Tai peoples

History

Origin

James R. Chamberlain (2016) proposes that the Tai-Kadai (Kra-Dai) language family was formed as early as the 12th century BC in the middle of the Yangtze basin, coinciding roughly with the establishment of the Chu state and the beginning of the Zhou dynasty. Following the southward migrations of Kra and Hlai (Rei/Li) peoples around the 8th century BCE, the Yue (Be-Tai people) started to break away and move to the east coast in the present-day Zhejiang province, in the 6th century BCE, forming the state of Yue and conquering the state of Wu shortly thereafter. According to Chamberlain, Yue people (Be-Tai) began to migrate southwards along the east coast of China to what are now Guangxi, Guizhou and northern Vietnam, after Yue was conquered by Chu around 333 BCE. There the Yue (Be-Tai) formed the Luo Yue, which moved into Lingnan and Annam and then westward into northeastern Laos and Sip Song Chau Tai, and later became the Central-Southwestern Tai, followed by the Xi Ou, which became the Northern Tai).

Wilaiwan Khanittanan notes that Tai and Muong material culture in northern Vietnam resemble each other closely, the houses raised on posts and the women's dress alike in both. She reads this as the result of a language shift, some ancient Tai groups there having taken up Muong speech. She adds that Black Tai and some Muong groups share the surname เลือง.

Comparative linguistic research seems to indicate that the Tai peoples were a Proto-Tai–Kadai speaking culture of southern China and dispersed into mainland Southeast Asia. Some linguists proposes that Tai–Kadai languages may descended from the Proto-Austronesian language family. Laurent Sagart (2004) hypothesized that the Tai–Kadai languages may have originated on the island of Taiwan, where they spoke a dialect of Proto-Austronesian or one of its descendant languages. Unlike the Malayo-Polynesian group who later sailed south to the Philippines and other parts of maritime Southeast Asia, the ancestors of the modern Tai-Kadai people sailed west to mainland China and possibly traveled along the Pearl River, where their language greatly changed from other Austronesian languages under the influence of Sino-Tibetan and Hmong–Mien language infusion. However, no archaeological evidence has been identified which would correspond to the Daic (Tai-Kadai) expansion in its earliest phases. Aside from linguistic evidence, the connection between Austronesian and Tai-Kadai can also be found in some common cultural practices. Roger Blench (2008) demonstrates that dental evulsion, face tattooing, teeth blackening and snake cults are shared between the Taiwanese Austronesians and the Tai-Kadai peoples of Southern China.

Revolt and pressure in southern China

Chinese historical texts record that, in 726 AD, hundreds of thousands Lǎo (獠) rose in revolt behind Liang Ta-hai in Guangdong, but was suppressed by Chinese general Yang Zixu, which left 20,000 rebels killed and beheaded. Two years later, another Li chief named Chen Xingfan declared himself the Emperor of Nanyue and led a large uprising against the Chinese, but was also crushed by Yang Zixu, who beheaded 60,000 rebels. In 756, another revolt led by Huang Chien-yao and Chen Ch'ung-yu that attracted 200,000 followers and lasted four years in Guangxi.

In the 860s, many local people in what is now north Vietnam sided with attackers from Nanchao, and in the aftermath some 30,000 of them were beheaded. In the 1040s a matriarch-shamaness named A Nong, her chiefly husband and their son Nong Zhigao raised a revolt. They took Nanning, besieged Guangzhou for fifty seven days and slew the commanders of five Chinese armies sent against them. They were defeated and many of their leaders were killed.

Pressure from the north continued into the 13th century. Raids by the Chinese frontier states of Nanzhao and Dali and by the Mongols may have pushed part of this stream south along the rivers, particularly the Shweli, the Salween and the Mekong. Kublai Khan attacked south towards Pagan in the 1250s, and in the 1290s Mongol forces attacked Chiang Rung and Chiang Mai, subdued more than twenty kingdoms and sent an embassy to Angkor; a further attempt in 1312 collapsed from disease and other hardships.

The warrior culture those centuries produced is described in some detail. The Nong, who rebelled in the 11th century, bred horses for cavalry, tattooed their bodies, fought with swords and crossbows, built hilltop forts and recruited women as warriors. They fought in teams of three, one man carrying the shield that covered the body while the other two threw spears from behind. The Chiang Mai chronicle describes a successful warrior taking domains at an uneven rate, ruling those he took and killing their rulers, and afterwards installing one of his own officers or leaving the previous ruler in charge.

