Fifteen languages are spoken by the fourteen ethnic groups living in Xekong Province in southern Laos.
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
understanding between them. There is no doubt that most of them are multilingual speakers. Since different
languages have different functions in a multilingual society, collision is out of the question.
Cultural and linguistic diversity in Xekong Province is harmless. Cultural and linguistic contact cannot be
avoided and code switching and language blending are natural. Linguistic borrowing can cause various types of
linguistic variation and change at many levels, for example, the lexical, phonological, morphological and syntactical
levels.
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.