pali and Sanskrit spellingsof common roots. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Rama IV(Mongkut) became concerned about the "flux and caprice in Thai spelling"(Anthony Diller, personal correspondence), and launched an interest in
standardizing the Thai language in a "proper etymological" way, which
eventually resulted in the deliberate adoption during the 1950s of full andregular Sanskrit spelling of Indic borrowings in Thai. The historicaldevelopment of Lao orthography is much less clear. Today it remains thecase that while Pali and Sanskrit can be transcribed literally to the letter inregular everyday Thai script, the "limited" inventory of twenty-seven
Modern Lao consonants (including the letter "r"; see below), cannot handle
this task.
Thus, from the naive point of view, it looks as if Lao is less complete
than Thai, and if one believes that Lao really does "come from" Pali (asmany apparently do), then one is led to conclude that something must have
happened along the way to those "missing" characters. When people argue
on this basis for a "return to tradition" through incorporation of theremaining characters, they are in fact not arguing for restoration, but for themodern, and in many cases novel, fixture of orthographical devices in thelanguage. The deeper historical questions regarding developments of"native" Lao/Thai orthography are complex ones, which I cannot pursue
here. But it is important to understand in the present context that thestandardized etymological basis of Thai orthography in its present form,
being literally designed to handle faithful transcription of Pali and especially
Sanskrit, does not represent something that Lao once had or, in particular,
could ever "go back to."Spoken Lao, in its numerous regional forms, shows considerable
variation. Not only do speakers from different regions have markedly
different "accents," but they also display significant differences in regularvocabulary, as well as subtle grammatical and idiomatic differences. These
differences may identify a Lao person's background, and thereby indicate
much about their likely history and, probably, their position in society.
Each regional variety of Lao has one or two salient diagnostic indicators(among many actual distinctions), which are strongly symbolic of thatvariety, and generally known in Vientiane by all speakers of Lao in thecommunity. For example, the Southernmost varieties of Lao have a

LAO AS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE

261

characteristic falling pronunciation (typically with glottal constriction of thevowel) of the tone inherent in "live" syllables with "low" consonant initials(such as law (Q)'I8) 'Lao', maa (D'I) 'come', khuu (El,) 'teacher').4 Thispronunciation is immediately diagnostic of a speaker's southern origin, andis fabled to be a "loud," "heavy," or "rough" style. On the other hand, thevariety of Lao spoken in Luang Prabang includes a distinctive high fallingrising tone in "live" syllables with "high" consonant initials (such as hrn(mu) 'stone', maa (UlJ'I) 'dog', milu (~) 'pig'). This pronunciation isconsidered typical of the "softness" or "lightness" of that variety. There arealso some lexical stereotypes which are diagnostic of regional varieties, suchas Phou-Thai kilaa (nG@) 'where' (cf. Vientiane sa) ?:<J) , or Luang Prabang'eew (GgJ) 'play, pass time' (cf. Vientiane lin ~u). These examples showfeatures which have achieved privileged status as folk diagnostics of
speakers' regional origin. Each variety, of course, has many other distinctive
features, but these have not achieved the same diagnostic status, and are notconsciously recognized, nor publicly symbolic in the same way as thoseother more stigmatized features.
While speakers' regional origin may be easily identified by accent, it has
been claimed that this has no negative consequences in Laos. Regarding thesituation in 1974, Chamberlain had this to say: "Laotians working together
accept these regional dialects with little notice. This would seem to be ahighly desirable situation, as it eliminates social prejudice . . . "(Chamberlain 1978: 267). But while aspects of regional "accents" associatedwith different tone systems are indeed considered basically innocuous(sometimes even quaint), there do seem to be more negatively stigmatizedregional "mispronunciations." Consider the perceived inability of speakers
from Savannakhet (including many Phou-Thai from that area) to produce
the labio-dental fricative If-I, instead producing an aspirated bilabial stop
Iph_1 for words which in other dialects have If-I, and which are spelt with"r' (w/oJ) in Lao. (In other words, the distinction between If/ and Ipol
collapses in favor of Iphl.) The stock example is /phaj-phaa/ 'electricity',corresponding to Vientiane /faj-faal (written as twCh). While people in theVientiane speech community are aware of this diagnostic feature of
Savannakhet speech, many are not aware of other diagnostics, such as thelack of diphthongs in the phou-Thai varieties of Lao (spoken in the easternpart of Savannakhet province), whereby lia. tta, ual correspond to simple
long vowels lee, gg, 001 (such that 'wife', 'salt', and 'bridge', written as GDU,dll) and 28 are pronounced /mee/, /k~g/, /khoo,/, while in Vientiane they
are /mia/, /kitg, /khita/).
Another example of regional variation perceived as "mispronunciation" isthe neutralization in some Southern varieties of the phonemes II/ and Id/. It
is an oft-related anecdote that where a Vientiane speaker says Ikhwaaj dam

262N. ]. ENFIELD

khwaaj d5:ml for 'dark buffalo, pale buffalo' (m'1Un1fi1J1UrlmJ), the Southern
speaker says Jkhwaaj lam khwaaj 15:m/. This is in fact a naive perception of
the Southern "accent." Rather than literally "mixing up" II/ and Idl, thesevarieties instead neutralize this distinction, producing a single phoneme,
usually realized as a lateral tap (which, incidentally, would seem to be thephonetically closest thing to the trill [rl found in dialects of Lao; see below).
This is heard by speakers of other varieties of Lao as sometimes I dl,
sometimes III. The stigma of such regional "mispronunciations" means thatthey are likely to be consciously phased out of the speech of newcomers toVientiane, where possible.
It is of coutse natural to find extensive dialect variation in any region(Chambers 1995: 229ft), and out of this arises the political, cultural, andpractical necessity for establishing and properly codifying an official
standard language. The standard is a vehicle for leveling regional variationin administration, education, and the media, as well as providing abenchmark of prestige and "correctness," regardless of what variety of thelanguage is spoken in an individual's own region or own home.
Establishment of a standard requires an effective level of codification (i.e.
the official certification in grammar books and dictionaries of what exactly
the grammar, particularly the pronunciation and spelling, of the standard
language is).
If it were possible at all to identify a spoken standard for Lao, it would
have to be the Vientiane variety. Vientiane is at the geographical andpolitical center of the country. While "Vientiane Lao" could be defined aseither "the variety of Lao spoken in Vientiane," or "the variety of Lao
spoken by those who have grown up in Vientiane (or whose families havebeen in Vientiane for x (number of) generations)," the former definition
would allow no generalization about the form of the language itself, since ahuge proportion of the population of the capital are speakers of regionalvarieties, born and raised in the provinces. Thongphet Kingsada, director of
the Language Section of the Institute for Cultural Research (rCR) in
Vientiane, evidently goes by the latter definition. He commented in aninterview that it was "a shame" that "Vientiane Lao" is used less and less inVientiane these days. Thongphet's impression is that the dialects of greatest
influence in Vientiane now are the Southern varieties, especially those ofSavannakhet and Champassak provinces. (The sociolinguistic implicationsof the large flow of immigrants into the capital over recent years are worthyof extensive research.)
An important measure of "standard" pronunciation is the language usedin national television and radio programming (e.g. news), which indeed
tends to follow the phonology of native Vientiane speakers, and tends not
to include regional vocabulary. But actually pinpointing the distinctive

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263

features of this "standard" is complicated by the fact that the target isconstantly shifting. The pronunciation of "Vientiane Lao" is nowhere
codified, and its form has surely been shaped in different ways over the
decades through major demographic changes, with an influx of wartime
refugees during the 1960s and early 1970s, incoming revolutionaries taking
power in 1975 with the accompanying flow of population into the capitalwhich followed, and the wave of economic migrants during the 1990s,
encouraged by increasing urban development and eased travel restrictions.
The outpouring of post-1975 refugees must also have had some effect.
Thus, while there is no official standardization of the spoken form of
Lao, and while it is perhaps even impossible to say exactly what constitutes
the Vientiane variety, there is no doubt an implicit concept of some neutral,central style. There is at the very least a notion of "toning down" one's
native (regional) speech when in the capital, or indeed when dealing withspeakers from outside one's own area, particularly when in some official
setting. People are quite willing, and quite able, to curtail the mostrepresentative features of their own "non-neutral" regional variety. There isthus a natural tendency to neutralize differences, at least for the pragmatic
purpose of facilitating communication. Thus, if a "standard" or "central"
spoken Lao can be characterized at all, it is to be characterized partly as"central" in the geographical sense (spoken by natives of the geographicaland political "center"), and partly in Diller's (1991: 110) third sense of"central" language: "the intermediate or shared variety, similar to a lingua
franca or koine," that is, one in which the most salient regional stereotype
features are bleached away.
Spoken Lao rates pretty poorly in terms of Diller's (1991: 99-100)
checklist of "national language functions." If we take the Vientiane variety
as our spoken standard, then it probably passes the criteria of (a) being
understood by a majority of national residents, and (b) being used inelectronic media for the majority of official or national level programming.
As a national standard for pronunciation, Vientiane Lao probably fails topass other of Diller's "national language" criteria, namely (a) being thenational medium of instruction; (b) being the sole language of official
government business; (c) being the "prestige dialect" for social mobility; (d)being used for religious purposes; (e) being enforced institutionally; and (f)being the norm for impersonal announcements. There is no pressure on
regional speakers to pronounce Lao as it is pronounced by natives ofVientiane. (Consider one Vientiane speaker's reported amusement uponhearing an announcement in strong regional accent over the public address
system at Louang Prabang airport.)
Where Lao does.have a stronger sense of standardization is in its written
form, where much greater concern has been focused throughout the history