Du Yuting and Chen Lufan from Kunming Institute Southeast Asian Studies claimed that, during the Western Han dynasty, ancestors of the Tai people were known as Dianyue (in today Yunnan). Tai peoples migrated far and wide: by the Tang and Song periods, they were present from the Red River to the Salween River, from Baoshan to Jingdong. Du and Chen linked the ancestors of the Thai people in particular to a 2nd-century Shan kingdom (Shànguó 撣國) mentioned in the Book of Later Han. That text places the Shan kingdom at the end of the boundaries of what is now Baoshan and Deihong prefectures, and has Shan ambassadors reaching the Han court from beyond Yongchang and beyond Rinan. Additionally, Du & Chen rejected the proposal that the ancestors of Tai people migrated en masse southwestwards out of Yunnan only after the 1253 Mongol invasion of Dali. Luo et al. (2000) proposed that Proto-Tais originated most likely from Guangxi-Guizhou, not Yunnan nor the middle Yangtze river.

Migration into mainland Southeast Asia

The Tai peoples, from Guangxi began moving south – and westwards in the first millennium CE, eventually spreading across the whole of mainland Southeast Asia. A dated tree of the family published in 2023 places its first split at about 4,000 years ago, with a range of roughly 2,700 to 5,500. It gives the Guangxi–Guangdong coast as the most probable starting point, at 47 percent against 19 percent or less for each of the four other places tested. It dates the spread into mainland Southeast Asia to within the last 2,000 years. Genetic work points the same way for the source. Kampuansai and colleagues find the Tai-Kadai populations of Thailand closer to Iron Age samples from Taiwan and southern China than to ancient samples from Southeast Asia, most strongly in the north. For the encounter in mainland Southeast Asia, Yin and colleagues read the haplotype sharing between Austroasiatic speakers and their Tai-Kadai, Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan neighbours as relatedness from about 1,160 years ago. Beside these, the chronicle tradition makes its own claim for the beginning of the Tai dynastic lines. Tai legends of Khun Borom, shared among various Southwestern Tai peoples of Southeast Asia, Greater Assam and Yunnan, concern the first ruler of Meuang Thaen, whose progeny go on to found the Tai dynasties that ruled over the various Tai mueang. The Siamese court made a dated claim of the same kind. Written instructions prepared in 1684 for an embassy to Portugal told the envoys to say that the reigning king descended from a king who ruled in 1300 of the Buddhist era, that is 756 or 757 CE.

Pittayawat Pittayaporn (2014) dates the southwestward migration of southwestern Tai-speaking tribes from modern Guangxi to mainland Southeast Asia between the 8th and 10th centuries. He argues it from layers of Chinese loanwords in proto-Southwestern Tai and from other historical evidence. Tai speaking tribes migrated southwestward along the rivers and over the lower passes into Southeast Asia, perhaps prompted by the Chinese expansion and suppression.

The Ahomese Tai chronicle relates the migrating event with the arrival of "9,000 Tai peoples, 8 noblemen, two elephants, and 300 horses" to Assam. Vietnamese scribers recorded groups of two- or three thousand "Mang savages" passing by. According to Baker, those migrants might have slowly exodused from their homeland via three routes. The early groups moved north to Guizhou. The second groups might have passed through the Red River Delta, crossing the Vietnamese cordillera into the Mekong Valley. The third and major migration direction crossed the valleys of the Red and Black River, heading west through the hills into Burma and Assam.

Baker and Pasuk hold that military force alone may not account for the spread of Tai languages. Georges Condominas described the diffusion as the work of small groups of warriors led by an aristocracy that imposed itself on numerous and varied peoples, and the long struggle with the Han Chinese had certainly produced a warrior culture in the Guangxi valleys. They set an economic asset beside it. The Tai did not bring rice, which was long established in these hills, but may have brought techniques for a higher and more secure yield developed in the karst country of southwest China, using dikes, retention dams, bamboo pipes, stone-lined ditches and lifting devices. Tai settlement sites share a distinctive topography, a large basin often at a confluence with a broad alluvial plain, with hill streams that can be tapped for irrigation.

