Where Lao is spoken
Lao is spoken in 4 countries: Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Laos | 69% | 5,487,956 |
| Cambodia | Not given | Not given |
| Thailand | Not given | Not given |
| Vietnam | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
On the map, Lao is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Lao.
How many people speak Lao?
Wikidata gives about 5.2 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2006). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Lao sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Lao as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Tai-Kadai
- Kam-Tai
- Daic-Beic
- Daic
- Central-Southwestern Tai
- Wenma-Southwestern Tai
- Sapa-Southwestern Tai
- Southwestern Tai
- Southwestern Thai PH
- Lao-Thai
- Lao
Related languages
Other languages in the Lao-Thai group:
- Thai (20.7 million speakers)
- Southern Thai (4.5 million speakers)
More about Lao
Codes: ISO 639-3 lao, Glottolog laoo1244. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about Lao
Where is Lao spoken?
Lao is spoken in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Unicode CLDR puts it at 69% of the population of Laos, which is about 5,487,956 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Lao?
Wikidata gives about 5.2 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2006). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Lao in?
Glottolog places Lao in the Tai-Kadai family, in the branch Kam-Tai, Daic-Beic, Daic, Central-Southwestern Tai, Wenma-Southwestern Tai, Sapa-Southwestern Tai, Southwestern Tai, Southwestern Thai PH and Lao-Thai.