264N.]. ENFIELD

of Lao as a national language. Today's written (i.e. orthographic)
conventions of Lao do pass the "standard" criteria of being used as thenational medium of instruction, the language of official business, and theobject of institutional maintenance. 5 But the nature of the written language
is such that it may be pronounced in a broadly varying range of regional
accents. Most of the discussion below concentrates on a range of issues
surrounding the history and development of the standardization of Lao as awritten language, since it is this issue which has been the native
preoccupation. 6
The area of strongest standardization of Lao can be witnessed in the Laoprint media. Publication of any printed material is subject to official
approval by the Lao government, who since 1975 has done well in seeingthat the standard writing system (according to Phoumi's (1967) grammar;
see below) is adhered to. However, while it is often observed that print
media can be one of the strongest forces of language standardization (cf.
Ivarsson, this volume), this is compromised in Laos by the fact that Lao
language newspapers have extremely limited readership. The two main
Vientiane dailies Vientiane Mai (New Vientiane) and Pasason (The People)
are distributed to government offices, hotels, other workplaces and some
private homes, but no newsagents or magazine stands as such exist. In
general, Lao people do not avidly read Lao language materials (but they are
beginning to avidly read Thai language materials; see below). So, the fact ofa fairly well-standardized orthography in the Lao press does not have thesignificant consequences for the standardization of the language that one
might expect.
Radio programming across the country tends to have strong regional
orientation, with local dialects being used in a large percentage of local
programming. Rural areas are, however, exposed to a certain degree of"central Lao" via national news reports produced in Vientiane. As alreadymentioned, spoken Lao has been much less effectively standardized, and thisis reflected in, and partly because of, the less unified spoken conventions inregional radio programming. (For further comments on radio
programming, see below.)
During this century, a number of government bodies have been set up to
take responsibility for the tasks of language standardization, which haveincluded production of Lao language educational materials; research on Lao
grammar, language, and literature; authorization of neologisms, borrowings,
and revisions in the language; and work on an official dictionary. In the
1930s, the Buddhist Academic Council (1.jn1Il::01JlJnm::OO1::ow-r), presided over byPrince Phetsarath, was responsible for various recommendations regarding
Lao orthography, including the attempted addition (attributed to 5ila
Viravong) to the Lao alphabet of fourteen supplementary consonants,

LAO AS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE

265

making up the full complement of orthographic distinctions required fortranscribing Pali (Bizot 1996). The early 1940s saw developments inlanguage standardization associated with the Lao Nhay (sJ'l~~mu) movement,
in which the "simple etymological spelling" associated with P. S. Nginn
took hold. Again the Buddhist Academic Council was involved in thisprocess, along with the Ecole Franc;:aise d'Extreme-Orient. (See Ivarsson,
this volume, for detailed discussion.) In August 1948, the Committee forCompiling and Authorizing the Spelling of Lao Words (El::;JJ::;n°'lJJ::;mJJ
s~us~Jcc@::;U1JUrlWI1J2~1JEl°'l@'l~) was set up (by Royal Decree no.
67, August 1948), and this was soon followed by the establishment of thelong-standing Comite Litteraire (mlJ5JJJJ::;El::;n), under the Ministry of
Education (by Prime Minister's Decree no. 407, 27 August 1951). The
Comite was to contain twenty-four members, and the founding five were
Kou Aphay, P. S. Nginn, Phuy Panya, Sila Viravong, and Bong
Souvannavong. (Sila left the Comite at the end of 1963.) In 1970, theCo mite became the Lao Royal Academic Council ("J'lm;::;iJ1Jnnrl::;81::;W'l@'l~), by
Royal Ordinance no. 72, 23 February 1970. It was to last five years until
the demise of the Royal Lao Government in 1975.
The reforms introduced by the post-1975 government were
implemented quite effectively without the need for a distinct official
regulatory body, presumably because the policy was so clear (as defined inPhoumi 1967), and also because little or no debate was entered into. The
reforms adopted had already been well established for at least twenty years
in the Liberated Zone. In 1999, there remains no official body specificallyentrusted with regulation of the Lao language.
On 8-10 October 1990, a major conference "The Round Table on Lao
Language Policy" was held in Vientiane, organized by the Institute forCultural Research under the Ministry of Information and Culture. A
number of the papers presented were collected and published as a volume
OCR 1995), in which is found a representative array of current attitudes
about Lao language and culture (see below for further discussion). One of
the most common demands made was the need for an institute or academy
to oversee and authorize decisions about the language, particularly
concerning the incorporation of neologisms, and decisions about what
orthographical conventions should be adopted. Indeed, it was an official
recommendation at the conclusion of the meeting that an official body be
set up to work at least on problems of standardizing orthography(Houmphanh 1995: 5). But nearly a decade later, nothing has come of thatrecommendation. In 1999, a proposal for a Linguistic Institute was before
the minister of information and culture.
Lao linguistic scholarship has of course been closely involved with thevarious institutions concerned with regulation and standardization of the266

N. J. ENFIELD

language. The three figures of greatest importance are P. S. Nginn, Sila
Viravong, and Phoumi Vongvichit, noted by Khamphao (1995: 15) assynonymous with the three most important views of the last seventy years
regarding how Lao language should be written.
Sila Viravong, the most prominent figure of traditional (i.e. prerevolutionary) Lao scholarship, produced a range of works on aspects of Lao
culture, and today there is a rather romanticized notion of his scholarship(cf. Outhin et al. 1990). Sila instigated an early (unsuccessful) attempt toincorporate the full complement of lndic characters (following Pali) into
Lao orthography, so that lndic etymology could be reproduced letter forletter in the everyday spelling system (cf. Bizot 1996, lvarsson (thisvolume), Sila 1996 [1938]). This attempt is to be found in Sila's grammar,
published in 1935 by the then recently established Chantabouri Buddhist
Academic Council. One of Sila's primary concerns was to promote religious
studies, and the move to make Pali accessible to anyone who knew Lao wasseen as a crucial step in doing this (Sila 1935: x (cited in Thongphet 1995:
103». This project ran into problems due especially to the Lao nationalist
desire for the language to be clearly distinct from Thai, which was alreadywell on the way to having standardized its full complement of lndic
characters. Sila's approach was taken by many to be dangerously close toaping developments in Thai orthography at the time (see Diller 1991,
lvarsson (this volume». Much later, Sila's proposals for Lao orthography
were also seen as less practical and more elitist, in opposition to
fundamental principles of Phoumi's "revolutionary" grammar (see below).
Pierre Somchin Nginn was head of the long-standing Comite Litteraire
for over fifteen years, becoming president of the Lao Royal Academic
Council, and presiding over the publication of the Royal Lao Government
official Lao grammar, published in 1972 (RLG 1972). Nginn's view of Laogrammar and orthography was more progressive, whereby he partly
followed a principle of simplicity and "phonetic" spelling, while allowing
for Indic etymology to be reflected in the spelling of borrowings, at least to
the extent that existing Lao characters could facilitate this.
Most recently, Phoumi Vongvichit has had the most direct hand in
determining the current state of Lao grammar, as well as being a leading
political figure throughout the history of the revolutionary struggle in Laos.
The "cultural tsar" of the Lao revolution (Stuart-Fox 1997: 5), Phoumi wasa "revolutionary activist member ... of the traditional Lao elite," who wasnamed interior minister of the Pathet Lao resistance government when it
was endorsed in 1950 (Stuart-Fox 1997: 78), later becoming minister ofeducation, culture, and information and a member of the inner cabinet andthe political bureau of the government of the Lao PDR (Stuart-Fox 1997).
Phoumi published his Lao Grammar in the heartland of the revolutionary

LAO AS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE

267

struggle in 1967. The book was widely distributed after the revolution in
1975, and has come to assume as much significance in Laos as a historicaland culturally symbolic document, as it has as an academic contribution toeither linguistic description or language standardization. In the last ten
years, and especially since his death in 1994, Phoumi has come to receive
mixed respect within the academic community in Laos. Compare, forexample, the strong support from younger scholars seen in Thongphet(1995) and Khamhoung (1995), in contrast to Thongkham and Souvan's(1997: ii) tepid, and essentially quite negative, mention of Phoumi's role inthe context of Sila's much earlier traditionalist work.
"Grammar" for the Lao is essentially prescriptive, properly consisting of aset of rules which define and thereby prescribe what is correct and proscribe
what is incorrect in the language. Further, the focus of "grammar" is almost
exclusively on orthographic convention, i.e. correct spelling, leaving muchabout the overall grammar (or morpho syntax) of the language undescribedand unexplored by Lao scholars. Work that has been done on morphology
and syntax is explicitly, and in many cases, inappropriately, modeled on
traditional European grammar (cf. Diller 1988b, 1993 on a similar
situation in Thai). Similarly, much of the descriptive linguistic work doneby foreign researchers is less than comprehensive and not always reliable.
No Lao "reference grammar," in the descriptive linguist's sense, has so far
been produced.
With the establishment of the Lao PDR, the politically motivatedreforms embodied in Phoumi's Lao Grammar were officially adopted, andremain officially in place today. The positions of Phoumi on the one hand,and of Nginn and Sila, on the other, have polarized, symbolizing the forcesof "old" versus "new," pre-revolutionary versus revolutionary, traditionalversus progressive. When Phoumi's grammar became the national standard,
the people accepted and adopted the reforms in accordance with this.
Clearly, it was not felt that criticism or debate regarding government policy
was appropriate at the time. However, since the "perestroika" of the late1980s, many aspects of culture and society associated with socialist ideology
have decreased in popularity (especially in Vientiane), and have beensomewhat "toned down," now tolerated rather than actively supported.
Since then, and particularly since Phoumi's death in 1994 (cf. Sisaveuy1996), the general feeling in Vientiane has been that Phoumi's reforms are
now out of date, having already "served their purpose" in contributing to acertain phase of the revolution (Houmphanh 1996[1990]: 167). In a rather
different tone, Thongkham and Souvan (1997: ii) imply that Phoumi's
grammar crowned a long history of steady deterioration of the ideal
embodied in Sila's four-volume grammar of more than three decades earlier(Sila 1935). It is clear that at least some of Phoumi's reforms are ready to be268

