People living in southern Laos sekong can speak more 14 languages.
It can be seen clearly that Xekong Province is a multilingual community. People in Xekong speak not only their
own mother tongue but also can speak Lao which is the national language of Lao PDR. Moreover, they speak the
languages of the other tribes living in nearby villages so that there can be good relationships and mutual
When I collected data on the thirteen Mon-Khmer languages spoken in Xekong Province for reconstructing
Proto-Katuic and Proto-Bahnaric, a wordlist of 2,300 lexical items was devised. Due to language change, only 1,406
Proto-Katuic lexical forms could be reconstructed. I noticed that a large number of Bahnaric, Khmer and Lao words
had been borrowed into the Katuic languages spoken in Xekong Province. In respect of Proto-Bahnaric, about 1,361
lexical forms could be reconstructed. Again, a lot of Katuic, Khmer and Lao loanwords were found in the Bahnaric
languages.
The fourteen tribes of Xekong have never fought against each other but helped fight in the liberation wars against
the French and Americans. We did not detect any racial or tribal problems when we conducted our field research in
Xekong Province. Inter-marriages among members of different tribes are common and this encourages bilingualism
within households and, later, multilingualism in villages.