Editing Tai languages (section)

==History==
[[File:Tai Migration.svg|thumb|350px|right|Map showing linguistic family tree overlaid on a geographic distribution map of the Tai family. This map only shows the general pattern of the migration of Tai-speaking tribes, not specific routes, which would have snaked along the rivers and over the lower passes.]]
Citing the fact that both the Zhuang and Thai peoples have the same [[exonym and endonym|exonym]] for the [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]], ''kɛɛu<sup>A1</sup>'',{{efn|A1 designates a tone.}} derived from the name of [[Jiaozhi]] in Vietnam, and that the indigenous [[Baiyue|Bai Yue]] were given family names by their northern rulers during the [[Northern and Southern dynasties]], while the Thai didn't have family names into the 19th century, [[Jerold A. Edmondson]] of the [[University of Texas at Arlington]] posited that the split between Zhuang (a [[Central Tai languages|Central Tai language]]) and the [[Southwestern Tai languages]] happened no earlier than the founding of Jiaozhi in 112 BCE but no later than the 5th–6th century AD.<ref>{{cite book |last=Edmondson |first=Jerold A. |chapter=The power of language over the past: Tai settlement and Tai linguistics in southern China and northern Vietnam |title=Studies in Southeast Asian Linguistics |editor1-first=Jimmy G. |editor1-last=Harris |editor2-first=Somsonge |editor2-last=Burusphat |editor3-first=James E. |editor3-last=Harris |date=2007 |location=Bangkok, Thailand |publisher=Ekphimthai |isbn=9789748130064 |page=15 |url=http://ling.uta.edu/~jerry/pol.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716085333/http://ling.uta.edu/~jerry/pol.pdf |archive-date=16 July 2011}}</ref> Based on layers of Chinese loanwords in Proto-Southwestern Tai and other historical evidence, Pittayawat Pittayaporn (2014) suggests that the dispersal of Southwestern Tai must have begun sometime between the 8th and 10th centuries&nbsp;AD.<ref name="PittayawatPittayaporn">[http://www.manusya.journals.chula.ac.th/files/essay/Pittayawat%2047-68.pdf Pittayaporn, Pittayawat (2014). Layers of Chinese Loanwords in Proto-Southwestern Tai as Evidence for the Dating of the Spread of Southwestern Tai]. ''MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities,'' Special Issue No 20: 47–64.</ref>

===Connection to ancient Yue language(s)===
{{further|Old Yue language}}
The Tai languages descend from [[proto-Kra–Dai]], which has been hypothesized to originate in the Lower Yangtze valleys. Ancient Chinese texts refer to non-Sinitic languages spoken across this substantial region and their speakers as ''"[[Old Yue language|Yue]]"''. Although those languages are extinct, traces of their existence could be found in unearthed inscriptional materials, ancient Chinese historical texts and non-Han substrata in various Southern Chinese dialects. Thai, as the most-spoken language in the [[Tai-Kadai languages|Tai-Kadai language family]], has been used extensively in historical-comparative linguistics to identify the origins of language(s) spoken in the ancient region of South China. One of the very few direct records of non-Sinitic speech in pre-Qin and Han times having been preserved so far is the ''"[[Song of the Yue Boatman]]"'' (Yueren Ge 越人歌), which was transcribed phonetically in Chinese characters in 528 BC, and found in the 善说 Shanshuo chapter of the Shuoyuan 说苑 or 'Garden of Persuasions'. In the early 1980s the [[Zhuang people|Zhuang]] linguist Wei Qingwen using reconstructed Old Chinese for the characters discovered that the resulting vocabulary showed strong resemblance to [[Zhuang language|modern Zhuang]].{{sfn|Edmondson|2007|p= 16}} Later, Zhengzhang Shangfang (1991) followed Wei's insight but used [[Thai script#Orthography|Thai orthography]] for comparison, since this orthography dates from the 13th century and preserves archaisms vis-à-vis the modern pronunciation.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Zhengzhang |first=Shangfang |author-link=Zhengzhang Shangfang |title=Decipherment of Yue-Ren-Ge (Song of the Yue boatman) |journal=Cahiers de Linguistique — Asie Orientale |volume=XX |number=2 |date=Winter 1991 |pages=159–168 |doi=10.3406/clao.1991.1345 |url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/clao_0153-3320_1991_num_20_2_1345 |access-date=23 May 2023}}</ref>