Lao is natively spoken by about 21 million people, primarily in Laos, where it is the official language, and among Lao communities in Thailand and the United States. It is integral to Lao cultural identity, known for its Buddhist heritage, traditional music, and festivals such as Lao New Year. Written in the Lao script, Lao grammar features a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order and a system of particles and affixes to indicate grammatical relationships.
Stats
Language Family: Kra-Dai
Writing System: Lao
Writing System Type: Abugida
Writing Direction: L to R
Tones / Pitch Accent: 6
Morphology: Analytic
Cases: 0
Grammatical Gender / Noun Class: 0
Number of Verb Tenses: 4
Word Order: SVO
Number of Vowels (Monophthongs): 18
Number of Consonants: 28
Areas Where Spoken
Laos (official) (57.0%) (4.29 mil)
Thailand (23.4%) (16.8 mil)
Resources
Websites
LiveLingua Free Lao Lessons: https://www.livelingua.com/project/fsi/lao
Lao Lessons: https://laolessons.com/
Videos
Lao101 Lao Lessons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGqH1aks6Xc&list=PLNuOJZ_8UWyBlJcBcO87NTgywE3qjksjs
NICKAR PNP Lao Lessons (alphabet is like in ep 6 i think) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKzKwmsElOE&list=PLr26meWG_X5rbRNZ1iH52LwFuObOgFQX7