N. j. ENFIELD

phased out, by popular choice. But while commentators are almost
unanimous that the reforms are inappropriate for contemporary Lao, there
remains the problem of determining what the new alternatives are. Let us
first look briefly at the debate which occurred in the decade or so before
liberation.
Lao was first officially adopted as the language of education in (RoyalLao Government-controlled) Laos in 1962, under the National
Educational Reform Act (RLG 1962, cited in Chamberlain 1978: 267).
While the diversity of pronunciation in various dialects of Lao wasapparently considered quite tolerable ("most Lao scholars agree ... that
promoting a standard pronunciation is neither feasible nor necessarily
desirable," according to Chamberlain 1978: 267), the issue that generated
lively debate was orthographic standardization (Chamberlain 1978;
Houmphanh 1996[1990]). The situation at the time is nicely summed up
by Allan Kerr in the preface to his 1972 Lao-English Dictionary:
A major difficulty which confronted the compiler was the fact that thespelling of Lao words has not been standardised; this is particularly true inthe case of words of Pali and Sanskrit origin. The chief guide for correctspelling is a special directive sent by the King of Laos to the Comite Litteraire,
which states as a general principle that all words are to be spelled exactly as they
are pronounced. However, this has thus far been an ideal rather than an
accomplished fact ... In determining which of a series of [variant spellings]
should be treated as a main entry the compiler has had the temeriry to makedecisions in doubtful cases ... His decisions represent a compromise between
the attitude of the traditionalists who oppose change of any kind and that of themodernists who are eager ro change everything (ix).

Clearly, the debate was highly politicized. The original directive (Royal
Ordinance no. 10, 27 January 1949, for which consult Khamphao 1995,
RLG 1972), was interpreted in different ways (or to different degrees of"strictness") by different political factions of the various coalition
governments. Article 2 reads:
The orthography of Lao words, and of words borrowed into Lao fromforeign languages, follows pronunciation used in Laos.

The "traditionalists" wanted aspects of original Pali/Sanskrit spelling
retained in loanwords from those languages, creating apparently arbitrarycomplexity for those unfamiliar with lndic etymology. These spellings
would have to be learnt by memory, rather than directly reflecting
pronunciation in predictable fashion. Houmphanh (1996[1990]: 163; cf.

269

LAO AS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE

ICR 1995) mentions the added issue of foreign borrowings and neologisms,with regard to which there were many different opinions, and no unified
resolutions.
Chamberlain (1978: 269) reportS that at the time the Lao Patriotic Front"followed a stricter interpretation of the Royal Ordinance." Thus, not only
would they dispose of spellings which used final consonants alien to Lao
phonology, they would also overtly write in the epenthetic vowels which areautomatically inserted by the phonological rules of Lao between consonants
in erstwhile clusters.

Etymological

Phonetic

Pronunciation

Meaning

SlltJ'1@@llll:::tJ'1U~LitJ~:::'t.ffiJ

3s:::5:Jal

3@:::5:J~lJ'1lJ~:::ffiJ'1lJ

liitthabaan
sam a}
vfilav6ng
sanaamgovernment
era(surname)(sports) field

While the various interpretations were subject to debate in the Royal Lao
Government-occupied areas of lowland Laos, there was no such discussion
in the Liberated Zone, where this stricter interpretation (which would
eventually prevail) had been accepted and applied by revolutionary forces
since at least the early 1950s.7 Thus, a symbolic struggle between"grammars" directly reflected the political struggle between the communist
forces in the Liberated Zone, and the royalist forces in the lowlands. The
competing interpretations carried potent symbolism, throughout theembattled period up to 1975, and well beyond. 8

PHOUMI YONGVICHIT'S REFORMS
Phoumi's Lao Grammar was published by the Lao Patriotic Front at Sam
Neua in 1967. Its wider distribution a decade later had far-reaching effect(Houmphanh 1996: 164), setting in place as a national standard therevolutionary forces' strict interpretation of the 1949 Royal Ordinance,
which had already been the norm in the Liberated Zone for at least twenty
years. Phoumi takes a strongly political stance in his introduction, stressing
the nation-unifying function of a "scientific" grammar, an urgent
requirement at that time of struggle to unite the nation under socialism. He
commits to words the principles of language reform in Laos which were
established and carried through until his death. Let me quote him at length:
Every countty in the world has its own principles of speech and writing,270N.]. ENFIELD

its own linguistic principles which may demonstrate the style and thehonour of the nation, and demonstrate the culrural independence of thenation, along with independence in political, economic and other arenas.
Laos has gone back and forth as a colonised state of various foreign
nations for many centuries. Those countries that have colonised us havebrought their languages to be used here and mixed with Lao, causing Lao tolose its original former content, bit by bit. Most importantly, this has been
the case during the time that Laos has been an "old-sryle" colony of theFrench colonialists, and a "new-sryle" colony of the American imperialists.
They have tried to incite and force Lao people to popularise speaking andstudying their languages, and so then to abandon and forget our own Lao
language, litrle by litrle. Furthermore, activities along the borders adjoining
various neighbouring countries have led a certain number of Lao people,
who do not remember their Lao well, to introduce those foreign languages
and mix them with Lao, causing their already degraded Lao to further
depart from the original principles, on a daily basis. The resulr of thissituation is that Lao people speak and write Lao without uniry, where those
who live close to the border with whichever country it may be, or who havestudied the language of that country, write and speak according to the sryle
and the accent of that country.
Since Lao does not yet have unified principles of writing and speech, we
Lao neither like to nor dare to write books or translate books into Lao,which means the cultural struggle of our Lao nation is not as strong as otherareas of the struggle. This has considerable negative consequences for our
struggle to seize control of the nation and fight American imperialism.
The preservation and renovation of the nation's orthography, idiom,literature and cultural principles demonstrates the patriotic spirit, the finetradition and heritage of bravery which was passed down to us from ourforebears ...
The leading idea in my research and writing of this book "LaoGrammar" is for the grammar of Lao to belong to the nation, and to thepeople, and for it to be progressive, modern, and scientific ... Every
principle and every term used herein is intended to be simple, so that thegeneral populace, of high or low education, may easily understand ... My
greatest concern in writing this book is to have people understand andutilise the principles and the various terms in the easiest possible way(Phoumi 1967: 5-8).

Thus, two crucial principles guided Phoumi's reforms-first, to preserve
the language as uniquely Lao and free of unwelcome foreign (especially
Thai) influence, and second, to facilitate the greatest access to literacy forthe population as a whole, not just the well educated andlor privileged.

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271

Adult education was an important focus of educational policy in the new
government, and much of this was aimed at non-Lao speaking minorities(Stuart-Fox 1986: 147-8).
It is interesting to consider why it is that while in the passage quoted
above, Phoumi named the French and the Americans, he didn't explicitly
name the Thai, even though he was so obviously referring to them. The
passage about "neighbouring countries" could only be referring toThailand, particularly obvious given the distribution of political control
during the time the book was written. Thai influence was also already a
topic of scholarly debate in Royal Lao Government areas of lowland Laos
when Phoumi's grammar was published. Apparently, Thai was thennoticeably influencing not only Lao orthography, but also Lao
pronunciation, in daily life, as well as in the mass media. For example, it
was claimed (Xao n.d: 5) that Lao haw (G13'1) 'I/we' and hoong-MEm(tsJCCSlJ) 'hotel' were being writtenlpronounced in the Thai manner (i.e. as
GS'I 16w and tSJCCSlJ loongltEm in Lao). In these pre-1975 lowland debates,
Thailand was also often euphemistically referred to, as in Xao (n.d), wheremost references are to phaasaa fang khila (w1~~i;iJ2J1) 'the language of theright bank (of the Mekong),' and even phaasaa khaw (W'I<J'IG2'1) 'theirlanguage.' This sensitivity is apparently less operative today, as evinced by
Sisaveuy's recent open reference to the influence of Thai words bringing
about the "death" of Lao words (Sisaveuy 1996: 99).
Phoumi's changes to the orthography fully reflected the Lao Patriotic
Front's "stricter interpretation" of the royal directive to spell words
according to their pronunciation. This especially concerned the spelling ofIndic loanwords whose original pronunciation (and thus spelling) included
a far greater range of syllable-final consonants than were phonologicallypossible in spoken Lao. Bounthan (1995: 52) and Chamberlain (I978: 269)
separately discuss the example of the syllable lkaanl which formerly could
be spelt variously as mOl kaal, ms kaar, or mlJ Man (where Ol "I" and S"r" in final position are regularly pronounced as I-n/, as in Thai today).
While the "purists" had hoped to preserve etymology (at the expense of easeof learning and predictability of pronunciation, according to some), the"strict" reformers at the other end of the scale now had their way, and such
distinctions neutralized in speech would now also be neutralized in writing.
Thus, the three syllables pronounced Ikaanl are all today standardly spelled
n'llJ.

