Oi (Oy, Oey; also known as The, Thang Ong, Sok) is a Mon–Khmer dialect cluster of Attapeu Province in southern Laos. According to Ethnologue, the dominant variety is Oy proper, with 15,000 speakers who are 80% monolinguals. Speakers follow traditional religions. the 1995 Laotian census places the Oi population at 14,947.

Some locations where Oi is spoken in include (Sidwell 2003:26):

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics.

The approximately 3000–6000 languages that are spoken by humans today are the most salient examples, but natural languages can also be based on visual rather than auditory stimuli, for example in sign languages and written language. Codes and other kinds of artificially constructed communication systems such as those used for computer programming can also be called languages. A language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. The English word derives ultimately from Latin lingua, "language, tongue", via Old French. When used as a general concept, "language" refers to the cognitive faculty that enables humans to learn and use systems of complex communication.

Michel Thomas (born Moniek (Moshe) Kroskof, February 3, 1914 – January 8, 2005) was a polyglot linguist, language teacher, and decorated war veteran. He survived imprisonment in several different Nazi concentration camps after serving in the Maquis (World War II) of the French Resistance and worked with the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II. After the war, Thomas emigrated to the United States, where he developed a language-teaching system known as the Michel Thomas Method. In 2004 he was awarded the Silver Star by the U.S. Army.

Thomas was born in Łódź, Poland, to a wealthy Jewish family who owned textile factories. When he was seven years old, his parents sent him to Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), where he fit in comfortably. The rise of the Nazis drove him to leave for the University of Bordeaux in France in 1933, and subsequently the Sorbonne and the University of Vienna.