Lao
5.4M people can hold a conversation in Lao across 2 countries; official in 1.
Data as of 28 Oct 2026 · ISO 639-3 lao · Glottolog laoo1244 · Tai-Kadai · CLDR 49, Glottolog 5.3, States sheet
Where Lao is spoken
Share of each country's people who can hold a conversation in it.
Loading map…
Small territories are not drawn at this scale.
Countries
Share of the population and people who can hold a conversation in it, by country.
How this is measured
Most figures are CLDR's estimates of speakers. CLDR lists only each country's larger languages, so where it has no figure a national census or official survey fills in, and the Figure column says which and what it counts. A home-language figure is a floor: more people can speak the language than use it at home.
States where it is the first language
States whose first language is this one, largest population first.
Family
Where it sits in the Glottolog tree, root to language.
- Tai-Kadai
- Kam-Tai
- Daic-Beic
- Daic
- Central-Southwestern Tai
- Wenma-Southwestern Tai
- Sapa-Southwestern Tai
- Southwestern Tai
- Southwestern Thai PH
- Lao-Thai
- Lao
Tai-Kadai: 11 languages, 94.4M speakers.
Where these numbers come from
- Unicode CLDR territoryInfo (release 49) (Unicode License v3). Country-level language shares, official status and Tier 3 reach (populationPercent is total speakers, first plus second language).
- Glottolog 5.3 (CC BY 4.0). Language names, ISO 639-3 codes, families.
- Database of International and Intranational Linguistic distances (DICL v2), USITC (CC BY 4.0). Country-pair linguistic proximity (loaded, not yet shown in release one).
- States (ISO 3166-2) sheet, MetroAreas workbook (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation). States, populations and the four language labels per state.
- Natural Earth 1:110m Admin 0 Countries (nvkelso/natural-earth-vector) (Public domain). World outline for the language maps (world-110m.geojson, properties reduced to iso3 and name).
- Country layer of this site (countries.json workbook population, World Bank iso2 and iso3, OWID country-population) (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation; World Bank CC BY 4.0; OWID CC BY). Country population, iso2 and /countries slug joined onto languages, countries and families (speakers = share x population).
Definitions are on the Method page.