|
Lao Language
Lao (Lao: , ), sometimes referred to as Laotian, is the official language of Laos and a significant language in the Isan region of northeastern Thailand, where it is usually referred to as the Isan language. Spoken by over 3 million people in Laos and 3.7 million in all countries, it serves as a vital link in the cultural and social fabric of these areas. It is written in the Lao script, an abugida that evolved from ancient Tai languages, Tai scripts. Lao is a Tone (linguistics), tonal language, where the pitch or tone of a word can alter its meaning, and is Analytic language, analytic, forming sentences through the combination of individual words without inflection. These features, common in Kra–Dai languages, Kra-Dai languages, also bear similarities to Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan languages like Chinese language, Chinese or Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic languages like Vietnamese language, Vietnamese. Lao's mutual intelligibility with Thai language, Thai a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laos
Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and southwest. The country has a population of approximately eight million. Its Capital city, capital and most populous city is Vientiane. The country is characterized by mountainous terrain, Buddhist temples, including the UNESCO's World Heritage Site of Luang Prabang, and French colonial architecture. The country traces its historic and cultural identity to Lan Xang, a kingdom which existed from the 13th to 18th centuries. Through its location, the kingdom was a hub for overland trade. In 1707, Lan Xang split into three kingdoms: Kingdom of Luang Phrabang, Luang Prabang, Kingdom of Vientiane, Vientiane, and Kingdom of Champasak, Champasak. In 1893, these kingdoms were unified under French protection as part of French Indochina. Laos was und ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tai Languages
The Tai, Zhuang–Tai, or Daic languages (Ahom language, Ahom: 𑜁𑜪𑜨 𑜄𑜩 or 𑜁𑜨𑜉𑜫 𑜄𑜩 ; ; or , ; , ) are a branch of the Kra–Dai languages, Kra–Dai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai language, Thai or Siamese, the national language of Thailand; Lao language, Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos; Myanmar's Shan language; and Zhuang languages, Zhuang, a major language in the Southwestern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, spoken by the Zhuang people (), the largest minority ethnic group in China, with a population of 15.55 million, living mainly in Guangxi, the rest scattered across Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Hunan provinces. Name Cognates with the name ''Tai'' (''Thai'', ''Dai'', etc.) are used by speakers of many Tai languages. The term ''Tai'' is now well-established as the generic name in English. In his book'' The Tai-Kadai Languages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Language
Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic languages, Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a Language family, family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin with 66%, or around 800&nb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sino-Tibetan Languages
Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Sinitic languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese (33 million) and the Tibetic languages (6 million). Four United Nations member states (China, Singapore, Myanmar, and Bhutan) have a Sino-Tibetan language as a main native language. Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented. Several low-level subgroups have been securely reconstructed, but reconstruction of a proto-language for the family as a whole is still at an early stage, so the higher-level structure of Sino-Tibetan re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kra–Dai Languages
The Kra–Dai languages ( , also known as Tai–Kadai and Daic ), are a language family in mainland Southeast Asia, southern China, and northeastern India. All languages in the family are tonal language, tonal, including Thai language, Thai and Lao language, Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos, respectively. Around 93 million people speak Kra–Dai languages; 60% of those speak Thai. ''Ethnologue'' lists 95 languages in the family, with 62 of these being in the Tai languages, Tai branch. Names The name "Kra–Dai" was proposed by Weera Ostapirat (2000), as Kra and Dai are the reconstructed Exonym and endonym, autonyms of the Kra languages, Kra and Tai languages, Tai branches, respectively. "Kra–Dai" has since been used by the majority of specialists working on Southeast Asian linguistics, including Peter K. Norquest, Norquest (2007), Pittayaporn (2009),Pittayaporn, Pittayawat. 2009. The phonology of Proto-Tai. Ph.D. Thesis, Cornell UniversityPeter Jenks and Pitt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analytic Language