As a result of these three bloody centuries, or with the political and cultural pressures from the north, some Tai peoples migrated southwestward, where they met the classical Indianized civilizations of Southeast Asia.

Settlement and the Austroasiatic encounter

Settlement and assimilation

The Tai migrants assimilated and intermarried with the indigenous Austroasiatic peoples of Southeast Asia, while also displacing some communities into marginal areas. Their expansion nevertheless took place within a region dominated by Indian-influenced kingdoms of the Mon, Khmer and Cham, with the Khmer emerging as the dominant regional power by the time of the major Tai migrations. Legends of these encounters are found in both Tai and non-Tai traditions. In the Black Tai chronicle, a Tai leader asks to marry the daughter of a Laha chief, kills the chief at the wedding feast, and causes the remaining Laha to flee to the hills. In the Suwanna khamdaeng story, a Tai pioneer declares that the people already living there must be obeyed, appoints the Lawa chief to high office, and marries two of his daughters. Some traditions end with the earlier population adopting Tai language and customs and becoming assimilated. The Tai formed small city-states known as mueang, developing irrigation works and paddy fields suited to wet-rice cultivation.

The Tais from the north gradually settled in the Chao Phraya valley from the tenth century onwards, in lands of the Dvaravati culture, assimilating the earlier Austroasiatic Mon and Khmer people, as well as coming into contact with the Khmer Empire. Jenny puts the arrival of Khmer from the east and Tai from the north at around the eleventh century, when Mon ceased to be the uncontested literary language of the region. He allows that Tai speakers may already have been present in the Dvāravatī period, but holds that they left no political or cultural trace. David K. Wyatt distinguishes three movements into the country north of the plain: down the Yom from Phrae, Phayao and Chiang Rai, down the Nan from the U River valley, and down the Ping from Lampang and Lamphun, the last from country already Mōn in its culture, Theravada in religion and literate where the others were not. He reads the movement as the working of an ultimogeniture in which elder sons were sent south to find towns of their own while the youngest inherited. A northern sixty-year cycle of days and years appears in at least nine early inscriptions and is on his account unique to Tai-language texts, where it is regularly named as Thai in contradistinction to Khōm; and the claim of the Ram Khamhaeng inscription of 1292 to have invented Tai letters he reads narrowly, as a claim to one particular form of writing rather than to writing itself, Hans Penth having shown that Tai was written in other alphabets for as much as two centuries earlier. The Tais who came to the area of present-day Thailand took up the Theravada Buddhism of the Mon together with Hindu-Khmer culture and statecraft, so that Thai culture became a mixture of Tai traditions with Indic, Mon and Khmer elements.

Genetic work on the same populations finds them close. Kutanan and colleagues, comparing Mon-Khmer and Tai speakers of northern Thailand, report a between-group fraction of 1 to 2 percent of the variation, statistically different from zero only in the much larger mitochondrial data set. They prefer gene flow after the Tai arrival to an explanation by prior similarity, and say the result should be read with care. Kampuansai and colleagues place the Lawa and the Mon in one cluster, in close contact with the Tai from the founding of Lan Na, against a second cluster of groups that had little contact with the lowlands.

Convergence in language

Chingduang Yurayong and colleagues read the encounter as one that reshaped the incomers’ speech. Tai–Kadai languages left in southern China, among them Zhuang and Kam, converged instead on Sinitic patterns inside the Western Lingnan linguistic area. Southwestern Tai moving into a landscape of Mon and Khmer speakers took on an Austroasiatic phonological profile, keeping complex vowel systems and initial consonant clusters that its northern relatives lost. They read the mismatch between Tai–Kadai speech and an ancestry reported as largely Austroasiatic as elite dominance. A small group of newcomers held authority, and a larger local population shifted language, carrying its own structures into the one it adopted. Their test case is Saek, classed as Northern Tai by the comparative method but aligned in typology with Lao and Thai. The encounter is visible in the lexicon as well. Mathias Jenny holds that the incomers took a large number of words from their new neighbours, and traces several to the Old Mon period: dèk 'child' and kwiən 'ox cart', both attested in seventh-century inscriptions near Lopburi, máʔ-phráaw 'coconut', whose Mon form stands in a sixth-century fragment from Nakhon Pathom, and khlɔɔŋ 'canal' and khrâat 'rake'. For dèk he argues Old Mon against Michael Vickery's Old Khmer derivation, on the ground that the Old Khmer initial would have given Thai th. Where the evidence does not settle the direction of borrowing, as with dàan 'path' and sàphaan 'bridge', he leaves it open.

