Laoz really isn't the biggest language

so earlier this week i was looking through facebook and blogs, and i found this link posted on jai Lao's fb page; it is a blog by roland drake who is going to Laos - i think to the village where Jai Lao just built their most recent school - to work on a water sanitation project. here is the link:

http://myjourneytolaos.blogspot.com/

his blog is very earnest and sincere, and very much void of the sarcasm and meanness that i got splattered all over mine... and that being said, here i go again; (on to what i really wanted to post about:)

i found this youtube video on roland's blog and it is the best thing since i first ate padek. watch the video, then read my review...



so the wonders of the Laoz language, with its 5 tones, (ain't there 6?) i think that the real difficulty here is that you most likely got an american-born kid teaching people how to speak some basic Laoz. i'm guessing he must be in the mid-west somewhere by himself (without a large Lao community around him,) and so he ain't aware that he don't know Laoz all that well. otherwise he'd never had the courage to post this. in my job i run into quite a few Laoz young people, and they're overly aware of their deficiencies in the language and would never post something like this, even though some of them speak Laoz really well.

but if you're still reading this critique, the main problem (besides the lakone thing: nobody really says lakone unless you're singing a cheesy Lao break-up song; and the inconsistent romanization of Laoz words; and the fish, aunt, and crazy comparison: fish and aunt start with a different consonant (p) than crazy (b); and the coughing up phlegm on camera thing; with all the jump cuts, that could've easily been removed, right?) is what is in the cage behind him? is that a dead hamster back there???

and i know this is mean of me... i really shouldn't say nothing at all, because look at all the comments on youtube from other Lao-american kids who also don't know Lao! so all said and done, props to this kid for putting himself out there and teaching us all something about the Laoz language. (or as they say in Louisiana where i'm from: bless his heart.) and he even has a couple of good jokes: sabaidii does sound a lot like somebody, especially if you can't speak Lao all that good.