language...

So I've been trying to learn a little Lao language. What a challenge...

The writing system is fairly complex and this is complicated by several facts: there is no official system of transliteration into English; as a former French colony many of the words are based on French; and there are regional dialects that vary... To complicate everything, vowels are not always indicated by a single symbol but by multiple symbols that may come before, after, above and below the consonant symbol. So other than basic words like Beerlao and toilet I haven't bothered much with reading...

Learning to speak Lao is much simpler than English from a grammatical sense. There are no verb tenses like in English (go, went, goes) but there are five tones: mid, low, falling, high, and rising. Five completely different words can come from the identical English spelling.

But, as always, the language gives clues to the culture. Lao has many words based off the word for the heart, jai. To understand is to enter the heart, khao jai. To be glad is to feel good at heart, di jai. To be angry is to feel bad at the heart, jai hai. To be absent-minded is to have a floating heart, jai loy. To be impatient is to have a hot heart, jai hon. There are many, many more... A culture with so many shades of meaning based on the heart is a deeply sensitive culture.