The most famous and most potent symbol of Phoumi's reforms was theremoval from the Lao alphabet of the letter s "r," theoretically representing
the alveolar trill [rl (for impassioned discussions, see Bounleuth 1995:
37-39, Sisaveuy 1996: 98-99). This had already been long in place inrevolutionary writing in the Liberated Zone. For example, in a Neo Lao

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272

Issara information sheet, dated 1955, the Lao letter "r" does not appear
once; examples of @ "\" for s "r" in that document include 'iiameelikiia(g'lGlJ@m) 'America',faliing (w:::@:J) 'France', ldatsa'iianaacak (@'1n~:::g'lu'l~n)'kingdom', and liitthabiian (@nll:::1J'Iu) 'government'.) Whereas Central (i.e.
the normative standard) Thai, for example, has a spoken contrast between
II/ and /r/, there is no such contrast in spoken Lao, and /rl is not part of thesound system. 9 As Thongphet puts it, "no linguist, phonetician orphonologist would ever say that the Lao language had the sound [r]"(Thongphet 1995: 104). He goes on to quote Reinhorn (1970: x), forwhom "r" exists in Lao language "purely in theory."
If a word beginning with /rl in Central Thai is also found in Lao, theThai Irl will correspond in spoken Lao to either II/ or Ih/:

Thai

n
~l
I'll

HI
5[1

!I,"

Lao
ram
ram
lam
rot
rot
lot

5"1

oh
@'1

SCI

Sin
Sin

meaning
ham
lam
ldm
hot
lot
lot

bran
kind of danceclassifier for boats, and other large
tubular things
to pour (water)
vehicleto reduce

Given Phoumi's premises, his reasoning for removing the symbol "r" wasperfectly rational. Why should the language retain an orthographic
distinction (i.e. "1" vs. "r") which reflects no spoken distinction, and thus
must be remembered either arbitrarily (thus harder to learn), or with
explicit reference to a distinction made in a foreign language? The removalof "r" nicely served both of Phoumi's aims in linguistic reform-to exclude"non-Lao" elements, and to make the system simpler, and thus easier tolearn for those with lower level of education (i.e. by not having toremember by rote, or by knowledge of Thai, which Lao words pronouncedwith II/ are spelt with "r" and which are spelt with "1").10
There is an increasing popular preference in recent years to tend towards
the preservation of etymology in loanwords where possible. Whilerraditional etymological spellings are less likely to be seen in official
publications, they are now often seen where privately produced, as for
instance in the spelling of shop names. This is perhaps felt to be eyecatching, for example in the case of the flamboyant etymological spelling
11@u, in place of the "correct" spelling 11u, for the syllable pronounced s[n.
One place where etymological spelling has recently become notably popular
is in the romanization of Lao names, virtually all of which are of Indic

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273

OrIgin. While many feel that they cannot write their name with its
etymological spelling in Lao, there is a growing tendency for people toromanize their name according etymology rather than pronunciation. Thisis very common in Thailand, where the etymologically-motivated English
spellings of many Thai proper names result in Anglo pronunciations oftenvery different from the Thai-cf. Dejphol, Poolsub, for example.
Consider the following Lao examples. The name of the present viceminister of information and culture appeared romanized in the 1980s as
Bouabane Volakhoun (Stuart-Fox 1986: 155)' but now as Bouabane
Vorakhoun (Bouabane 1996a) reflecting an etymological "r" in English,
while the Lao spelling ;)@::;~u retains "1" (e.g. as in Bouabane 1996b). The
pronunciation remains Iv:J;y/akhiinl. Similarly, the founding head of the ICR
Houmphanh Rattanavong uses the etymological "r" in the romanization of
his family name, while still using "I" in Lao (i.e. @[1(1::;u::;JJ, as inHoumphanh 1996[1990]). The pronunciation remains l/attanav6ngl. The
novelist whose name is pronounced Ibunthan5:mg somsajphonl now
romanizes his family name as Xomxayphol, using the "x" of former Frenchtransliteration (for lsi), and reflecting the final "1" of the word's Sanskrit
root (pronounced as Inl in Lao). The name of the former minister for
public health was pronounced Ivdnnaleet Idatph6ol, and yet was
romanized as Vannareth Rajpho (Vientiane Times, vol. 4.1, 1-3 Jan 1997)'
again reflecting etymology at the expense of correct pronunciation by the
Anglo reader. 11
How do younger Lao know what these etymological spellings should
correctly be, since they have been largely erased from Lao orthography for
now over twenty years? Since few Lao study enough Pali (let alone Sanskrit)
to really be closely familiar with the sources of many Lao loanwords, it
seems clear that they would have to rely for this on their self-taught
knowledge of Thai (see below), whose orthography has long been designed
to reflect etymology. The problem is not a new one, and has often beenraised in debate on Lao orthography, in which there has been an ongoing
tension between the desire on the one hand to maintain (or invent)"tradition" by asserting the religious and scholarly importance of having a"Pali-based" language, and, on the other hand, to adhere to the nationalist
requirement for Lao and Thai to be clearly distinguished (cf. Ivarsson thisvolume). Interestingly, Thai is considered by some Lao to be "morecorrect," and even "superior" for this reason. Thai is often authoritative
where there are discrepancies between the spelling systems. This ispresumably a combination of, firstly, the known high level of official
codification and standardization in Thai; secondly, the more "difficult" andthus "higher" (i.e. more "learned") form that Thai orthography takes; and,thirdly, the excessive humility Lao people are sometimes known to display.

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N. J. ENFIELD

There is a running joke in Vientiane about the brand name b(a Maw(CUU@'l'J 'Lao Beer': due to the similar shape of Lao u "b" and Thai ~ "kh," inaddition to a vowel symbol combination G-U which is read in Lao as /ia/,but in Thai as / iJiJ) /, a Thai is likely to read the label of a Lao Beer bottle
not as bra Maw 'Lao Beer', but as khJiJ} Maw 'Lao (son)-in-law' (or, moregenerally, Lao man who has married into one's family). I have heard
educated Lao remark in seriousness that the Thai reading is in fact "correct"(although this is by no means the majority view).
Moving away from the issue of spelling, there are other aspects of thelanguage which have been similarly subject to politically motivated reforms,
although it seems these were not overtly published and distributed in thesame way. Many changes were brought in either explicitly, or by example,
during the nationwide "massive increase" in education immediately after
1975 (Stuart-Fox 1986: 145), of which a major proportion was ideologicaland political in nature (cf. also Stuart-Fox 1997: ch. 6).
Prior to the change of government, the particle doo} (tnu) was a standard
polite/deferential affirmative marker in Lao, with similar uses to Thai
khrdp/khd (f1l'u/ri~; cf. yes, sir/ma'am), usually associated with the use of theself-deprecating pronoun khanS;)} (2::;U9U) T (literally 'little slave').
Apparently, this was regarded by the new regime as symbolic of an overly
hierarchical pre-revolutionary society, asserting and perpetuating values
which were to be abolished. The use of doo} was immediately associatedwith this social arrangement, and was banned. This ban was apparently noteffected by any official public decree. Rather, the changes were brought in
at ground level through the education system, and in the frenzy of public"seminars" held in schools, temples, and other public places in the earlyyears of the Lao PDR (Stuart-Fox 1986: 156).
Doo} was deliberately replaced by another word caw (G~'l). Many Lao
report that the initial period of transition was a very difficult anduncomfortable one, in which ordinary people had to drop a well-establishedhabitual politeness marker overnight, replacing it with something
unfamiliar. People report having felt embarrassed in doing so, andconscious of being "rude." One must wonder how long it took for the newusage to become normal, or even if for some people it remains
uncomfortable to this day.
In recent years, dooj has made a comeback. Its usage began to slowly reemerge in the early 1990s, and is now once again quite widespread,particularly by children speaking to teachers and elders, as well as by adults
addressing traditionally respected people-e.g. monks, one's own elders,and so on. Many Vientiane children are now openly urged to "doo)" theirsuperiors (in the same way many English-speaking children are urged to"please" and "thank you" theirs). Som (1996: 146-7) argues in favor of thisLAO AS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE

275

return to traditional etiquette, beginning with the question "Is dooj a word
for slaves?" (clearly referring to the original revolutionary reasoning behind
the word's prohibition). Interestingly, he never explicitly mentions the post1975 ban on dooj, but in arguing that the etiquette does not symbolize selfdeprecation, he remains out of danger of challenging the revolutionary
motivation for the original ban (i.e. he simply challenges one of theargument's premises).
Complementing proscriptive reforms like the banning of dooj, there
were also a number of prescriptive reforms under the new regime. Consider
the introduction of sahaaj «(l~m1u) 'comrade' as a standard "leveling" termof address (in accordance with global socialist practice). In Lao, kinshipterms and other terms of address (such as occupational terms like 'aacaan(IY1TllJ) 'teacher') are used as pronouns, and sahaaj was no exception. Up
until the early 1990s, the term sahaaj could be heard in many officialtransactions, meaning 'you,' 's/he,' or even 'I,' depending on thecircumstances. As Lao society has begun to loosen up over recent years, andproscribed elements like dooj are returning, the use of prescribed elements
like sahaaj has begun to recede, correspondingly. The usage of sahaaj has
become a loaded indicator of socialist conservatism, and thus, in today'ssocial climate, considerable social distance. In Vientiane today, this is often
not appropriate (although there remain contexts in which this kind of talkis expected).
Other terms have taken on a stigma of association with socialist
conservatism, in particular many of the expressions prevalent in the
numerous propaganda slogans which Lao people have had to learn by rote
(especially until the late 1980s). One example is the term saamakkhfi(al'uJn8) 'solidarity, friendship,' used most notably in the political slogans
referring to "special relationships" of political nature (e.g. between Laos,
Vietnam, and Cambodia). Until more recently, this term would often be
used informally with regard to collective activities. I recently used the termwith reference to an invitation to dine amongst friends who hadn't met forsome time, but was advised that it was inappropriate (unless ironic in tone)
for a casual and intimate engagement such as it was. Many other terms fromsocialist propaganda (often calqued from universal socialist political slogans)are now falling our of favor in Vientiane, due to their association with aconservative socialist stance. Such expressions are, however, still noticeable
in more isolated rural centers.
Another interesting and perhaps more subtle area of prescriptive reformin Lao concerns the choice of certain official terminology. Prior to 1975,
many standard terms were common to Lao and Thai, especially those basedon Pali or Sanskrit borrowings. A number of such terms were changed in
Laos, arguably based on Phoumi's two major principles of reform-to makeN.]. ENFIELD

