Customer Reviews

Lao for Beginners

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been in search of quality Lao language study materials since my first trip to Laos seven years ago. Klaus Werner's book was, until recently, the best reference available. Ms. Simmala and Ms. Becker have now put together a comprehensive package for getting started with this beautiful language.

The book and audio program (CDs and tapes available) provide an introduction to the Lao written language (with traceable characters), contemporary essential vocabulary, practice sentences, conversations for listening comprehension and practice, and essential grammar points. An appendix also provides "useful phrases" for travel (also included in the audio program). Lao friends have verified that the recorded audio is authentic and professional.

I recommend listening to, and repeating aloud, the vocabulary recordings for each chapter as often as necessary. Also practice the useful phrases audio portion. You don't need the book in front of you to do this --perfect for time in the car or walking. Try to imagine yourself in a relevant situation as you speak the word or phrase.

At the same time, start to learn and practice the Lao characters. Then, as you learn new vocabulary, try to read & write them using the Lao alphabet. Transliteration of characters (use of roman alphabet) is difficult in Mon-Tai-Khmer languages and does not altogether capture the essential sounds and subtleties. It is a more enriching experience to tackle Lao writing from the start.

There are a few supplementary materials available. EuroTalk is supposed to produce a basic "Talk Now! Lao" software sometime in 2004. Paiboon Publishing (which has produced excellent Thai language materials) has a handy Lao-English dictionary. Lonely Planet's phrasebook is great to keep in your pocket for use anywhere/anytime you have a few minutes.

"Sook dii!" Good luck with your studies! --C4PO

Lao is an overlooked language. I have been studying Thai and Lao on my own for a few years. This book shares many strengths with other Paiboon language books. It is very practical and offers clear step by step introduction to Lao. This is its strength, but their are problems as well. For some reason the high tone mark 'mai dtii' is not printed anywhere in my book. On page 35 everything is in place except the symbol for 'mai dtii'. I had to browse NIU's website to see what the symbol looked like. In addition in many instances the transliterated script has contradictory pronounciations. The authors may have done this intentionaly to show the diverse range of dialects prevelant in Laos, however for a beggining text I find it confusing. On page 69 (sentence 3a) luu (or) is transliterated as having a mid tone. Then on 72 (sentence 3) the same word is transliterated as having a rising tone. Because the word occurs in the same section the same speaker is used on the tape so I think it is an error and not a change in dialect. This happened with other words throughout the book. Regardless this book is probably the best introduction to the Lao language readily available. When will the ministry of education start an online store selling educational materials???? I can't imagine that the L.D.P.R. leaders would turn down the extra revenue.

This is the most comprehensive course on the Lao language that I have seen, in fact it is the only english language book on Lao language (other than dictionaries or phrasebooks) that I have ever seen.
On the other hand, the book suffers from what appears to be very little in the way of proofreading. English transliterations are inconsistant throughout the book, some of the test answers are wrong, and it is completely missing one Lao tone mark.
This being said, it is the best books on this topic you will find, so buy it anyway.

There are indeed two books not very creatively titled Lao for Beginners. This one, by Benjawan Poomsan Becker and Busawan Simmala, devotes half its space to teaching the student how to read and write the Lao alphabet and to recognize the tone of a syllable. It does this job very thoroughly and fairly well, although there are quirks and even the occasional typo even here. Unfortunately the rest of the book seems to have been inspired by an early elementary school idea of language teaching. Seriously--when I was in first-grade a sixth-grade girl used to come into our room to "teach" us Spanish, and of all the many forms of language instruction I've witnessed since then, both as teacher and student, this book reminded me of nothing so much as that. First we learn the numbers--all of them, up to billions, and including fractions and decimal points--in lesson one. Then we learn how to tell the time, in exhaustive detail; then the days of the week and the months of they year. After this we actually get a few useful verbs, but then the book degenerates into endless catalogues of nouns. We get the parts of the body: dozens of them, including not only kidney and liver and intestine but dimple and pimple and mole and paunch. We get lots of colours and vehicles and occupations and fruits and vegetables and articles of clothing (down to brooch). Every time there are three or four Lao words for the same thing, all of them are given together. There is no concept of giving the most useful or high frequency words, and no attention to the function words that actually help one communicate. After five pages of vocabulary words, a typical lesson then gives five pages of sentences. Obviously one learns something from these sentences, but there is no explanation of syntax or usage. Words appear which were not included in the vocabulary, or whose function in the given sentence is not explained. At the very end of the book there is a long list of classifiers, but by then it is too late to get much practice of them! I finished this book able to read and write, and having a basic vocabulary, but that is it.

It is too early to pass judgment on this book and audio disc, I am only on the first of three discs. My first complaint is that the audio CD goes a bit quickly and is hard to follow in the book, you have to stop and back up the audio to repeat passages and the book has no indication of a time-line to correspond to the time-line on the CD. So when you back up the CD you have to guess how far to run it back to repeat a given passage. I make notes in the book for each section of the lesson as to chapter number and how many minutes/seconds on the CD that corresponds. Lao is a tonal language with five or seven different tones, depending on the local Lao regional accent. These tones are quite difficult for an English speaker to discern. It does not help that the voice of the woman on the CD is quite squeeky and moves from one word or phrase to the next with hardly a pause.

I will be able to judge this book a lot better in about four months when I will be spending two weeks living in a remote village where there will be few, if any English speakers. Then it will be sink or swim for me.

You can write in a foreign and unusual language and also learn the basic grammar in laotian language.

This book was ordered on April 1st and as of today (4/20) I still have no notice that it has shipped. It would be nice if this group could at least communicate with their buyers if they can't ship an item.