Talk:Lao people
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Ethnic groups, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to ethnic groups, nationalities, and other cultural identities. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project's talk page. |
| NB: Assessment ratings and other indicators given below are used by the Project in prioritizing and managing its workload. | |
| ??? | This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project's quality scale. |
| ??? | This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project's importance scale. |
 |
After rating the article, please provide a short summary on the article's ratings summary page to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses. |
|
WikiProject Ethnic groups open tasks:
|
|
I deleted the material about reasons for the Isan and Laos being poor. That Laos is resource poor is absurd. Laos is rich in natural resources including gold, copper, timber, hydropower. It goes on and on. It's agriculture potential is huge, both on the bolovens plateau for coffee and tea, and on the plain of jars, which in the past has been used or livestock grazing, and temperate fruits. Historians from the 17th century onwards always insisted that the West bank of the Mekong was very fertile and the East bank very infertile. It was only after Siam burned Vientiane that the population was forced to inhabit the unfertile isan region.
As for isan's poverty, agriculture alone is not a sufficient explanation for the region's poverty. Many areas of the world have no agricultural capability to speak of and manage to be rich. Simplistic explanations can always be arbitrarily judged and dismissed.
Shoudn't this page be redirected to Laos and the content moved there? Wikipedia is not a dictionary so as a rule we do not have articles about words. --mav
Done. -- prat
We need (somewhere) an article about the Lao ethnic group- something like Mon (ethnic group). Are there any objections to putting it here, or would it be less confusing to have it at Lao (ethnic group)? Markalexander100 08:41, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Done. Markalexander100 08:01, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Do we have a source for the 500,000 emigrant Lao figure? I found one source saying 400,000 from Laos in the US, but that was including Hmong and various others. Mark1 09:25, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This article claims that 15 million Lao live in Thailand. The CIA World Factbook reports that 11% of Thailand's population of ~65 million is 'other', which is ~7.5 million. I don't know what the correct number is, but it's something i noticed.
[edit] Insults on Lao people
I detect many offensive and what many Lao people would be considered insults. The article seems to be very biased and makes it look like the Laotians are inferior to the Thais, not to mention many things revolving around the Thais when this article is about the Lao people not Thai.
The article I would consider is non-reliable and full of useless many things that are not facts, one is about how Isan mor lum having a major influence in Laos, that is totally not true. Today there are many Isan people that are copying and using Laotian artist's songs to use in the Isan mor lum.
As a good gesture and a peaceful way of trying to make things better, please and I mean please revise the entire article before further action will be taken by me or other Laotians that view this page and find it very offensive to the Lao people and the country of Laos.
- The history of the Lao people since the 18th century is essentially a history of what the Thai people have done to them; I'd say that reflects worse on the Thais than on the Lao. On your specific mor lam point, you are completely wrong. The Laotian influence on lam in Thailand since the 1980s has been tiny, limited to a few cover version of Laotian songs- in that period lam in Thailand has been influenced far more by central Thai and western influences than by Laotian ones. Laotian lam, meanwhile, has been utterly transformed by the importation of western instrumentation and luk tung song styles via lam from Isan. (Laotian music, as you will know, is almost impossible to find in Thailand, while Laotian shops are full of lam from Isan). HenryFlower 11:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
-
- I agree, the anonymous editor is wrong on pretty much all points, however, I do think that, for an article supposedly about "Lao People" it does tend to focus (too much, IMHO) on history instead of the culture of the Lao people. I realize the historical relationship with the Thai is very important to understand the situation of the modern Lao, but that should be a small portion in relation to the rest of the article (which should actually describe Lao culture, demographics, distribution, language, origin, music, etc and not merely relate them to the Thai). Also, the "Language" section is wrong. It appears to be trying to minimize the differences between the group of Lao dialects and the group of Isan dialects. There is a reason the two are classified seperately (and it's not just a national border). In addition to the differences listed, there are also differences in phonology (especially tone rules and distribution/number of tones). In short, this article needs a lot of work, but it is not, in any way, biased or "insulting" to Lao people.--WilliamThweatt 15:22, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