276

the terms uniquely Lao, and to make them as easy as possible to teach andunderstand. For example, the former term for 'mathematics' khanltsaat(8::;un8l'ln; from Sanskrit garzita-sastra 'the science of computation'), wassubstituted by leek (CSlTl), literally 'number(s).' While leek is in fact a loan
from Pali, it is nevertheless a simple term in daily use, unlike the more
technical term khanitsaat. Twenty years later, the Ministry of Education
has now dropped that reform, publishing its high school mathematics
textbooks once again using the former "high" term khanltsaat. Why thereversion? In direct contrast to the original principles behind the reform,
people I have interviewed on the matter favor the adoption of the former
term, pardy because of its more "learned" flavor, and pardy because it
unified the terminology of Lao and Thai. This latter point is especiallysignificant for the many students who utilize the considerably greater
volume and range of instructional and educational materials available inThai (see below). Here we see a direct conflict of interest between thehighly practical benefit of Thai/Lao orthographic/terminologicalconsistency, and the long entrenched nationalist opposition to the very idea.
A final example concerns the reformed terms for the Ministry of Defense
and the Ministry of Interior. In the Royal Lao Government, these two Laoministries had the same Pali-derived titles as in Thai, Kasuang kaldah60m(Tl::;~~JTl::;sntmlJ) and Kasuang mahaatth6j (n::;~~JIJ::;m'lntUl), respectively.
These were changed to Kasuang p3:mg kdn patMet (Tl::;~~JtJgJnlJtJ::;GUln;literally 'ministry (to) protect (the) country') and Kasuang ph6aj-ndj(Tl::;~~J1J'ItR.lJ; literally 'ministry (of the) inner part'). The adoption of these
new terms again nicely satisfied Phoumi's policy of firstly maintaining Lao
uniqueness (i.e. while many ministries remained named as in Thai, thesetwo powerful ministries were perhaps the most symbolic choices), andsecondly bringing the terminology "down to earth," away from "big words"
which the average peasant (or speaker of Lao as a second language) would
be unlikely to use.

CONTEMPORARY DEBATE
Within current debate among today's community of Lao concerned withthe state of the language, we can discern a number of divisions, related ingeneral to the partition of "new" versus "old." But since there are threemain movements in the standardization of Lao, as discussed above, the line
may be drawn in different places. The extremes are the (post-) Phoumi
position (e.g. Thongphet 1995) on the one hand, and the Sila position (e.g.
Thongkham and Souvan 1997), on the other. The Nginn approach is
progressive and rationalist from the Sila point of view, but conservative andLAO AS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE

277

traditional from the Phoumi point of view. From the perspective of modernsocialist principles, and a concern for the integrity of the present
government's cultural policies, only the Phoumi position is politicallycorrect. But for those with the more general nationalist concern that the
Lao language be kept safely distinct from Thai, only Sila's approach looks
problematic. For those who are particularly concerned that Buddhism bebetter served in education and in public life, neither the Nginn nor Phoumi
approach offer the promise of what Sila had planned. These oppositions ofrationalist versus traditional, progressive versus conservative, emblems
versus principles, all overlap to various extents. While I cannot attempt here
to unravel this complex intellectual weaving, let me try to bring out a few of
the issues which emerged in the recent conference on Lao language policy(published in ICR 1995), and which remain the main topics ofcontemporary debate.
One issue concerns the general choice between taking Lao as "Lao," ortrying to see it from the view of how it fits in to the greater world whichpresses in upon it. This may concern contemporary global social andpolitical forces such as the spread of the culture of science and technology,
or it may involve historical encrustations, such as those traceable to the
Indic sources of religious culture in Laos. A common theme in arguing forincreasing the complexity of the Lao writing system is that foreign words,
especially proper names and technical terms, must be faithfully transcribed.
Bounyok (1995: 100) claims that a simplified Lao orthography (i.e. without
the letter "r") prevents us from effectively transcribing foreign terms, withthe result that "people of the world will figure that we [Lao] are ignorant,
and have nothing good in our country." In contrast, Thongphet (1995:
103) praises Phoumi's "daring" in "serving the people" by cutting out "r,,,among other simplifYing reforms.
This is typical of a strong theme of Lao "local pride" throughout
Thongphet's work, nowhere more apparent than in his discussion of theremoval of the letter "r," in which he pointedly argues that "those who aremost offended are those who have previously used the letter 'r' and haveheld an attitude of worship towards Pali and Sanskrit, that these languages
are superior to Lao, their own mother tongue" (Thongphet 1995: 110).
Consider Douangdeuan (1995) and Outhin (1995), who share a view ofrather extreme normative conservatism, opposing linguistic change, andeven revealing a lack of confidence in the integrity and/or expressive
capacity of the basic resources of the Lao language (as opposed in particular
to Pali and Sanskrit). Outhin (1995: 125-6), for example, argues that arange of cases of rather ingenious folk reanalysis of expressions originallyfrom Pali are actually "negative developments" in Lao which should berectified. In a similar vein, Douangdeuan (1995: 133), making a case in278

N. j. ENFIELD

favor of the need for Lao people to learn Pali and Sanskrit, gives a set of Paliwords for 'beautiful,' arguing that they attest to the "clearer" expressivenessof Pali over Lao. 12 Scholars such as these (and many other contributions to
ICR 1995) are now arguing for greater attention to Pali and Sanskrit in basic
Lao language education, often (whether intentionally or not) playing on thevagueness of the Lao term khfiw (G~'1) 'source, root, basis' which is typicallyused to describe the status of Pali/Sanskrit with respect to Lao. Younger
scholars such as Thongphet (1995) and Khamhoung (1995) point out themisleading effect of this usage, and find it necessary to stress that Pali is not"the source" of Lao language at all.
Many commentators show primary concern for issues which areessentially emblematic in nature, rather than being concerned with theapplication of general principles. This may be illustrated once again withrespect to the tireless letter "r." Two important arguments for reinstatementof "r" are (a) that it is required for representation of the "rolled-tongue"
sound [rl found in many minority languages of Laos, and (b) that it isrequired for representation of (at least) proper names and technical terms
frem European languages. In such discussions, it is often as if the presenceor absence of "r" alone will make or break the ability of the Lao language rocope with these tasks (Souvanthone (1995: 117) is a typical example). But
according to Thongphet's rationalist view, if one is really concerned withthe principles, then there are many equally deserving candidates in theinventory of sounds required to faithfully transcribe minority languages,
and to transcribe foreign technical terms and proper names. The point hereis that throughout the years, the debate has revolved around the stock
examples, and not on general principles. These examples become potent
symbols, and quickly eclipse rationalist issues of principle. However, those
who try to argue this line often do not acknowledge that such an emblem
has a greater meaning than its face value would suggest. By orthographic
convention, "r" signifies an alveolar trill, a convention Phoumi's view deems
unnecessary and inappropriate for Lao. But by historical fact, the letter "r"has come to import with it the signification of pre-revolutionary Laos, asociety and culture personally lived by many, and yet collectively denied inrecent times. It now signifies what is missing. The removal of "r" from thelanguage came with the removal of much more significant things in theculture and society of lowland Lao people. Thus, while Thongphet's
arguments regarding the letter "r" may be more rational and consistent,
many of them are likely to fall on deaf ears in a circle fixated upon suchsalient and historically (not to mention personally) loaded emblems.
There are many more issues which could be discussed in this context, butthese should suffice to invoke the aroma of the current array of intellectual
standpoints in Vientiane. On the one hand, rationalist scholars like

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279

Thongphet harshly criticize simplistic and/or unprincipled arguments put
forward by those who "understand nothing at all about the basic andunique features of the Lao language" (Thongphet 1995: Ill). His aim is toretain and promote the principled rationalization of the language whichbegan with Nginn and was taken much further by Phoumi. Others argue
for the very opposite, such as Khamphan (1995: 57), for example, whodemands a two-stage renovation of the Lao language, first reinstating the
Nginn system (RLG 1972), as a prelude to adopting Sila's proposed Palified system (Sila 1935). Such a course would precisely reverse the direction
in historical trend of the last seventy years.

