Language
The Lao language is a tonal, analytic, right-branching, pronoun pro-drop language of the Tai–Kadai language family, closely related to Thai and other languages of Tai peoples. Most of the vocabulary is of native Tai origin, although important contributions have come from Pali and Sanskrit as well as Mon–Khmer languages. The alphabet is an indic-based alphabet. Although the Lao have five major dialects, they are all mutually intelligible and Lao people believe they all speak variations of one language.
Read more about this topic: Lao People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“He had not failed to observe how harmoniously gigantic language and a microscopic topic go together.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)