Lao Traditional Dance

by the Famous Dancing Team of Lao Vision School

Logo of Lao Vision School

They will soar on wings like eagles !!!

Khmer(Cambodia) Alphabet

Khmer alphabet   

Origin

The Khmer alphabet is descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India by way of the Pallava script, which was used in southern India and South East Asia during the 5th and 6th Centuries AD. The oldest dated inscription in Khmer, found at Angkor Borei in Takev Province south of Phnom Penh, dates from 611 AD.

The Khmer alphabet closely resembles the Thai and Lao alphabets, which were developed from it.

Notable features

• This is syllabic alphabet in which each consonant has two forms, one with an inherent /a/ (first series) and one with an inherent /o/ (second series)
• Vowels are indicated using either separate letters or diacritics, which written above, below, in front of, after or around consonants. The pronunciation of the vowels depends on whether a consonant they are attached to is of the first or second series.
• All consonants have a subscript form which is used to write the second consonant of a cluster.
• In a Khmer text there are no spaces between words, instead spaces indicate the end of a clause or sentence.
• Inspite of efforts to standardise written Khmer, many words have more than one accepted spelling.

Used to write:

Khmer (Cambodian), a member of the Mon-Khmer group of Austro-Asiatic languages, spoken by about 8 million people in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, China, France and the USA. Khmer shares many features and much vocabulary with Thai as a result of centuries of two-way borrowing. There are also borrowings from Sanskrit, Pali, French and Chinese in Khmer.

Khmer alphabet

Consonants

Subscript consonants

Independent vowels

Numerals

Lao Alphabet

Lao alphabet 

Origin

After the unification of the Lao principalities (meuang) in the 14th century, the Lan Xang monarchs commissioned their scholars to create a new script to write the Lao language. The scholars probably modelled the alphabet on the the Old Khmer script, which was itself based on Mon scripts.

Notable features

• Syllables are based around consonants. Vowels are indicated with diacritics which can appear above, below or around the consonant letters. When they occur on their own or at the beginning of a word, vowels are attached to the glottal stop symbol (the final letter in the third row of consonants).
• Lao is a tonal language with 6 tones. The tone of a syllable is determined by a combination of the class of consonant, the type of syllable (open or closed), the tone marker and the length of the vowel. 
• For some consonants there are multiple letters. Originally they represented separate sounds, but over the years the distinction between those sounds was lost and the letters were used instead to indicate tones. Various offical reforms of the Lao script have reduced the number of duplicate consonants.
• There are no spaces between words, instead spaces in a Lao text indicate the end of a clause or sentence.
• Written Lao is based on the dialect of the Lao capital, Vientiene.
• There is no official Latin transliteration system for Lao. In Laos, French-based systems are used and there is considerable variation in spelling, particularly of vowels. In Thailand, the Royal Thai General Transcription is used.

Used to write

Lao, a Tai-Kadai language spoken by approximately 15 million people in Laos and Thailand. It is closely related to Thai and speakers of Lao are able to understand spoken Thai without too many difficulties. Thai speakers find it more difficult to understand Lao due to lack of exposure to the language.

The language family is also known as Kradai, Kra-Dai, Daic or Kadai.

Lao alphabet

Consonants

Consonants are divided into three classes which help to determine the tone of a syllable (indicated by the numbers below). The sounds represented by some consonants change when they are used at the end of a syllable (indicated by the letters on the right of the slash below). The consonants can all be used at the beginning of a syllable but only some can be used at the end of a syllable.

 The consonants in the final row are compounds and conjuncts used as alternatives to the basic consonants.

Vowel diacritics (with k)

Numerals

Tone indication

	Open syllables			Closed syllables *
	unmarked			short vowel	long vowel
Class 1	low	mid	high falling	high	low falling
Class 2	low rising	mid	low falling	high	low falling
Class 3	high	mid	high falling	mid	high falling

* Closed syllables are those ending with p, t or k

Signboard of Lao Vision School

Publishing in Cambodia

“How can we meet more people who thirst in the truth?” This is why we started to publish a free monthly magazine. The Living Water from the Heaven is its name. It’s 8 paged booklet now. We hope it with better contents can let the living water flow to many more people.  

A Native Speaker's Tutoring

Say “A”[ei] … “A”[a:]

Classroom Work in Lao Vision School

Christmas Day Event in Lao Vision School

Activities of Lao Vision School

At Teacher’s Day in 2008

Activities of Lao Vision School

At Teacher’s Day in 2008

Activities of Lao Vision School

At Teacher’s Day in 2008

Miss Lao Vision School

Traditional Dance of Laos

At The 2^nd Anniversary of Lao Vision School

Lao Vision School

Started with ‘Saturday Open English Class’, we officially opened the school with a license from the government in 2008.

