who's heard of this? After the fall of Vientiane centuries ago, laotians were forced to leave and live along the borders of Burma and Thailand living on borrowed time harvesting for soldiers. A very sad situation where these Laotians have kept their culture and traditions but dont even know where laos is nor even heard of Vientiane. These laotians have been exploited, abused, treated as second class citizens and do not have much of a chance for a better life.

I just finished watching the documentry about it, i'll upload it later on for everyone to watch.

^ i saw it this summer i can especially remember the part where some of them were confused of the location of vientiane

very sad indeed, the young laotians think they're lao through and through but think they are an ethnic minority and would rather take up thai citizenship. i don't understand why the laotiand govt won't come in and save them

Yeah man i watched it a long time ago and it made me very sad.
Some of the people in the video didn't speak with Vientiane accent though. I heard Isan style accent.
The guy who made the video did a very nice job. I like the questions he asked.


There were also Lao Long in Vietnam back in the day. They were about to be flown back to Laos by helicopter but SouvannaPhouma(the Prime Minster at the time) told them to leave the Lao Long where they were and come back. So the Lao Long were left there. I have no idea what happened to them. I actually read this on some other Lao board. But i do know SouvannaPhouma was a meanie.

what should happen to these unwanted laotians?

I heard about it. Very sad indeed.

i think, but i can be wrong, gov tried to bring them back in the past but they ignored the invite because of the war that was happening....

If you would like to learn more about these lost Laotians who called themselves Lao long (long means forgetten, lost, or mistaken). It's in Lao. Briefly, a few years back, there were internal wars in Burma and some folks from that country crossed across the border into Thailand. A group of those "burmese refugees" arrived at Kanchanabouri, located in the western region of Thailand about 150 km from Bangkok. Thai police then interviewed these refugees by asking them where they came from and who they were. They replied they were Lao. The police kept asking if they were Lao, then were they Lao from Isan or from the LPDR (republic democratic popular Lao). They replied they were none of those, they were Lao "long" taken away from Vientiane and remained so for generations since the defeat of Vientiane to Siam. They were not considered Burmese. They were not allowed to learn or teach Lao to each other.

You can listen to their lum, their interview in the sites below I took from Laoplanet. Roll down the thread to open the following:

Lam Lao Long
Lao Long Intro
Lao Long 1
Lao Long 2
Lao Long 3
Lao Long 4

Interview part 1
Interview part 2

http://laoplanet.net/component/option,com_...d,3426/catid,3/

This is quite interesting.

It is interesting that Tai ethnic groups despite having a relative degree of mutual intelligibility still consider themselves very separate from each other . This is true of ethnic Shan ( tai yai ) and how they are seen in Thailand and from what this article suggests about Lao diaspora in Thailand and Burma. ( there have been Lao diaspora in Burma since 1500s )

The first state you encounter as you come west from Lao into Burma is an ethnic Tai state ( Shan ) . The majority of people there speak a Tai dialect of some sort - albeit several dozen different ones . You have to travel some 300 miles or so before you come to any area where Bama is the dominant language .

I cannot see therefore any ethnic Bama as seeing Lao as anything other than Shan ( traditional Lao are refered to as Lin Zin / Lin Xin Shan : ie from Lan Xang ) . Even ethnic groups like the Pa-O who live in the Shan state are wrongly considered Shan though they are actually Tibeto-Burman of probably the Karennic branch. ( and this is officially by the government ).

So therefore I cannot see the Bama discriminating between different Tai / Shan ethnic groups . Any feeling of not being accepted must stem from inter-Tai mistrust .

Likewise the Shan in me has no affinity felt with the central Thai but nevertheless I have always seen Chiang Mai and Lao ( probably North ) as Shan.


Interesting article : pity I can't understand it.

This story is very interesting indeed. But I'm kind of confused as to why they would have Issan/Southern Lao accent instead of the Vientiane accent used today. Perhaps this was why the Thai police asked if they were Lao from Issan. Some of the Lao Long in the interview even said that they only know Laos as Vientiane and Vientiane as Laos, and this was told by their parents. The last time that Siam sacked Vientiane during King Anu's era, they took almost everybody from Vientiane and burned the place down, almost no one was left. So I'm wondering if these Lao Long carry the original Vientiane accent, or if the Vientiane accent used today is new, if not these people could not have been from Vientiane and from somewhere else. The Siamese did not just depopulate Vientiane, they depopulated Southern Laos, Luangprabang, and Siengkhoung as well to prevent further uprising. That's why there are some Tai Phuans from SiengKhoung living in northern central Thailand today.

Some of the old ladies spoke with old style Vientiane accent. Some of the people in the video spoke hybrid Isan/Vientiane accent. There are also many many Isan accents. I think the accent originally spoken in Vientiane before it was depopulated was if much different than the one spoken today. Vientiane was abandones for a long time. Then when the french arrived other groups of Lao people moved in. Then you have your current Vientiane accent. That's what im thinking. Not sure.

From what I know my relatives who speak tai Long / yai tell me that the accent / dialect most intelligible to them in LanNa ( Chiang Mai ).

Similar to how you guys know little about Burma we know little about Lao so I can't say whether old Vientiane is similar to current. All I know is that my relatives see northern Lao and LanNa as being related to them but Central Thai as not .

It's only in last 10-15 years that I realised that many in Sipsongpanna and Dehong in Yunnan are virtually identical to people over the border in Burma . ( there are slight differences in that some Tai in sipsongpanna seem more old style Burmese / Shan in the way they dress . )