Editing Tai languages (section)

===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>