Editing Laal language (section)

==Speakers and status==
The language's speakers are mainly [[river]] [[fishing|fishermen]] and [[agriculture|farmer]]s, who also sell [[salt]] extracted from the ashes of [[doum palm]]s and ''[[Vossia cuspidata]]''. Like their neighbours, the [[Niellim language|Niellim]], they were formerly cattle herders but lost their herds around the turn of the 19th century. They are mainly [[Muslim]]s, but until the latter half of the 20th century, they followed the traditional ''Yondo'' religion of the [[Niellim]].  The area is fairly undeveloped; while there are [[Qur'anic school]]s in [[Gori, Chad|Gori]] and Damtar, the nearest government school is 7&nbsp;km away, and there is no medical dispensary in the region ({{as of|1995|lc=on}}).

The village of Damtar formerly had a distinct dialect, called Laabe (''la:bé''), with two or three speakers remaining in 1977; it was replaced by the dialect of Gori after two Gori families fled there at the end of the 19th century to escape a [[war]]. No other dialects of Laal are known.

Under Chadian law, Laal, like all languages of Chad other than [[French language|French]] and [[Arabic language|Arabic]], is regarded as a [[national language]]. Although the 1996 Constitution stipulates that "the law shall fix the conditions of promotion and development of national languages", national languages are not used for education, for official purposes, or usually for written media, but some of the larger ones (but not Laal) are used on the radio.