| Lao is a tonal
language with six tones in the Vientiane
dialect: low, mid, high, rising, high falling,
and low falling. Meanings are dependent on the
tone, so try not to inflect your sentences; in
particular, questions should be pronounced as
flat statements, without the rising intonation
("...yes?") typical to English questions.
The script used to
write Lao has the same Brahmic base as Thai and
Khmer, and Thai readers will be able to figure
out most of it. The Lao written language is
essentially alphabetic and, thanks to extensive
post-revolutionary meddling, now considerably
more phonetic than Thai or Khmer. Still, there
are 30 consonants, 15 vowel symbols plus 4 tone
marks to learn, and the Lao also share the Thai
aversion to spaces between words. Lao remains a
bit of challenge to pick up, even though it is
usually considered easier to learn than Thai.
Lao romanization is
bedeviled by the incompatibility between French
and English pronunciation. Most older
transliterations are French-based, while newer
ones are English-based. The French-style
"Vientiane", for example, is more accurately
spelled "Wiang Chan" in English. Wikitravel uses
a modern English-based orthography modeled on
the Thai system, but the French transliterations
have been noted below when appropriate.
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