How to spell "love" in Lao?

June 27, 2013 4:25 PM

I tried google Translate and got a bunch of spellings, but many of them had different senses of the word. I want the one that means love as both a noun and a verb- like we do in English. It's going to be a tat, so I don't want to accidently be wearing something on my body that's lewd.

If you could point me to the right place or tell me that the version I'm after is the eighth one down in the google translate list, I would really appreciate the help.

posted by puddinghead to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

My guess is it's the first result in Translate, which it transliterates as "hak". The characters are like "ruk" in Thai, which is "love", and Lao and Thai are highly cognate.
posted by seemoreglass at 7:33 PM on June 27, 2013

Response by poster: Excellent. Thank you.
posted by puddinghead at 7:43 PM on June 27, 2013

hak ຮັກ is the verb, 'to love'. Wiktionary gives the noun as ຄວາມຮັກ, khwamhak (accuracy not guaranteed). I'd very much recommend you find and pay a translator or fluent Lao speaker for this, so that you can be a) accurate (not just in spelling, handwriting/typography and dictionary meaning, but for really getting the right word for what message you want to convey, in the right grammatical form) and b) respectful.
posted by lokta at 7:57 PM on June 27, 2013

I was just about to add that about kwahm. It's the same in Thai, for changing a word to a noun. See, for example, the Thai and Lao words for "happiness" in Translate (a friend had Thai "happiness" as a tat).
posted by seemoreglass at 8:03 PM on June 27, 2013 [1 favorite]