THAI INFLUENCE
WE may now turn to the Thai language, and consider its constant presencein the development of Lao as a language, and as a national language. In
Phoumi's "Introduction," above, Thai was implicitly singled out as alanguage (and culture) whose influence Lao must resist. 13 It now appears
that Phoumi's worst fears are turning to reality (Stuart-Fox 1997: 205), but
for most modern Lao the facts are not considered quite so awful. The levelof exposure to Thai in Laos has increased dramatically in recent years, andnow most if not all residents of Vientiane (as well as those in many otherparts of the country) have daily contact with Central Thai. In a recent
survey on social makeup in urban Vientiane, over 90 percent of residents
responded that they could understand Thai, while at the same time lessthan 30 percent said they could speak or write it (ICR 1998: 57).
By far the most pervasive and powerful medium of exposure to modern
Thai culture in Laos today is television. In reporting on the reception ofThai television in Laos over ten years ago, Stuart-Fox noted that "(o)nly
those [Lao provincial towns] close to the Thai frontier can receive
programmes," and that in any case there were "few residents lucky enoughto possess TV sets" (Stuart-Fox 1986: 155). Due to stronger broadcast
signals from Thailand, or better reception equipment, or a combination of
both, the reception of Thai television now goes a lot further. It has beenreported, for example, that Thai programs can now be received in Attapeu,
a province with no border to Thailand. Further, not even those places outof range of Thai television transmission are spared from regular exposure toThai. Enterprising Lao are doing good business in rural areas charging for
public access to video showings, whose popularity is rapidly increasing. In
Sepon town, for example, a district center near the Vietnamese border inthe far East of Savannakhet province, I witnessed large numbers of young
men paying for entry (US$ 0.50 each) to gather around a television set and280

N. J. ENFIELD

view Chinese and Thai videos, all with dialogue in Central Thai. Similarly,
the advent of satellite television dishes has now well and truly taken hold,and television programming from across the world can be received virtually
anywhere as long as one can afford to buy a dish (from US$ 400 to US$1000). Thus, fewer and fewer Lao people are isolated from exposure to theCentral Thai language, and to the popular culture of mainstream Thai
society.
It was noted in 1985 that the Vientiane authorities "(took) no action
against those watching Thai programmes" (Stuart-Fox 1986: 155). While
the official view of modern Thai culture at the time was certainly negative,
the perceived "threat" of Thai TV was apparently not great, given thattelevision sets were fairly rare. At the time, the Lao television station had
only recently expanded programming from three days to five days a week
(each day only a few hours in the evenings), and was about to introduce
programming seven days a week. Thai programs would have often been the
only choice. By the late 1990s, ownership of television sets has skyrocketed,and they are found everywhere. While there are now rwo Lao television
stations broadcasting in Vientiane, the competition from Thailand isoverwhelming, with Bangkok-based programming matching the technicallevel of any developed country. Thai television is loud, flashy, andtechnologically advanced. These are all attractive qualities to many modern
residents of Vientiane. Many homes, markets, and workplaces havetelevisions installed to help pass the time (as is common practice inThailand). It has been somewhat ironic to observe that even the State
Bookshop has a television installed, broadcasting Thai commercial
programming inside the shop throughout the day. This is the same placethat ten years ago contained "nothing but Eastern bloc magazines, theworks of Marx and Lenin and a few 'acceptable' novels translated into Lao"
(Stuart-Fox 1986: xiv).
As in any high-consumption society, the vast proportion of television
programming in Thailand is overwhelmingly consumer-oriented. The mostobvious features of this are the high frequency of advertisements, and thearray of consumer-oriented game shows which revolve around theaccumulation of money and consumer goods. Also very popular is theplethora of implausibly dramatic soap operas, most of which are basedaround the lives of the wealthy and beautiful (much in the "Western"mold).
Thai radio and Thai popular music are also in high demand in lowland
Laos. Ownership of radios is widespread, and it is vety common for people
to work outdoors (e.g. on construction sites, at marketplaces, in rice fields)
to the tune of radio sets. More and more commonly, Vientiane sets are
tuned to the FM stations broadcasting from nearby Nong Khai and Udon

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281

Thani in Thailand. Vientiane residents contribute to the participatingaudience of the Thai stations, writing to the stations to request songs, andtaking part in promotional competitions. Vientiane businesses advertise on
these Thai stations. While announcers on the northeast Thai radio stations
received in Vientiane speak some amount of Lao (or at least "Isan Thai," themix of Thai and Lao spoken in northeast Thailand; cf. Preecha 1989), mostly
Central Thai is used, especially in regular news bulletins and the like.
Commercial radio programming is, of course, dominated by popular
music, and Thai radio is no exception. The Thai popular music industry isvery advanced in terms of its levels of production quality and marketing,and among the Vientiane youth especially, the booming, heavily imageoriented Thai scene is popular. The many bars and clubs operating in
Vientiane playa high proportion of Thai and "international" (i.e. Western)songs. A minimum level of "local content" is required by law (VMGO
1997, Articles 9.8 and 15) though often not followed, and is enforced byoccasional monitoring (including educational "seminars") by local
authorities.
Many bars and clubs in Vientiane feature live bands which playa mix of
Lao, Thai, and Western music, with a few clubs playing no Lao music at all.
Among the more trendy youth, Lao songs are uncool, and there areinteresting ways in which language becomes a factor. For example, Thai
popular songs, especially those that deal with the dominant themes of loveand relationships, use the pronouns chan (,ju) for T and thaa (bfi'1l) for'you.' While a number of pronouns and pronominal strategies are common
to Thai and Lao, these particular forms are highly marked as "very Thai,"and definitely not Lao. Young Lao musicians who aspire to write original
songs in the style of modern Thai pop are stuck. They are unable to use theThai pronouns, since these would never pass the approval of thegovernment, as is required for original material broadcast or published in
Laos (VMGO 1997, Article 6.3). But to use Lao pronouns (kh3:Jj (2mJ) T
and caw (G~'1) 'you'; or 'aaj (g'lU) 'older brother' and n3:Jng (DgJ) 'younger
sister') in a song of the Thai pop style would sound embarrassing to a hipyoung Lao. 14 The result is that the Thai industry dominates the pop music
market in Laos.
Print media is another major channel for Lao people's exposure toCentral Thai. Lao language newspapers and magazines are somewhat
limited in quantity and content, for both economic and political reasons.
All Lao publications require official government approval, a fact whichmust, to some extent, discourage experimentation and/or enterprise in any
non-established styles of publishing (for example, anything "lowbrow,"
satirical, critical, or politically reactionary). In this context, the sheer

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quantity and variety of Thai written materials attracts a lot of interest in
Laos.
The Thai language written materials found now in Laos are basically of
two types, the "popular," and the "practical." Thai popular writtenmaterials include novels, comics, and popular magazines (the latter often
associated with promotion of Thai music or television industries), as well as
stickers, signs, and slogans advertising Thai products. These can be seen allover Vientiane, in shops and homes, in markets, and on the street. The
popularity of these materials is evinced by the small shopfront or market"libraries" which can be found around Vientiane, from which one may
borrow (for a price) Thai-language glossy magazines and novels. There is nosuch market in Vientiane for private Lao language libraries.
Thai practical written materials include educational resources, technicalmanuals, instructional materials, and the like. These kinds of publications
are widespread and of a relatively high standard in Thailand, and manysrudents in Vientiane now utilize the broad range of publications which
provide information and resources on technical matters. There is often noalt~rnarive, since so little is available in Lao. Most of the bilingual English
language teaching materials are produced in Thailand, and are on sale inmost Vientiane bookshops. A number of new bookshops have opened up
around Vientiane, stocking mostly Thai language titles. Thus, many
Vientiane Lao are being exposed to a lot of written Central Thai out ofsheer practical necessity, and much of their working technical terminology
is directly borrowed from Thai. A typical example observed recently was aseries of Thai health education information sheets hung on the wall of award in the "150-bed" Lao-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Vientiane. While
it would of course be preferable for the Lao to have such materials available
in Lao language, it is obviously better to have access to the information in
Thai than not at all.
Thai newspapers provide elements of both the "popular" and the"practical." The nature of journalism in the Thai press is a world apart fromthat in Laos, and is very closely modeled on the style of developed
countries. Aside from the range of human interest stories and glossy
advertising, one can find critical social/political analysis, scarce in the Laopress. This in itself is engaging for Lao readers, particularly where thisconcerns probing of native political mechanisms, whereby readers may beprivy to highly critical analysis of the activities of their national leaders, aswell as no end of gossip. This for the Lao is attractive, at the vety least for
its novelty. (At the same time, many Lao are glad that they are notthemselves governed directly by such an openly chaotic system.) It is also
notable that the kinds of news people are exposed to in the Thai press (aswell as electronic media) are probably slightly nerve-racking for those

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concerned with Lao national security, given the open political debate,
criticism, and also exposure to the culture of industrial action, and so on.
Recently, Lao people in Vientiane may be observed debating over morning
coffee the fortunes of Thai politicians and political parties, and the
dynamics of Thai politics.
Thus, with respect to mass media like television and newspapers, there is
no way to state simply whether the exposure of Lao people to Thai culturein this way is "good" or "bad," "destructive" or "constructive." Like
television in general, Thai television can be said to have a numbing and/or
distracting effect, or it may be said to broaden horizons and promote
progressive thinking by means of creating exposure to ideas from without,which can be constructively borrowed and appropriated. For better and/or
worse, Lao people learn a lot from watching the Thai. And the Thai, who
spend little time taking any notice of the Lao, indeed learn very little fromthem.
The present high level of exposure to Central Thai in Laos is having a
noticeable effect on the spoken language, particularly of young people. The
following chart shows a handful of the many Thai words which are coming
into use among Lao in Vientiane:
Lao terms ofrecent Thai origin

