Lao for Beginners: An Introduction to the Spoken and Written Language of Laos

by Tatsuo Hoshino, Tatsuo Hoshimo, Russell Marcus

This is an effective and concise self-study Lao language book. Lao for Beginners is for the person who is beginning to learn Lao. It is an incredibly useful introduction to spoken Lao for tourists, businesspeople or students. Lao for Beginners is primarily a workbook full of exercises to help beginners practice and acquire the ability to communicate with Lao people in spoken Lao. It is not a phrase book to scratch the surface of the Lao language. The book has been tested in classrooms and by individuals who have used it successfully to learn Lao. This beginning Lao text was designed for people who want to learn how to speak Lao fast. The book mainly teaches speaking Lao although there is a section which teaches reading Lao. The vocabulary in the whole text is limited to the 1,000 most frequently used words in everyday speech based on one of the author's own research in Vietnamese. The Lao words are listed in a special glossary for beginners which is arranged in English alphabetical order. To make studying easier, all exercises are written in phonetic Lao as well as authentic Lao script. As an additional aid, a review of the major features of Lao grammar is condensed into only 16 pages (including very useful tables) and is located in one place so that it can be read quickly and used as a reference frequently. Lao for Beginners is organized in five parts: Part 1: How to speak Lao. Part 2: Grammar Review. Part 3: How to Read Lao. Part 4: Lao-English Glossary for Beginners.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804816298
• ISBN13: 9780804816298
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Easy to understand

This book is easy to use. It has all of the basics phrases and works that you could use in the country. Well worth the price.

A great start

I've been using this book on and off for 20 years and have found it very useful indeed. I always go back to it to brush up. It's simple (if a little crude in terms of its presentation) but it's systematic, breaks down the sentence structure into meaningful blocks of text and uses both lao script, phonetics (including numbers for the correct tone), as well as the English translation. There are a few mistakes here and there but not serious. It should be remembered that Lao is not spoken by a whole lot of people (between 5-15 million?) and there aren't many books that cover this language. This is the best introductory book that I've seen.

Learn to speak Lao

The books offers an easy to understand method of learning to speak Lao. After a quick study of the book I was able to communicate with a native Lao speaker and be understood. However the book doesn't really focus on the language a modern person might want if traveling in Laos.

It helped me...

This is not a do-it-yourself book. The title even says it is an "introduction" to the language. I found it very helpful, and personally easy to use. Each section is purposeful, with an intro discussing how intonations and consonants can change the word, and how it is based on the closest English pronunciation as best as it could. (It has better phonetics than other Beginning Lao books out there, and there are not many options.) The sections are divided into basic conversational language, grammatical use, and reading/writing exercises. This book is not meant to be used alone, you definitely need a Lao/English Dictionary and probably someone Lao to fine-tune the pronunciation. My Lao friends were able to understand me after the first two lessons! As in many languages, there are sometimes differences in "casual" speech and proper speech, but they do say that you would use the examples given in the book for proper speech. This is more of a workbook a teacher would assign students given to support a Lao lesson.

Easy to follow and understand.

To this beginner lao student, I thought it was easy to understand. I was able to work on this independantly, and then refer to my Lao friends to learn more accurately the pronunciations.