An analytic language is a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers, using affixes very rarely. This is opposed to synthetic languages, which synthesize many concepts into a single word, using affixes regularly. Syntactic roles are assigned to words primarily by word order. For example, by changing the individual words in the Latin phrase "''fēl-is pisc-em cēpit''" ("the cat caught the fish") to "''fēl-em pisc-is cēpit''" ("the fish caught the cat"), the fish becomes the subject, while the cat becomes the object. This transformation is not possible in an analytic language without altering the word order. Typically, analytic languages have a low morpheme-per-word ratio, especially with respect to inflectional morphemes. No natural language, however, is purely analytic or purely synthetic. Background The term ''analytic'' is commonly used in a relative rather than an absolute s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch (music), pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflection, inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation (linguistics), intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with ''phoneme''. Tonal languages are common in East Asia, East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific islands, Pacific. Tonal languages are different from pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that is more prominent t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abugida
An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary, similar to a diacritical mark. This contrasts with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent, Abjad#Impure abjads, partial, or optional – in less formal contexts, all three types of the script may be termed "alphabets". The terms also contrast them with a syllabary, in which a single symbol denotes the combination of one consonant and one vowel. Related concepts were introduced independently in 1948 by James Germain Février (using the term ) and David Diringer (using the term ''semisyllabary''), then in 1959 by Fred Householder (introducing the term ''pseudo-alphabet''). The Ethiopian Semitic langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isan Language
Isan or Northeastern Thai (Endonym and exonym, autonym: /, ; , ) refers to the local development of the Lao language in Thailand, after the political split of the Lao-speaking world at the Mekong River at the conclusion of the Franco-Siamese crisis of 1893. The language is still referred to as Lao by native speakers.Keyes, Charles F. (1966). "Ethnic Identity and Loyalty of Villagers in Northeastern Thailand". ''Asian Survey''. As a Variety (linguistics), variety of the Lao language, Isan belongs to the Southwestern Tai languages, Southwestern branch of Tai languages in the Kra–Dai languages, Kra-Dai language family. It is most closely related to (other than Lao) "tribal" Tai languages such as Phu Thai language, Phu Thai and Tai Yo language, Tai Yo. Isan is officially classified as a dialect of the Thai language by the Thai government. Although (Central) Thai is a closely related Southwestern Tai language, it falls within a different subbranch. Central Thai and Isan are mutual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National University Of Laos
The National University of Laos (NUOL) is a national public university in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Founded in 1996, with departments brought in from other existing colleges, it is the only national university in the country. The NUOL accepts students from all over Laos, along with international students. The university is a partner of the Greater Mekong Sub-region Academic and Research Network (GMSARN) and ASEAN University Network (AUN). History National University of Laos "NUOL" was established by merging the higher education institutes which were under the supervision of several ministries into one university under the Ministry of Education in accordance to the Decree Number 50/PM of the Prime Minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Laos dated 9 June 1995. NUOL is a multi-campus structure, with five campuses including, Dongdok campus (Central), Sokpaluang campus (Faculty of Engineering), Nabong campus (Faculty of Agriculture), Donnokkhum campus (Faculty of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thai And Lao Braille
Thai Braille () and Lao Braille () are the braille alphabets of the Thai language and Lao language. Thai Braille was adapted by Genevieve Caulfield, who knew both English and Japanese Braille. Unlike the print Thai alphabet, which is an abugida, Thai and Lao Braille have full letters rather than diacritics for vowels. However, traces of the abugida remain: Only the consonants are based on the international English and French standard, while the vowels are reassigned and the five vowels transcribed ''a e i o u'' are taken from Japanese Braille. Braille charts Thai and Lao Braille run as follows:UNESCO (2013World Braille Usage 3rd edition. Consonants Consonants follow English and international conventions except where, as in ''b'' and ''f'', there is interference from the Japanese-derived vowels. Low-tone-class ''kh, ng, ch, s, th, f'' are derived from English Braille ''k, g, st, s, th, f'' by adding dot 6. ''B'' and low ''ph'' are derived from high ''ph'' through reflection; ''p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
