The government plans to establish a Council of Lao Linguistics to facilitate discussions and approve the official use of a new edition of the national Lao dictionary, according to a linguistics expert.

“The Institute for Linguistic Research doesn't have the power to decide on the official use of Lao words, which is why we need an officially approved council to help speed up the process,” said the institute's Director General, Dr Thongphet Kingsada, in an interview with Vientiane Times yesterday.

Dr Thongphet, who has a Ph.D in linguistics, said the council, which would be approved by the Prime Minister, would be a gathering place for linguistic experts from many different organisations, including the Ministry of Education, schools and the National University of Laos.

He said the council would have the role of discussing and approving updates to the Lao dictionary, which have been developed by the institute. He explained that without a council of linguistics, it was impossible to ensure the correct inclusion of new words into the official language.

Lao people write and pronounce words differently, which creates difficulties for children and for foreign students studying the Lao language. Many say they get confused when they talk to people from different part of the country, according to Dr Thongphet.

Dr Thongphet said his institute, which was moved from the Ministry of Information and Culture to the Institute of Social Science in 2005, mainly worked on developing new editions of the Lao dictionary.

“This will be our first work since moving from the Ministry of Information and Culture, and we have already proposed that the government approve a budget for dictionary development for the next financial year,” he said.

There are currently only two editions of the Lao dictionary; the first published in 1995, and the second in 2005. Neither is approved by linguistic experts, because there has been no forum for discussion on the matter, according to Dr Thongphet.

He said that the third edition of the Lao dictionary would be the most comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date, because there would be a chamber of experts to approve it.

Dr Thongphet said Lao people were strongly influenced by the foreign media, and inevitably integrated foreign words into their daily speech. This meant that the dictionary's devel opment process was potentially endless, because Lao people create new words all the time through their daily lives, from television, newspapers, foreign films and music.

This was why there was a need for all people to have an official language guide on how to write and pronounce new words correctly, he said.

He said the new edition of the dictionary would contain several new words from the English language, particularly in relation to technological jargon, such as ‘software', ‘hardware' and ‘hard drive', with exact definitions in Lao.

Dr Thongphet said that in his own research, he had found that nearly 10 percent of the Lao population used the Lao language in a completely different way to what was generally considered ‘correct'.

He said the updates, usually undertaken every five years, would take at least three more years to complete.

By Ekaphone Phouthonesy
vientianetimes