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Laothian, also referred to as Laotian or Lao is a tonal language from the Kradai family of languages. It serves as the official language of Laos. It is also used in the northeastern areas of Thailand, where it is known as the Isan language. Apart from being the main language of the Lao people, Laothian is popularly used as a second language by the substantial ethnic population in Laos and Isan.

Professional Laothian translation services are available at Tomedes in a large number of language pairs including Laothian to English and English to Laothian translation. All translations are done by qualified and experienced professional translation experts.

• Lao is written using an abugida script. Officially no particular dialect has been recognized as being the standard. However the de facto standard is the Vientiane dialect.

• Although the Laothian language has many dialects, most of them are mutually intelligible. Similarly, the Isan language spoken in Thailand also has a number of sub-dialects which are mutually intelligible. Apart from these there are many other Laothian dialects which are spoken by small tribes of speakers who are descendants of the Laos people who were forced to migrate to Central Thailand.

• The various Laothian dialects are -

• Vientiane Lao

• Central Lao (Khammouan)

• Northern Lao (Luang Prabang)

• North-Eastern Lao (Xieng Khouang)

• Southern Lao (Champasak)

• Isan Lao (Isan)

• Isan Lao is sometimes regarded as a separate language due to political reasons, but it is spoken by the ethnic Lao people.

• Laothian and Thai language share a lot of similarities including most of their fundamental vocabulary. However mutual intelligibility is limited due to the differences existing between many basic words.

• The Laothian vocabulary mostly contains native Lao words. But it has also been influenced by some other languages like Pali after the introduction of Buddhism, Khmer because of the closeness and strong culture of the Khmer Empire which ruled certain parts of Laos in the past and Sanskrit which was bought to Laos by Indian traders.

• Laothian was originally written using the Thua Tham script which was based on the Mon scripts. It is still used but only in temples of Lao and Isan. The present Lao script uses an alphabet derived from the Khmer alphabet. In formal writing Laothian uses a considerable portion of foreign loanwords especially terms derived from Pali, Sanskrit and Khmer. The Isan people use the Thai alphabet for writing Laothian.

• Numerals are written are preferably written as symbols although Arabic numerals are popular, Lao numerals based on the Brahmi script are also used. 

• Although no spaces are inserted between words in written Laothian, they are used to denote ends of sentences or clauses.

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