Many young and younger people of Laos are interested in learning English. Opening to the wide world, they started to feel the necessity of English. But, it’s not mandatory in public schools yet.

Actually, teachers are not good enough at English to teach. If they want to go to afterschool, school fee is quite burden.

To meet children and adults in this situation, we opened the school.

Now, about 200 students study English from many activities as well classroom work.

And, out of the school, we support 800 students in local primary schools. We offer English class in their school as we send English teachers who majored in English language. And every Saturday, we bring them(about 60 students from 2 schools) to our school, we give more active lesson with lunch.

Nearby the school, there are several sewing factories. Many young people working there want to learn English, too. Yet, they don’t have enough money, time.

For them, we opened another class on Sunday. We’re happy to see their happy faces to pronounce ABC.(Most of them didn’t know alphabet, some of them even their own letter.)

We have many out-of-classroom works. Christmas is a good day to teach them English speakers’ culture. Every year, we have Christmas event. Students are very active to participate. They amaze their parents with fluent English speaking in the event.

And, school-opening-anniversary is another big event. We had ‘Miss Lao Vision school contest’ in 2010.

In this way, we try to advance education in Laos. Now, we teach English only as a kind of afterschool. The license we got from the government is for a private school to teach every subject. We hope and prepare to do it in near future.

Thank you! - a Cambodian shy boy

A Special Class with White Grandpa

A Christmas Party in the Cambodia Sarah Vision school

Happy Faces to prepare happy meal together

An ordinary class of the Cambodia Sarah Vision school

Children in the Cambodia Sarah Vision school

Bread for Cambodian Children

Cambodia Sarah Vision School

Since we opened the school in 2009, we offer free English class. As it’s explained below, many younger Cambodians have favoured learning English. Learning English, they can get more chance to get job in major cities, tourist centers, etc. But, it’s not for everybody. Many young Cambodians come to Phnom-Penh(the capital) for better future of them and their family. They work hard day and night. But, they don’t have enough money to prepare their future. For their vision, the Cambodia Sarah Vision school tries to be a little help. Recently, we opened a new class to teach Cambodia letter. For many are still illiterate.(About 63% of Adult)

Poverty in Cambodia 2

Poverty in Cambodia 1

Demographics of Cambodia

Language

Ninety percent of Cambodia's population is of Khmer origin and speak the Khmer language, the country's official language.

In recent decades, many younger Cambodians and those in the business-class have favoured learning English. In the major cities and tourist centers, English is widely spoken and taught at a large number of schools because of the overwhelming number of tourists from English-speaking countries. Even in the most rural outposts, most young people speak at least some English, as it is often taught by monks at the local pagodas where many children are educated.

Religion

Theravada Buddhism is the official religion of Cambodia, which is practiced by about 95 percent of the population. Buddhism in Cambodia was suppressed by the Khmer Rouge during the late 1970s but has since experienced a revival. Islam is the second highest practiced religion in Cambodia with almost two percent of the population, mostly the Cham people, practicing Islam. Along with Buddhism, Islam was also suppressed during the Khmer Rouge years and has also experienced a revival . Christianity and other unspecified religions are also practiced by almost two percent of the population.

Education

In 2004 it was estimated that 73.6% of the population was literate (84.7% of males and 64.1% of females).  The education system in Cambodia continues to face many challenges, but during the past years there have been significant improvements, especially in terms of primary net enrollment gains, the introduction of program based-budgeting, and the development of a policy framework which helps disadvantaged children to gain access to education.

Traditionally, education in Cambodia was offered by the wats (Buddhist temples), thus providing education exclusively for the male population During the Khmer Rouge regime, education suffered significant drawbacks.

Health

The quality of health in Cambodia is rising. As of 2010, the life expectancy is 60 years for males and 65 years for females, a major improvement since 1999 when the average life expectancy was 49.8 and 46.8 respectively. The Royal Cambodian Government plans to increase the quality of healthcare in the country by raising awareness of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Cambodia's infant mortality rate has decreased from 115 per 1,000 live births in 1993 to 54 in 2009. In the same period, the under-five mortality rate decreased from 181 to 115 per 1,000 live births. In the province with worst health indicators, Ratanakiri, 22.9% of children die before age five.