How Does The Fetch-a-Phrase System Work?

The Fetch-a-Phrase system uses a selection of color-coded template sentences that can be quickly and efficiently manipulated to create new sentences by substituting one word for another from adjacent color-coded word lists.

To give a general idea of how it works, we'll use a sentence in English and its equivalent in Lao, the main language of Laos:
I like {the} room...................khàwy mak hàwng.

Thanks to the color coding we can see that:
I = khàwy, like = mak, {the} is absent in Lao, room = hàwng

Notice that both like and room are underlined. When words are underlined it means they can be substituted with like-colored words from the word lists:
I like {the} room.....................khàwy mak hàwng.
can become:
I like {the} bicycle.................khàwy mak lot thìip.
or:
I pay {the} bill.........................khàwy jaai saek bil.

Naturally it would be very limiting to be stuck saying sentences like this. For this reason certain options have been added to the sample sentences. Options are surrounded by [square brackets]. They are words that don't have to be in a sentence to make it complete but change the meaning of it when added. One very important optional word is the "negative":
I [don't] like {the} room..............khàwy [baw] mak hàwng.

Now you can say:
I don't like {the} bicycle...........khàwy baw mak lot thìip.
or
I don't pay {the} bill..........khàwy baw jaai saek bil.

Other options include Time Modifiers; words like "[now]" and "[today]" and Adjectives such as "[big]" and "[new]". With these at hand you can now talk about "{the} big room" - "hàwng nyai" (the adjective comes after the noun in Lao) or "{the} new bicycle" - "lot thìip mai" . You can even say that you'll pay {the} bill "now" or "later".

As you can see, you really can make up thousands and thousands of sentences in a foreign language while knowing nothing more than the language's pronunciation and the Fetch-a-Phrase system.

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