Lao terms

tUl@::OW'1U
GS(l;Jc;n~Ju
Ul°'1g(159J

ceil;)
WU

thoolaphliap
her vlakhiing-miitham-'ith3:JngkE£w
phoptUl@::OUl(1Ulo1J'1U@;)Ud

111 cc@n
1:IgJ
2;)(1
G'1

thoolathat
tham ngaan
luaj
thl i-lEEk
13:Jngkhuat
d'meamngs

television
to workrich
at first
sing
botde
meet

Accent may be affected, although this is perhaps less widespread. In anumber of cases, the Thai pronunciation of a Lao word may be adopted(e.g. Thai len (b~'W) for Lao lin rnu) 'play, pass time'). Effect on tones may
be observed, where, for example, young Lao women can be heard using the(characteristically Thai) lengthened, rising tone with final glottal stop on
the sentence-final perfective marker IE£w (cc1:l;)). Outhin (1995: 126-7)
gives the examples of phJ<Jm (GWJJ) 'add, additional,' /J<Jm (G~l)) 'begin,'muang (0;):]) 'purple (color),' and thaw (GUi'1) 'extent, amount,' which arebeing pronounced in Lao as phJ<Jm, IJ<Jm, muang. and (hfiw, following theThai tone (i.e. as if they were written in Lao as G2;JJ, G~JJ, i:bJ, and Gcil1).
There are at least two levels of usage of spoken Thai among the Lao

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which may be termed "flippant" versus "serious." Flippant usage of Thai iscommon among young people, and among those into popular culture. It
involves "putting on" a Thai accent, and using Thai expressions inimitative, joking fashion (just as Australians often do with American or
English accents and idioms). This conscious and deliberate usage of Thai isconsidered by most to be not actually "speaking Thai" in any genuine sense.
Thus, someone who uses Thai expressions flippantly may still assert that
their "serious" Lao does not incorporate any Thai elements at all.
Nevertheless, there is a significant degree of "serious" usage, and this is on
an apparently unconscious level, where many people would indeed denythat they do it at all. John Gumperz (1982: 75) has described thisphenomenon, noting that "expressed attitudes tend to conflict with theobserved facts of behaviour." Indeed, I have pointed out to Lao informants
who deny seriously using any Thai, that they have in fact been recorded ontape doing just that. When the facts are attested, the result has often been
considerable debate and confusion as to what is Thai and what is Lao after
all. Some speakers are very clear about the distinction, others are not. The
former tend to be those who oppose Thai influence, while the latter tend tosee it as "no problem," since Thai and Lao are "basically the same language"
anyway. This is an especially common line when defending one's use of aThai term in Lao.
The adoption of Thai words into the Lao system has resulted in someinteresting phenomena with respect to the changes in meaning that certain
elements undergo. For instance, a Thai word may simply replace its Laoequivalent. An example is 'television,' th60laphaap (t1l1@::;w"lu) in Lao. Laospeakers have now almost unanimously adopted the same term as Thai,th60lathat (t1l1@::;U1n cf. Thai t'VI~'l'lf'l1!). Another possibility is for a Thai
meaning to replace the Lao meaning, where Thai and Lao had different
meanings for a shared word. An example is falang (L.!::;Q':J), which until
recently meant 'French' in Lao, an abbreviation of falangseet (W::;i.:iJG~ll).
The term fQl·ang (w*~ in Thai) refers generally to 'Westerners' or'Caucasians,' and this usage is now being adopted by children and youth inVientiane, as well as many adults. Another example concerns the word phEe
(ccti), which in Lao (for older speakers) means 'to win, to defeat someone.'Interestingly, it has the very opposite meaning in Thai, i.e. 'to lose, to be
defeated by someone.' With the present level of exposure to Thai, this has
now become a possible source of confusion, which on occasion needs to beresolved by the question "Do you mean Lao phEe or Thai phEe?" (cf.
English "Do you mean funny 'peculiar' or funny 'ha-ha?"'). It appears thatthe confusion engendered by the possibility of opposite readings for a single
word is too impractical, and I have noticed that some young people inVientiane now use phEe almost exclusively in the Thai sense.

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285

Where Thai and Lao have synonyms, a Thai word may be incorporated
into Lao, where the meanings of the two words adjust, each taking on a
separate sense. For example, the words for 'wealthy' in Lao and Thai are
hiing-mii (~JLJ) and ruaj (~rm), respectively. The term ruaj (Lao luaj @CJu) isnow being used in Vientiane to refer to the kind of flashy nouveau-richestyle of wealth often depicted on Thai TV, or associated with the modern
new rich of Vientiane. The Lao term hang-mii now tends to refer to moreestablished family wealth, with inherited ownership of land and paddy,
perhaps with influence because of this, and so on. Another example
concerns the words for 'work,' v(ak (Cl,sn) and ngaan (~TW) in Lao and Thai,
respectively. The Lao term tends now to refer to manual labor, while theThai term is gaining currency in Vientiane for reference to white-collar
work. This example is rather transparent in terms of the social levels at
which Lao and Thai expressions tend to refer. David Bradley (personalcommunication) has suggested that these examples of former synonyms
adjusting to complement each other semantically could be construed ascases where Thai actually has an enriching influence on Lao. While Laoindeed gains a semantic distinction it formerly lacked, there is a tendency,
however, for the formerly neutral Lao terms to become pejorative (as in theexample of Lao vs. Thai 'work,' above). This has already happened in manycases in Isan Thai.
A feature of Central Thai which modern Lao now conspicuously lacks isldatsasdp (@"(1~::;gu) "royal vocabulary," the special flowery terminology
derived from Pali, Sanskrit, and Khmer, used for reference to activities of
the royal family. Lao possessed this feature at the time Laos had a royal headof state. Tay (1995: 169) reportS that upon the establishment of Lao PDR,
royal vocabulary was officially banned, permitted only where appropriate ornecessary in poetry and literature. 15 Today, however, the Lao in range ofThai TV are exposed daily to lengthy reportS on the activities of royalfamily members on Thai news bulletins, and these are full of royal
vocabulary. Perhaps more significantly, Lao language reportage is itself
beginning to use the conventions of royal vocabulary (see front page reportof Princess Sirindhorn's visit to Vientiane, Pasason newspaper, 20 Mar.
1998). Notably, the Thai royal family is well-liked by many Lao. Images ofKing Bhumibol and Princess Sirindhorn are common in shops and some
private homes in Vientiane. The Krung Thai Bank distributed a 1997
calendar to shops and offices all over Vientiane featuring a large photographof King Bhumibol of Thailand. It is amazing that in Vientiane his image is
now at least as widespread as those of any of the Lao revolutionary leaders.
The issue is well worth researching, but remains politically quite sensitive(cf. Evans 1998).
The bottom a line here is that while attitudes to the incursion into Lao

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of various elements of Thai differ considerably from individual toindividual, no one denies that it is happening. And the debate goes backthroughout the history of Laos as a nation-state. Adoption of Thai linguistic
practices correlates with the adoption of other cultural practices, including
some of the most salient symbols of the "social evils" to which the current
regime's cultural policies have been so strongly opposed. Consider thefollowing comments of a Vientiane man who spent time during the late1970s in re-education, as a "social misfit": 'They took those with long hair,
they took those with platform shoes, they took those with even slightly
flared pants. They'd say, 'This person is attached to social evils from theWest,' like the Americans. They took out the bad people for re-education."(Enfield 1994: 189-90.) Clearly, these "social evils" were taken very
seriously by the new regime. It is thus perhaps a cruel irony for some thatthe streets of Vientiane are once again replete with flared pants andplatform shoes. And the Thai influence on Lao language that Phoumi
resisted is well under way. It will thus be of great interest to monitor the
progress of these influences within Laos itself over the coming decades. 16

THE POLITICS OF LAO LANGUAGE: OUTLOOK AND
CONCLUSION
Trends in linguistic and cultural policy are subject in part to fluctuatingsocial and political attitudes. In Vientiane, particularly with the recent
emergence of a consumer middle class, this correlates with the compromiseof certain revolutionary ideals. But Laos remains a socialist country, andthere are important signs of a continuing level of revolutionary
consciousness, particularly in official contexts. For example, in a recent
newspaper article on Lao language studies, Thongphet (I996) displays asimilar level of political concern as Phoumi had done in his 1967 grammar.
In the second part of the paper, entitled "The Viewpoint of our Parry,"Thongphet quotes Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Ho Chi Minh, going on topresent his "Ten directions for linguistic research." The first cwo of theseare "Research on Marx-Lenin theory," and "Research on the cultural,
ethnic, and linguistic policies of the [Lao People's Revolutionary] Party."
Similarly, in a classic token of political correctness, having made one of thestrongest statements against Phoumi's revolutionary reforms in the recent"Lao Language Policy" volume (ICR 1995), Khamphan signs off "inrevolutionary solidarity" (Khamphan 1995: 60). Indeed, the general trend
since the early 1990s away from conservative politics in Laos was noticeably
reversed in the lead-up to the general election of December 1997, during
which an atmosphere of political conservatism was apparent in VientianeLAO AS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE

287

and elsewhere (cf. e.g. PCPC 1997). So it is difficult to predict what the
future will hold for Lao as a national language, but it is highly unlikely thatthe current government will officially approve restoration of conventions
such as those championed by Nginn, and especially Sila, with such salient
symbolic attachment to former regimes, and the foreign nations. The bestthat traditionalists can hope for is official restoration of the letter "r," inplace already for foreign words and proper names.
In conclusion, a review of the status of Lao as a national language
supports a claim that variation and change in a given language is revealingof the nature and extent of variation and change in the culture and society
in which that language is spoken. The persistent disunity of grammaticalconvention in Laos, and the rapid change the Lao language is presently
undergoing are clearly symptomatic of the sediments and fault lines acrossLao social and political history, as well as the rapid and dramatic socialchange occurring now. The two most salient forces of change in thelanguage today are the overall decrease in social presence of revolutionary
ideals, and the active and pervasive influence (perhaps unprecedented inextent) of Thai culture, and through it, the culture of the developed world.
The two are surely not unrelated, and it is impossible to give a simplistic
appraisal of the value or detrimental effect of this process for Lao people.
When we examine current popular debate on Lao language, we see clearly
how the real issues are to a large extent not really "linguistic" (in one
important sense of the term) at all. When it comes to language engineering,
the pivotal arguments are often not based on theoretical principles or
rational argumentation derived from linguistic science. They are based on
salient emblems whose presence or absence may be exploited to achievecertain desired cultural or socio-political effects. The Lao letter "r" is aclassic example. From a rationalist standpoint (e.g. from the point of viewof a theoretical linguist or a Marxist-Leninist theoretician), most of thedebate on "r" is appallingly simplistic, and the symbol itself, as a substantive
issue, is overrated. As Thongphet has shown, by the principles that argue forthe official reinstatement of "r" into Lao orthography, there are a number ofother sounds/letters equally deserving. But they receive little or no attention
in these contexts. Why? Because the stock example, "r," has achieved
unique status as a potent metonymic emblem of whole cultural and socialworlds denied by the movement that Phoumi Vongvichit represented, yetwhich remain embedded in the biographies of many Lao people. And
despite the revolutionaries' principled and rational justification for theremoval of "r," the symbol is a potent metonym for them, too. In language
engineering driven by the social and political forces of nationalism, the"linguistic principles" at stake virtually fade into insignificance.