Angkorian influence

How far Angkorian authority reached into these lands is disputed. Baker and Pasuk find no administrative trace of it west of the Khmer country. The Chao Phraya plain has yielded none of the temple-endowment inscriptions characteristic of Angkorian provinces, and Jayavarman VII's hospital foundations reach no further west than Prachin Buri. They take the spread of Angkorian styles across the plain to show cultural influence rather than administration. Ellen London gives the empire a wider reach, extending its control beyond the Khmer heartland to outlying areas populated largely by non-Khmer peoples, among them the country north and north-east of modern Bangkok, the lower central plain and the upper Ping River around Lamphun and Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

The Tai were the main non-Khmer population of the central Thai areas on that periphery, and some Tai groups were probably absorbed into the Khmer population. The rest kept their cultural distinctiveness, though their animist religion gave way in part to Buddhism. Tai records treat the Angkorian period as one of great internal strife, and in the 11th and 12th centuries territories with a strong Tai presence, Lavo among them, resisted Khmer control.

Xiān and the port polities

Chinese records of the late 13th and 14th centuries call the polities of the lower Chao Phraya Xiān (暹). Yoneo Ishii argued that the name covered several port polities of the Bay of Bangkok rather than one place, and that in the Chinese classification of tributary countries a name written in Chinese characters need not denote a single locality. Baker and Pasuk make the same reservation, reading Xiān as Ayodhya from the late 13th century while allowing that the Chinese may first have applied the name elsewhere.

The earliest notices of the name are Vietnamese. The Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư records that in 1149 merchant ships from Xiān and two other countries reached Hǎidōng and were granted a trading post at Vân Đồn. In the Chinese record the name first appears in 1282 or 1283, when an official fleeing the Mongol army took refuge there. It sent its first mission in 1292, its ruler presented a gold plate at court in 1295, and further missions followed in 1299, 1300, 1314, 1319 and 1323; over the same span Lavo sent four missions between 1289 and 1299 and Phetchaburi one in 1294. Suphan Buri appears later as Su-men-bang, whose prince, described as heir to the king of Siam, sent missions between the 1370s and 1398. Baker and Pasuk count four towns of the lower plain, Lavo, Suphan Buri, Ayodhya and Phetchaburi, that had each dealt with China in its own name before the union.

Which polity the name denotes has been disputed. The identification of Xiān with Sukhothai began with a translator of the Chinese annals and spread through Cœdès; Yamamoto Tatsurō challenged it in 1989 from the Guangzhou gazetteer of 1297–1307, in which Sukhothai stands as the object of a verb meaning to control and Xiān as its subject, so that the two cannot name one place. Xiān and Luó hú (Lavo) were joined in 1349, after which the records treat the pair as Xiānluó hú.

Lan Na, Sukhothai and Lan Xang

In their new home the Tai took up the Indic culture of the Mon and the Khmer, and Buddhism above all. The Tai kingdom of Lanna was founded in 1259 in what is now northern Thailand, and the Sukhothai Kingdom conventionally in 1238. As Sukhothai rose, the principal Lao city-states came increasingly under Tai influence: Muang Sua, also called Xieng Dong Xieng Thong, "the city of flame trees beside the River Dong", on the site of present-day Luang Prabang; and the twin towns of Vieng Chan Vieng Kham, present-day Vientiane and Viengkham. Maha Sila Viravong gives a stronger account, in which Sukhothai took Muang Sua in 1271 and the Lao town of Chanthaburi, renaming the latter Vieng Chan Vieng Kham. The Tai peoples had firmly established control in areas to the northeast of the declining Khmer Empire. After the death of Ram Khamhaeng and amid disputes within Lan Na, both were independent Lao-Tai mandalas until the founding of the kingdom of Lan Xang in 1353. The Sukhothai Kingdom and later the Ayutthaya kingdom took the Khmer lands of the upper and central Menam valley and pushed well beyond them.

