Tai languages

Criteria for classification

Classifications have been made according to the geographic location of the Tai speakers, social, political, and cultural criteria, and literacy versus nonliteracy. The classification used for this article is based on linguistic relationships proposed in 1959–60; the criteria for it are lexical (involving similarities in vocabulary) and phonological (involving similarities in sounds and systems of sounds). According to these features the Tai languages are divided into the three groups mentioned above (see map). Languages of the Southwestern group are spoken in Thailand, Laos, northern Vietnam, Myanmar, and Yunnan, China; they include Thai, Lao, Shan, Khün, Lü, White Tai, Black Tai, and others. The Southwestern division, which is geographically the most widespread group, consists of two-thirds of the Tai-speaking population and represents an expansion that has occurred in comparatively recent periods. To the Central group belong the Tay dialects that are spoken in northern Vietnam and the various dialects spoken in Guangxi, such as Longzhou. The Buyei dialects in Guizhou and the Zhuang dialects in Guangxi belong to the Northern group. Some of the Northern dialects are also spoken in Yunnan and Vietnam, and one, called Saek, is spoken as far south as Laos and Thailand.

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Differences in vocabulary

The fairly large number of vocabulary items that are shared by languages of these three groups suggests their genetic relationship. In some instances, however, there are items that are shared by only two of the groups and are not found in the other. For instance, the word for ‘sky’ is shared by the Southwestern dialects (Thai fáa) and the Central dialects (Longzhou faa), but another word is used in the Northern dialects (Buyei mɯn). Similarly, the word for ‘beard’ is shared by the Central group (Longzhou mum) and the Northern group (Buyei mum) but is replaced by another word in the Southwestern group (Thai nùat). In another instance the term for ‘knife’ is shared by the Southwestern (Thai mîit) and the Northern groups (Buyei mit) but not by the Central dialects, which have various words such as Leibing taau and Ning Ming pjaa (Longzhou has both pja and taau). There are also vocabulary items that are found only in one of the three groups. The evidence seems to indicate that there are three groups of dialects in the Tai family.

Differences in phonology

Different phonological features may be reconstructed for the ancestral form of some words according to the dialect group. For instance, the Southwestern forms for the verb ‘to be’ (Thai pen) are derived from a protoform *pɛn (with the vowel pronounced as in English egg), whereas the Central dialect forms (Longzhou pin) and the Northern forms (Buyei pan) come from a protoform *bɛn. (A protoform is the presumed or reconstructed ancestral form of a word; an asterisk [*] indicates an unattested, reconstructed form.) Similarly, the Southwestern and the Central forms for the classifier for animals (Thai tua, Longzhou tuu) are derived from a protoform *tua, whereas the Northern forms (Buyei tuu) are attributed to a protoform *dua. (A classifier is a term that indicates the group to which a noun belongs [for example, ‘animate object’] or designates countable objects or measurable quantities, such as ‘yards [of cloth]’ and ‘head [of cattle]’.) Such words as the forms for ‘to be’ and the classifier for animals are good indications of dialect boundaries.

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In phonological development, the Northern dialects differ from the rest in not maintaining the distinction between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops. That is, the dialects have lost the feature of aspiration, which sounds like a puff of breath accompanying a consonant. Aspiration may, however, be reintroduced in some dialects by later borrowing or secondary developments. The Central dialects differ from the other groups in the treatment of certain Proto-Tai consonant clusters, such as *tr- and *thr-. Although they have changed from the protoforms, these are usually kept distinct in the other groups—e.g., in Thai as taa (‘eye’) and haaŋ (‘tail’), in Buyei as taa and lŋ. In the Central dialects, however, they have merged into a single sound—e.g., Tay thaa and thaaŋ, Longzhou haa and haaŋ.