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Laos: Language Situation

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Laos: Language Situation 698 Lao initial /J/ and the absence of /r/ in spoken Lao. Gram- postprimary education existed, the Lao language suf- matically, too, there are close similarities to Thai: word fered a loss of prestige, even among many of its own order is subject-verb-object, nouns and verbs are not speakers. The decline of French influence and the rise inflected, the pronominal system is complex and capa- of nationalism in the aftermath of World War II ble of conveying subtle degrees of relative status and helped to improve the status of Lao. Although the intimacy. ‘Classifiers’ or ‘count words’ are used in noun communist government, which came to power in phrases involving numbers. 1975, has Lao-ized the education system, introduced Words of purely Lao origin are often monosyllabic. adult literacy programmes and attempted to teach Sanskrit and Pali borrowings are numerous, and Lao to the country’s ethnic minorities, literacy rates where they coexist with an indigenous Lao word remain low. they reflect a more formal or literary style. Other sources of loan words are Thai, Chinese, and See also: Laos: Language Situation; Southeast Asia as a Cambodian, although with Thai and Lao sharing Linguistic Area; Tai Languages; Thailand: Language Sit- many common basic words, the extent of Lao bor- uation. rowing can be overestimated; many relatively recent- ly coined Thai words have, however, been consciously absorbed into Lao. Despite the country’s former Bibliography colonial status, French loan words are relatively few. Chamberlain J R (1978). ‘Language standardisation in Laos.’ In Perez A Q, Santiago A O & Nguyen Sample of Lao with Translation Dang Liem (eds.) Papers from the conference on the standardisation of Asian languages, Manila, Philippines, khoˆ yda`yhu` uca´kka´p December 16–21, 1974. Pacific Linguistics, Series C – no. 1st pers. pron. to get to to know (s.one) with 47. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Austra- N la´aw ju¯uho´ o hian lian National University. 3rd pers. pron. location marker school Hoshino T & Marcus R (1981). Lao for beginners. Rut- ‘I got to know her at school’ land, Vermont. Charles E. Tuttle. Enfield N J (1999). ‘Lao as a national language.’ In Evans G (ed.) Laos: Culture and society. Chiang Mai. Thailand: Recent History Silkworm Books. 258–290. When the boundaries of present-day Laos were Morev L N, Moskalyov A A & Plam Y Y (1979). The Lao language. Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute drawn up in 1893 under the terms of a Franco- of Oriental Studies. Siamese treaty, the Lao-speaking population was Smalley W A (1994). Linguistic diversity and national divided in two, the majority paradoxically being in unity: language ecology in Thailand. Chicago: University northeast Thailand. The French brought in Vietnam- of Chicago Press. ese to carry out much of the administration of their Yates W G & Souksomboun S (1970). Lao basic course. colony, and with French the medium for what little Washington, D.C.: Foreign Service Institute. Laos: Language Situation N J Enfield, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, languages spoken in the country is not known, due Nijmegen, The Netherlands mainly to a lack of empirical data. Estimates vary ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. between around 70 and around 120 distinct lan- guages (Ethnologue 2004 lists 82). For a country of its size (smaller than the United Kingdom) and popu- The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) lation (less than 5 million), Laos features a very high is home to languages from at least four different degree of linguistic diversity in global terms. This ‘genetic’ groups: Tai (southwestern and northern diversity is greatest in the country’s hill and moun- branches), Mon-Khmer (Bahnaric, Katuic, Vietic, tain areas, which account for some 70% of the land Khmuic, and Palaungic branches), Hmong-Mien mass. Flatter stretches of land along rivers (especially (Hmongic and Mienic branches), and Tibeto-Burman along the Mekong River) are dominated by speakers (Lolo-Burmese branch). The precise number of of Lao. Laos: Language Situation 699 Historical Background military service. Official promotion of Lao as a national language is served in part by the develop- Mon-Khmer languages appear to have been spoken in ment of Lao language media and education, but this Laos longer than languages of other families. They is slow thanks to the country’s very weak infrastruc- show greater geographical spread and greater internal ture. Authorities widely encourage (and occasionally diversity. This is particularly apparent among lan- force) migration by minority peoples from upland guages of the Vietic, Katuic, and Bahnaric subgroups areas to more accessible lowlands, ostensibly to spoken throughout upland areas of the country’s ease the burden of social development in this poor south. Many of these languages are near extinction, nation. Internal migration is widespread, and in many with very few remaining speakers (e.g., The´marou, cases this accelerates the process of