Ming dynasty and Tai history

During the Ming dynasty in China, attempts were made to subjugate, control, tax, and settle ethnic Han along the lightly populated frontier of Yunnan with Southeast Asia (modern-day Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam). This frontier region was inhabited by many small Tai chieftainships or states as well as other Tibeto-Burman and Mon–Khmer ethnic groups.

The Ming Shi-lu records the relations between the Ming court in Beijing and the Tai-Yunnan frontier as well as Ming military actions and diplomacy along the frontier.

First Ming communication with Yunnan (1369)

The first communication between the Ming dynasty and Yunnan was in a formal "letter of instruction" using ritual language. Submission to the Ming was described as part of the cosmological order:

"From ancient times, those who have been lords of all under Heaven have looked on that which is covered by Heaven, that which is contained by the Earth and that on which the sun and moon shine, and regardless of whether the place was near or far, or what manner of people they are, there was no place for which they did not wish a peaceful land and a prosperous existence. It is natural that when China is governed peacefully, foreign countries would come and submit (來附)"…I am anxious that, as you are secluded in your distant places, you have not yet heard of my will. Thus, I am sending envoys to go and instruct you, so that you will all know of this" (14 July 1370).

Initial Ming attempts to win Yunnan over (1369–1380)

The Mongol prince Basalawarmi ruled Yunnan under the Yuan dynasty from the capital in Kunming. He ruled indirectly over an ethnically diverse collection of small polities and chieftainships. The most powerful of these states was controlled by the Duan family who ruled over the area surrounding Dali.

The Ming Shi-lu reports that envoys were sent to instruct the inhabitants of Yunnan in 1371. In 1372 the famous scholar Wang Wei offered terms of surrender to Yunnan as an envoy. The envoy Wang Wei was murdered in 1374 and another mission was sent in 1375. Once again the mission failed. A diplomatic mission was sent to Burma in 1374, but because Annam was at war with Champa the roads were blocked and the mission was recalled. By 1380 the Ming were no longer wording their communications as if Yunnan was a separate country. Initial gentle promptings were soon to be followed by military force.

Languages

Tai languages spoken today use incredibly diverse scripts, from Chinese characters to abugida scripts. The high diversity of Kra–Dai languages in southern China possibly points to the origin of the Kra–Dai language family in southern China. The Tai branch moved south into Southeast Asia only around 1000 AD. Chinese epigraphic materials from Chu texts show clear substrate influence predominantly from Tai-Kadai, and a few items of Austroasiatic and Hmong-Mien origin.

External relationships

In a paper published in 2004, the linguist Laurent Sagart hypothesized that the proto-Tai–Kadai language originated as an Austronesian language that migrants carried from Taiwan to mainland China. Afterwards, the language was then heavily influenced by local languages from Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien, or other families, borrowing much vocabulary and converging typologically. Later, Sagart (2008) introduces a numeral-based model of Austronesian phylogeny, in which Tai-Kadai is considered as a later form of FATK, a branch of Austronesian belonging to subgroup Puluqic developed in Taiwan, whose speakers migrated back to the mainland, both to Guangdong, Hainan and northern Vietnam around the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Upon their arrival in this region, they underwent linguistic contact with an unknown population, resulting in a partial relexification of FATK vocabulary. On the other hand, Weera Ostapirat supports a coordinate relationship between Tai-Kadai and Austronesian, based on a number of phonological correspondences. The following are Tai-Kadai and Austronesian lexical items showing the genetic connection between these two language families:

• PAN = proto-Austronesian, PMP = proto-Malayo-Polynesian, PTK = proto-Tai-Kadai
• M = Mak, Bd = Hlai of Baoding, G = Gelao, Tm = ?, By = Buyang, Lk = Lakkja, K = Kam, Ml = Mulam, Ts = Hlai of Tongshi
• Ostapirat (2013:3–8) did not provide full reconstructed forms for many of the proto-Tai-Kadai lexical items cited in the above tables

