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Well, I for one am certainly not going to visit the country until this issue has been settled...

Hmmm....maybe we should turn the table...add an "s" on the end of France and start calling them Frances.

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Originally posted by gojonesgo:
Well, I for one am certainly not going to visit the country until this issue has been settled...

I am going to rip the pages of my passport that have Laos stamps to join you in boycotting.

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Hmmm....maybe we should turn the table...add an "s" on the end of France and start calling them Frances.

How do you pronounce that?

quote:

Originally posted by gojonesgo:

quote:

Hmmm....maybe we should turn the table...add an "s" on the end of France and start calling them Frances.

How do you pronounce that?

I'm open to suggestions...

i pronounce it "loo".

(just to set myself apart from the rest of the tourists....)

I pronounce the "S" at the risk of sounding unsophisticated. Every authoritative source I found (eg dictionaries, wikipedia, Laotian-Americans) indicate the "S" is not silent.

Additionally, I don't think this is a British English/American English question because I know Americans that don't pronounce the "S" either.

Also, I think it does matter. Country's names have a certain pronunciation, it's not up to the whim of the speaker.

Well...this has only become an issue as more and more people travel there it seems.

I pronounce it Lao, because people from Lao told me this is how it is pronounced. I had always known it as Laos. I figured it was a small and easy change to make and I would using the name the actual people there use.

I personally think we should use the proper names of countries that the people that live there use...it would take a lot of reorganizing of thought, but why DO we change the names of other people's countries?

So...Deutschland, Espana (with a tilde if you please), Nippon and so forth....

going off the last post, we tend to say the country's names the "English-ized" way... Germany over Deutschland; Spain over España; China over Zhongguo... etc. So it's silly to look at Laos in a vacuum. The English pronunciation is with an S, so it makes sense to say it that way while speaking English.

Hi
I've met a Laotian student who told me that he prefers his country's name to be pronounced without the s...

ok, and i prefer that everyone call my country United States, not Estados Unidos, Etats Unis or Meiguo.

I wasn't saying its gonna happen...but I don't know how or why we changed names of places SO much. Germany...Dueschland...not really similar. I know there's etmelogical progressions, but why not just use the name that the people who live there use? I've often wondered this....