attrition and loss with only a couple of dozen speakers). Other lan- of minority languages, due to division of already guages, while small, are still being learned by children fragile speech communities and their resettlement (e.g., Tariang (Talieng) with about 4000 speakers), together with speakers of other languages, in closer although none show the vibrancy of the northern contact with the Lao-speaking world. The result is a Mon-Khmer language Kmhmu (Khmu), with some widespread and rapid shift to Lao. 300 000 speakers throughout northern Laos. Tai The two most prominent and vibrant minority lan- languages such as Lao have their origins in south- guages of Laos are Hmong and Kmhmu, both spoken west migrations of Tai speakers from southwestern by large populations, mainly in northern Laos. China, beginning some 2000 years ago (Enfield, Hmong speakers in particular show no signs of aban- 2003: 47–50). Like their modern descendents, these doning their language in favor of Lao. Hmong has a incoming Tai speakers were in search of flat riverside roman orthography that is taught unofficially and is land ideal for their trademark ‘ditch-dike’ system in widespread use in Hmong society (e.g., in advertis- of wet-rice cultivation. The success of Tai lang- ing, development, private correspondence, etc.). This uages and their speakers is attested to by their present contravenes the Lao government’s official stipulation dominance of the region, with Lao the official nation- that no minority language is to be written in any al language of Laos (Enfield, 1999), spoken as a orthography other than the Indic-based Lao script. first language by around half the population (more International languages with a significant presence than two million people). (There are also approxi- in Laos include Thai and Vietnamese. Laos’s longest mately 20 million residents of northeast Thailand borders are with Thailand to the west and Vietnam to whose native dialects are closely related to Lao.) the east. Lowland communities along the Mekong Hmong-Mien speakers are the newest arrivals in River are in intensive contact with Thai via electronic Laos, descended from migrants coming southwards media, as well as through seasonal migration of from China within the last 200 years (Culas and Lao workers to Thailand. Thai and Lao are essential- Michaud, 2004). ly dialects, making Thai especially accessible to Lao speakers. Vietnamese is less widely spoken as a sec- Language Contact, Sociolinguistics, ond language (despite large urban communities of Multilingualism expatriate Vietnamese in the lowlands), but is used for economic purposes by many minority peoples Laos’s high degree of linguistic diversity results in living along the Vietnamese border. Through the co- intensive language contact in most parts of the coun- lonial period of 1893 to 1954 (Evans, 2002), French try. Upland peoples maintain structured social rela- was widely used in national education and admin- tions across ethnicities and language backgrounds, istration. The use of French as an international lan- and are normally multilingual (Bradley, 2003). By guage has since steadily diminished in favor of contrast, lowland-dwelling people of Lao ethnicity English. tend to be monolingual. Some minority languages serve as contact languages within restricted upland Linguistic Research and Reference areas. For example, Ngkriang (Ngeq) is used in inter- Materials action among several Katuic ethnic groups in isolated Kalum district, Sekong province. Comparatively little scientific research has been con- Lao is the official language of administration, ducted on the languages of Laos. Descriptive studies education, and major economic activity, and hence of Lao include traditional European-style grammars all minority communities have regular contact with (e.g., Hospitalier, 1937; Royal Lao Government, Lao. Minority men are often more skilled than 1972; Reinhorn, 1980), dictionaries (Kerr, 1972; women and children in speaking Lao due to greater Reinhorn, 1970; Rehbein and Sayaseng, 2000), peda- contact with the language, for example, during gogical materials (e.g., Yates and Sayasithsena, 1970; 700 Laos: Language Situation Hoshino and Marcus, 1981), and work of a more Hoshino T & Marcus R (1981). Lao for beginners: an technical linguistic nature (e.g., Roffe, 1946; Morev introduction to the spoken and written language of et al., 1972; Crisfield, 1978; Wayland, 1996; Osata- Laos. Rutland/Tokyo: Tuttle. nanda, 1997; Enfield, 2003, 2005). Available re- Hospitalier J J (1937). Grammaire laotienne. Paris: Imprim- search on minority languages includes dictionaries erie National. Jacq P (in press). A description of Jru’(Loven) (2 vols). (e.g., Lindell et al., 1994; Preisig et al., 1994 Mahidol University [Mon-Khmer Studies Special Publi- [Kmhmu]; Ferlus, 1999 [Nhaheun]), text collections cation]. (e.g., Costello and IRLCS, 1993 [Katu]), grammatical Kerr A D (1972). Lao–English Dictionary. Washington, descriptions (e.g., Jacq, in press [Jruq]; Enfield, 2004 DC: Catholic University of America Press. [Kri]), comparative word lists (e.g., Kingsada and Kingsada T & Shintani T (eds.) (1999).
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