Genetics

Tai people tend to have high frequencies of Y-DNA haplogroup O-M95 (including its O-M88 subclade, which also has been found with high frequency among Vietnamese and among Kuy people in Laos, where they are also known as Suy, Soai, or Souei, and Cambodia), moderate frequencies of Y-DNA haplogroup O-M122 (especially its O-M117 subclade, like speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages), and moderate to low frequencies of haplogroup O-M119. It is believed that the O-M119 Y-DNA haplogroup is associated with both the Austronesian people and the Tai. The prevalence of Y-DNA haplogroup O-M175 among Austronesian and Tai peoples suggests a common ancestry with speakers of the Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and Hmong–Mien languages some 30,000 years ago in China (Haplogroup O (Y-DNA)). Y-DNA haplogroup O-M95 is found at high frequency among most Tai peoples, which is a trait that they share with the neighboring ethnic Austroasiatic peoples as well as Austronesian peoples in Mainland Southeast Asia (e.g. Cham in Bình Thuận Province of Vietnam, Jarai in Ratanakiri Province of Cambodia, Giarai and Ede in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam), Malaysia, Singapore, and western Indonesia. Y-DNA haplogroups O-M95, O-M119, and O-M122 all are subclades of O-M175, a genetic mutation that has been estimated to have originated approximately 40,000 years ago, somewhere in China.

A recent genetic and linguistic analysis in 2015 showed great genetic homogeneity between Kra-Dai speaking people, suggesting a common ancestry and a large replacement of former non-Kra-Dai groups in Southeast Asia. Kra-Dai populations are closest to southern Chinese and Taiwanese populations.

Social organization

The Tai practice a type of feudal governance that is fundamentally different from that of the Han Chinese people, and is especially adapted to state formation in ethnically and linguistically diverse montane environments centered on valleys suitable for wet-rice cultivation. The form of society is a highly stratified one. The Tai lived in the lowland and river valleys of mainland Southeast Asia. Assorted ethnic and linguistic group lived in the hills. The Tai village consisted of nuclear families working as subsistence rice farmers, living in small houses elevated above the ground. Households bonded together for protection from external attacks and to share the burden of communal repairs and maintenance. Within the village, a council of elders was created to help settle problems, organise festivals and rites and manage the village. Villages would combine to form a Mueang (Thai: เมือง), a group of villages governed by a Chao (Thai: เจ้า) (lord).

List of Southwestern Tai peoples

Northern branch

• Shan
• Tai Ya
• Tai Nüa
• Khamti
• Tai Phake
• Tai Aiton
• Tai Ahom
• Tai Leng
• Turung
• Sapa

Chiang Saen branch

• Thai
• some Northern Thai
• Lao
• Tai peoples of Vietnam
  • Tai Dam
  • Tai Daeng
  • Tai Dón
  • Tai Hang Tong
  • Tày Tac
• Tai Lü
• Khün
• Phuan
• Thai Song

Southern group

• Southern Thai

Southwestern Tai groups and names in China

Other Tai peoples and languages

Listed below are lesser-known Tai peoples and languages.

