Talk:Lao language

message: technically, there should probably a 'pasaa' before ລາວ .. if anyone can input it, go for your life! -- prat.
:Don't worry about it. Phasa Lao is only Phasa Lao in Phasa Lao. In English it's just plain Lao.
:--Mrrhum 22:21, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Markalexander100 05:16, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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

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

message: At http://www.omniglot.com/writing/lao.htm there is a character which should be pronounced [k] or [kh] (the third from the left) which I don't find in http://www.seasite.niu.edu/lao/lao3.htm (nor in a book on Lao writing), but looks like a Thai character which is pronounced the same way. Apokrif 03:45, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's certainly not one of the current letters; I suspect that it's an obsolete letter, removed during the simplification process.  The old system had more of a Thai influence. Markyour words 11:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

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

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

message: Cut the following:
:Many Laotians immigrated to the United States during the Vietnam War, as Laos was undergoing its own war over Communism.  Laos is the most bombed country in the world.  Bomb craters can be found in northern remote parts of the country.  Many Laotians who tried to escape by crossing the Mekong River that borders Laos and Thailand drowned or were killed by Communist soldiers.  Refugee camps were set up in Laos and Thailand where refugees waited years before immigrating to countries, such as the United States, France, and Australia.  The Tai Dam are an ethnic group from Laos that escaped the country as a group.  After thousands of years of political oppression, the Tai Dam people vowed to unite as one group and find a country they could call their own.  The Tai Dam are known as "the people without a country."  More than 90 percent of Tai Dam refugees immigrated to the state of Iowa after the governor agreed to take the Tai Dam as a group and have organizations sponsor families.  
..because it's clearly not about Lao language. If anyone thinks it's worth keeping, please put it into the correct article. It's not brilliantly written but looks relevant to History of Laos. Whoever inserted it, please don't be offended, but this really isn't the right content for this article. Leushenko 15:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not about the language 

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

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

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

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

message: I thought some readers without text Lao support might come here as well as the Lao script page so I wanted to mention how Lao, was compatible with Windows. I hope this will help out a few people if they don't know where to go and need this info.
Lao was not officially released for Windows until the 'Windows Vista' Microsoft Windows help page. Although user generated fonts are freely avalible online, requiring the user to download the fonts, place them into the "Windows", "Fonts", folder, and then open a "Internet Explorer" window and select the following; "Tools", "Internet Options", and on the 'General' tab, they need to click on the "Fonts" option and then select the font that they downloaded. AMERILAO.org site How to "Setup Internet Explorer to read Lao font". (Floppydog66 (talk) 20:21, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Lao compatibile software

message: According to Simmala & Becker's Lao for Beginners (1st ed.), "Some linguists have identified six tones in the Lao language and others say there are five. According to the Lao high school textbooks published by the Ministry of Education of Laos, there are six tones in the northern dialect and five tones in the central and southern regions. The people in the north tend to speak more slowly and draw out words."
They don't quite specify which northern dialect (Luang Prabang or Xiengkhuang), but the statement contradicts what's written in the "Tones" section of the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.123.224.190 (talk) 13:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of tones 

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

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

message: Manuel de conversation franco-laotien
https://archive.org/details/ManuelDeConversationFranco-laotien
Dictionnaire français-laotien
https://archive.org/details/DictionnaireFranais-laotien
https://archive.org/details/DictionnaireFranais-laotien_546
Rajmaan (talk) 15:25, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  French materials on Lao 

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

text: You've misunderstood the concept.  The labialisation alleged is represented in writing by ວ, not by a difference in stop consonants. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:57, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consonant Clusters 

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

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: https://www.ethnologue.com/18/language/lao/ does not count Isan language speakers here, so they have few million speakers. But our article counts Isan speakers - and hence we have the 20+ million for the number of speakers. We need to decide which of those two numbers is right for this article. I think we should only list Lao speaker estimate here, with a note that Isan language is closely related. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:25, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inflating native speakes with Isan speakers 

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

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