A linguistic hunch seems correct.

So, some of my (Thai) coworkers confirmed my hunch about (Lao), with the one (younger) (Lao) guy who's a cook in back.

From everything I gather, Lao and Thai are related languages with like 70% mutual intelligibility, though my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker has said that all (Lao) people can understand (Thai) people but that (Thai) people can't understand (Lao) people.

Though, when I asked her if it was a media access thing because (Thailand) probably has a bigger population and so it has media reach into Laos, she seemed to agree that that was the case.

Anyhow, it's all very interesting when you ask them for phrases; some things between (Lao) and (Thai) are completely different, and others like your standard "Hello/Goodbye" and "Good night" are the same or have some obvious sound change, and then other things are just weird.

Like, in (Thai) you always throw this particle after greetings and you say one particle if you're male and another if you're female, and if you don't say your particle you sound rude, even if you know someone quite well, and I'd read somewhere that these particles historically come from words meaning "man" or "woman" or something like that -- like you self-identify as a servant to someone, like "Hello, [I am your] man," and then that politeness practice became generalized to everyone -- and, with that, when I was asking around about it, my (Thai) coworkers had told me once that yes, there's other words like that that sound like the particles and they do mean "man" and "woman," but they're different. 

But, the one (younger) (Lao) cook guy was like, "They always say 'boy' after everything, but that's a Thai thing, we don't say that."

Anyhow anyhow, I had told my (Thai) coworkers that I'd noticed that the two (Lao) people I know have used very distinctive (English) responses when I tell them news -- "Really?" and "For real?" from the lady at the farmer's market and the cook, respectively -- and that I've been suspecting there's a (Lao) phrase that they use in conversation a lot that they've found (English) equivalents for, but this phrase doesn't exist in (Thai) since I've never seen any of my (Thai) coworkers say anything ever like that, but the two (Lao) people have each used their equivalent phrase to me, multiple times.

So, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker talked a while with my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones, and then she went in back to talk with the one (younger) (Lao) cook, and then she came out and talked some more with my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones, and yes, it does turn out that there's some (Lao) phrase like that, and she told me what it was, though now I forget.

. . .

(This is totally comparable to some stuff that has emerged from Spanish into English in Miami, if it ever gains traction among [Lao]-American kids and becomes part of their dialect.)