• Bazia (八甲 )– 1,106 people in Mengkang Village 勐康村, Meng'a Township 勐阿镇, Menghai County, Yunnan, who speak a language closely related to Tai Lü. They are classified by the Chinese government as ethnic Dai people. In Meng'a Town, they are in the village clusters of Mengkang 勐康 (in Shangnadong 上纳懂, Xianadong 下纳懂, and Mandao 曼倒), Hejian 贺建 (in villages 6, 7, and 8), and Najing 纳京 (in villages 6, 7, and 8). Zhang (2013) reports that there are 218 households and 816 people in 14 villages, and that the Bajia language is mutually intelligible with Tai. Another group of Bajia people in Manbi Village 曼必村, Menghun Town 勐混镇, Menghai County, Yunnan (comprising 48 households and 217 persons) has recently been classified by the Chinese government as ethnic Bulang people.
• Tai Beng 傣绷 – over 10,000 people in Yunnan Province, China. Also in Shan State, Myanmar. In China, they are in Meng'aba 勐阿坝, Mengma Town 勐马镇, Menglian County (in the three villages of Longhai 龙海, Yangpai 养派, and Guangsan 广伞); Mangjiao Village 芒角村, Shangyun Township 上允乡, Lancang County (in the 2 villages of Mangjing 芒京 and Mangna 芒那); Cangyuan County (in Mengjiao 勐角 and Mengdong 勐董 townships); Gengma County (in Mengding 勐定 and Mengsheng 勐省 townships); Ruili City (in small populations scattered along the border).
• Han Tai – 55,000 people in the Mengyuan County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan, China. Many Han Tai also speak Tai Lu (Shui Tai), the local lingua franca.
• Huayao Tai – 55,000 people (as of 1990) in Xinping and Mengyang Counties, Yunnan. It may be similar to Tai Lu.
• Lao Ga – 1,800 people mostly in Ban Tabluang, Ban Rai District, Uthai Thani Province, Thailand. Their language is reportedly similar to Lao Krang and Isan.
• Lao Krang – 50,000+ people in the provinces of Phichit, Suphan Buri, Uthai Thani, Chai Nat, Phitsanulok, Kamphaeng Phet, Nakhon Pathom and Nakhon Sawan, Thailand. Their language is similar to Isan and Lao. Tai Krang is not to be confused with Tai Khang, a Tai-speaking group of Laos numbering 5,000 people.
• Lao Lom – 25,000 people in Dan Sai District of Loei Province (locally known as the Lao Loei or Lao Lei), Lom Kao District of Phetchabun Province, and Tha Bo District of Nong Khai Province (locally known as the Tai Dan). The Lao Lom were first studied by Joachim Schliesinger in 2001. Unclassified Southwestern Tai language.
• Lao Ngaew – 20,000 to 30,000 people in Lop Buri Province (especially Ban Mi and Khok Samrong districts), the Tha Tako District of Nakhon Sawan Province and scattered parts of Singburi, Saraburi, Chaiyaphum, Phetchabun, Nong Khai and Loei provinces. Originally from eastern Xiengkhouang and western Huaphan provinces of Laos. Their language is similar to Isan.
• Lao Ti – 200 people in the 2 villages of Ban Goh and Nong Ban Gaim in Chom Bung District, Ratchaburi Province, Thailand. Originally from Vientiane in Laos. Their language is similar to Lao and Isan.
• Lao Wiang – 50,000+ people in Prachinburi, Udon Thani, Nakhon Sawan, Nakhon Pathom, Chai Nat, Lopburi, Saraburi, Phetchaburi and Roi Et. Originally from Wiang Chan (Vientiane) in Laos. Their language is similar to Lao.
• Paxi – 1,000+ people (as of 1990) in 2 villages 8 km from Menghai Town, at the foot of Jingwang Mountain in Xishuangbanna.
• Tai Bueng – 5,700 people in 2 villages of Phatthana Nikhom District, Lopburi Province, Thailand. The Tai Bueng live in the villages of Ban Klok Salung (pop. 5,000) and Ban Manao Hwan (pop. 600). Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Doi ('mountain people') – 230 people (54 families) as of 1995 in Long District of Luang Namtha, Laos. Their language is likely Palaungic.
• Tai Gapong ('brainy Tai') – 3,200+ people; at least 2,000 people (500+ households) in Ban Varit, Waritchapum District, Sakhon Nakhon Province; also live with the Phutai and Yoy. The Tai Gapong claim to have originated in Borikhamxai Province, Laos.
• Tai He – 10,000 people in Borikhamxai Province, Laos: in Viangthong and Khamkeut Districts; also in Pakkading and Pakxan Districts. Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Kaleun – 7,000 people mostly in Khamkeut District, Borikhamxai Province, Laos; also in Nakai District. 8,500 people in Thailand: the provinces of Mukdahan (Don Tan and Chanuman districts), Nakhon Phanom (Muang District) and parts of Sakhon Nakhon Province. The Tai Kaleung speak a Lao dialect.
• Tai Khang – 5,600+ people in Xam-Tai District, Houaphan Province, Laos; also in Nongkhet District of Xiangkhoang Province, and Viangthong District of Borikhamxai Province. Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Kuan (Khouane) – 2,500 people in Viengthong District, Borikhamxai Province, Laos: near the banks of the Mouan River.
• Tai Laan – 450 people in a few villages of Kham District, Xiangkhoang Province, Laos. Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Loi – 1,400 people in Namkham, Shan State, Burma; 500 people in Long District, Luang Namtha Province, Laos; possibly also in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, China, since some Tai Loi in Burma say they have relatives in China. Their language may be related to and probably also closely related to Palaung Pale.
• Tai Men – 8,000 people in Borikhamxai Province, Laos: mostly in Khamkeut District, but also in Vienthong, Pakkading, and Pakxan Districts. They speak a Northern Tai language.
• Tai Meuiy – 40,000+ people in Borikhamxai, