Lao language

Learning Lao is difficult for me. Firstly I have never learned a second language, and secondly, Lao is a tonal language and I am tone deaf! At first I could not find any Lao language resources so I thought that learning Thai would give me a step into Lao. Thai and Lao are members of the Tai group of languages and are very similar. So I bought a lot of tapes to help learn Thai, though I barely used them. But the picture above illustrates a problem. The Thai script has been changed to a "modern" form, so written Thai (top on the sign on the immigration station booth) is rather different from Lao script (on the bottom, below the English.) When this is combined with the different words for a number of things, learning Thai seemed to be a complicating approach rather than a help. I have recently given my Thai language learning resources to a young colleague, who I hope will use them better than I did! Meantime I have found a number of resources for learning Lao.

The first is "Lao for Beginners" by Buasawan Simmala and Benjawan Poomsan Becker which is a book which can be bought by itself, or with tapes or CDs. The second is "The Shapes and Sounds of the Lao Language" by David Dale which come with a CD. It is specifically designed to address "approaches that will help the native English speaker how to read, write and pronounce the Lao language" and helps particularly with the tones. I have made vague attempts to learn other languages but could not really progress learning words and phrases off by heart so I felt that if I could read and write the language I would have a better chance of learning to speak it. So I came on a learning programme from the Foreign Service Institute in the US, which though quite old (and old fashioned, helped me learn to read and write the language. It came as a CD with multiple MP3 files and a PDF format book. I found it very useful. But it will be a very long time before I can communicate in a meaningful way in Lao. Fortunately there are plenty of Lao people in my profession who can speak with me in simple English!