N. ]. ENFIELD

288

APPENDIX: NOTE ON LAO LANGUAGE REFERENCE
MATERIAL
The most extensive original work on Lao lexicography appears in largebilingual dictionaries compiled by American and French researchers (Kerr
1972; Reinhorn 1970), although a Lao monolingual dictionary wasproduced by Sila Viravong (1962, cited in Kerr 1972: xx), and some smaller
bilingual dictionaries have also appeared over the years (e.g. Marcus 1970).
The most extensive Lao monolingual dictionary appeared recently, largely asynthesis of these works, translated into Lao (Thongkham 1992). Publishedmaterials on the grammar of Lao (ranging from excellent to unreliable)
include a small range of pedagogical and descriptive materials produced inforeign languages (e.g. Hoshino 1973; Hoshino and Marcus 1981; Morev
et al. 1972; Ngaosyvath and Ngaosyvath 1984; Reinhorn 1980; Roffe andRoffe 1958; Werner 1992; Wright 1994; Yates and Sayasithsena 1970). For
Lao language materials, see the three Lao grammars: Phoumi 1967, RLG
1972, Sila 1935.

NOTES
Some field support for this research has come from Australian Research Council Grant
A59601467 "Thai-Lao Linguistic Interaction," for which I am very grateful.
lowe much to Tony Diller for his generous and ongoing support. Grant Evans's
assistance, consultation, and encouragement in Laos is also gratefully acknowledged.
His direct input has made a significant contribution ro the present shape of this essay.
Thanks also to Marian Ravenscroft for her help in Vientiane. This essay has also
benefited from comments and discussion with David Bradley, Adam Chapman, Tony
Diller, Chris Flint, Joost Foppes, Soren Ivarsson, Anthony Jukes, Syban Khoukham,
Craig Reynolds, Martin Stuart-Fox, and Kathryn Sweet. Usual disclaimers apply. My
transcription of Lao is based on International Phonetic Association convention, except
glottal stop /. /, palatal and velar nasals / n, ng/, low central vowel / a/, and high backuntounded vowel /n/. Tones are (approximately): high level (/44/) / -I; low falling(/211) / 'I; high falling (/511) / A/; low rising (/2131) / '/; high rising (/34/) n. Notethat "i" is pronounced like English "y" in you ot boy; "c" is pronounced approximately
like English "i" in jill. All quotes from Lao language sources are my translation.
1. There are of course many languages spoken in Laos which are not dialects of Lao,
including the languages of the Hmong-Mien group (e.g. Hmong), the Tibeto-Burman
group (e.g. Lahu), and the Mon-Khmer group (e.g. Khmu). The current status, andfuture of these languages is of urgent concern in the present climate of rapid change anddevelopment in Laos. However, these matters are beyond the scope of this essay. Notealso that in the interest of keeping the subject matter manageable, the present
exposition is necessarily biased rowards the situation of Lao language in urban
Vientiane.

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289

2. As Kathryn Sweet (personal communication) has pointed our, this concern withwritten language means that the issue of language standardization has little or no effecton the large number of people who are not literate. The level of literacy in Laos would
have been especially low earlier this century.
3. Sanskrit and Pali are Indo-Aryan languages, both no longer natively spoken.
Sanskrit has a specific script (the Devanagari script used in modern Hindi), and isassociated mostly with Hindu writings. While Sanskrit remained very conservative due
to emphasis on retaining the integrity of its original written form, Pali developed our ofa spoken descendent of Sanskrit, which was used in the dissemination and subsequent
spread of Buddhism. Pali does not have its own specific script (many different scripts
are used for writing Pali), but does require essentially the same range of characters as theDevanagari script, with some minor differences.
4. Traditional description of the rone system of Lao (as well as Thai) makes
reference ro three parameters: status of syllables as "live" (i.e. with vocalic or sonorantfinal) or "dead" (i.e. with stop final); membership of the initial consonant in one of thethree classes ("high," "middle," and "low"); and vowel-length ("long" vs. "short"; cf.
Phoumi 1967: ch. 1; Preecha 1989: introduction).
5. This, however, does not mean that the standards of the language are faithfully
adhered ro. There remains a certain margin for slippage in the writing of Lao, as
persistent variation in spelling of many words will attest.
6. For example, in ICR 1995, an important recent volume on "Lao language
policy," almost no one among over twenty-five contriburors identifies regional
pronunciation as an issue. Bounyok (1995: 98) is one exception.
7. It must be acknowledged that those who were producing Lao language documentsin the Liberated Zone constituted a small community in comparison to those in RoyalLao Government areas at the time.
8. Many overseas communities of Lao who fled Laos under the revolutionary
government continue ro publish their community materials using orthographic
conventions based on the more traditional interpretation of the 1949 Royal Ordinance.
9. As Grant Evans (personal communication) has pointed out, there are cases where"r" is pronounced by Lao people. Note, however, that these are without exception
marked usages, licensed either by the particular cultural context (e.g. religious formality
or marking of class distinction), or the markedness of particular words being
pronounced (e.g. foreign names). Contraty to folk belief in Vientiane, it is not the casethat Lao people are "unable to roll their r's." But it remains the case that there is nounmarked spoken usage of an alveolar trill [rl corresponding to written s in Lao.
10. Diller (1991) reports similar issues in Thailand, where the orthographic "r" vs.
"I" distinction is not colloquially pronounced by most Thai. He writes, "Occasionallyhigher government units take direct linguistic action. On 12 January 1988 the Prime
Minister's Office issued a proclamation warning the bureaucracy ro pronounce Ir-/ andII-I distinctly ... " (Diller 1991: 112).
II. Note that there are exceptions {and the situation is quickly changing}: Lao "r"appears on the cover of the 1995 Road Regulations Manual in the spelling of theauthor's name Sisouphan Urai (1i'OIW1J>J,ts), and also in the spelling of Sila Viravong's
name in various reissued publications (e.g. Sila 1996 [1938]). The abbreviation of"doctor" has always used Lao "r" {ns.}, following English/French "Dr."12. Thongphet's comments seem pertinent here, given Douangdeuan's high praiseof the shades of meaning Pali provides, despite the extraordinarily rich expressive power

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of "native" spoken Lao. One of the special features of Lao is its category of expressives(cf. Chapman 1996), a grammatical system providing abundant and subtle distinctions
across a range of semantic fields. The Pali terms Douangdeuan recommends are
expressive only to the extent that semantic distinctions from a classical language can be
re-created and/or contrived and deliberately imported into Lao linguistic culture.
Native expressive distinctions are arguably of much greater value to the cultural
integrity of Lao language, since they are already established among Lao fashions of
speaking, and are naturally inculcated through existing native channels of socialtransmission.
13. Indeed, the influence of Thai on Lao has been a concern in Laos ever since Laonationalism began, and is certainly not a preoccupation exclusive to the revolutionary
movement. Ivarsson (this volume) discusses the long-standing nationalist issues
surrounding Laos's need to distinguish itself from Siam and Thailand, and how this ismanifest in the need to distinguish the languages of the two nations.
14. Compare the similar virtual prohibition on Australian popular musicians singing
in an Australian accent, instead using American, or occasionally English, style.
Exceptions to this tendency may be found in "country" and/or "folk" genres (both inAustralia and Laos).
15. Souksavang (1995: 84) has challenged the premise that royal vocabulary is"c1ass-ist" in the same way that Som (1996) argued against the persecurion of doo) trlU,arguing that as parr of the language, it is "the common properry of the whole society,and of all people."
16. Consider the possibiliry in years to come of a conscious return to "uniquely Lao"
culture, a people's reclamation of all things "truly Lao." Would the rediscovered "Laolanguage" and "Lao culture" have to be invented, pieced together from clues and fondmemories, while accommodating the new cultural requirements of the modern society?
This process of "revival" of culture has been witnessed in many parts of the world, none
closer to Laos than Isan (northeast Thailand), where the people have been actively"rediscovering" (mostly reinventing) their "Lao" roots. Much of what is now emerging
as "Isan" culture is in fact new, but importantly, "uniquely Isan," and also putatively"Lao." And ironically, this "Lao" sryle is being adopted as a hip "alternative" by someyoung residents of Vientiane. It would not be at all surprising to see this same processtake hold in lowland Laos in a decade or two, as a backlash against the process ofintense cultural change we are witnessing now.