How to text and chat with Lao people (if you can speak Lao)
Lao people don’t use Lao letters for chatting.
It might seem a bit lunatic at first, but it is true in the context of messaging. The majority of young people in Laos uses another specific language to communicate. And here’s a quick guide to learn it.
A bit of History
When the mobile phenomenon has reached Lao land around 10–15 years ago, the effect was spontaneous. People communicate more. Back then, when Internet in Laos was still in its infancy, SMS was the only option and the cheapest way to text or stayed in touch with friends. Unfortunately, like for many other countries, phones didn’t support many languages. Yet, the number of mobile phone sales was growing rapidly. Having a phone became a social trend, if not a must. But texting in Lao was still an issue and impracticable, until young Lao people started to use a-not-so new language called “karaoke Lao”, a romanization system for Lao, similar to “karaoke Thai” and “Hanyu Pinyin” for Chinese, which use Latin alphabets to compose native words, to communicate with each others.
Today’s smartphones are fully compatible with Lao keyboard and fonts. However, “karaoke Lao” has spread so fast and been widely adopted by young Lao people that nowadays it still remains the standard language used for online conversations.
How to begin?
Writing in “karaoke Lao” is quite easy to get started as words are mostly written based on how they are pronounced in English (and French). From time to time you might encounter sentences that are illegible or indecipherable to you, it is absolutely normal. I assure you it still happens to me. The trick is to “guess” or have a context of your conversation in mind and pronounce slowly the sentences in English. Because there is no convention to follow, karaoke writing style differs from one person to another. The following examples are written in an opinionated style.
Before we go further, I have to admit that a basic level of understanding and speaking in Lao is required to begin. If you’re a foreigner and you have been in Laos for a long time, this following simple guide is dedicated to you.
Let’s get started with some sentences.
“Ern lao ma kin krao sao mae” meaning “Tell him/her to come to eat breakfast” in English. Here the word “ern” sounds the same as “earn” in English. The letter “a” is cutoff for simplicity. “mae” is read phonetically as “meh” in which “ae” (also written “ea”) sounds like the letter “a” in “cat”, “care” or “fat”.
“Pai sai dee mue ni ?” meaning “Where should we go today ?” could also be written like this “Pai sai d meu ni ?”. The words “mue” and “meu” are the same and sounds like the “u” in French words such as “chute”, “flûte”, “disputer”…
“Jao hen peum c leuang bor ?” (“Did you see a yellow book ?”) is a shortened version. We could read another way as “Chao hen peum see leuang bor ?”. The letter “j” is often used in lieu of “ch”. For the word “leuang”, it could be decomposed like this : “l” + “eu” + “ang”. The former is pronounced “ung” like “lungs” and not as “ang” like in “language” which is expressed “aeng” in karaoke. Also, remember “ue” and “eu” are the same, so “leuang” is also equivalent to “lueang”.
Last one but not least. “Phusao u thang lung jao narhuk lai” (“The girl behind you is very cute”) or expressively “Phu sao yu thung lung chao nahak lai”. Notice “u” is employed directly as it sounds in English, instead of typing “yu”. Idem for “c” and “d” that we saw earlier. But in the word “narhuk”, it becomes more like “truck”, “luck”, “Chuck”… Next, “ai” in the word “lai” is pronounced normally like the “i” in “fire”, “nine”, “fight”.
Are you still with me? Quite easy, isn’t it? If you have any question just let me know in the comments section. Now, for a better understanding, let’s translate English into “karaoke Lao”. I know this is going to look weird.
* I can feel you laughing.*
Warning. This is my own writing style, I’ll try to do my best so you can guess the pronunciation in your head too.
“Why the door is still open ?” = “Wai der dor is stiu ophern ?”
“Pick an apple and eat it” = “Phik un aebpo aen it it”
“Let’s watch a movie tonight” = “Lets wat er muvi thunai”
“I have two sisters and one brother” = “Ai haeb thu sister aen wan boder”
“This is so good, who made this ?” = “Dis is so kood, hu med dis ?”
“Don’t cross the road” = “Don khors der lod”
“Goodbye, see you next time” = “Koodbai, c u nek thaim”
Of course, it has never occurred to me to write this in real life, this is just for demonstration purpose. Pardon me, I cannot cover all the words in this article, it will take me an eternity to do so, but I hope you got the basics to text with your close ones in “karaoke Lao” now and also enjoyed this quick tutorial.
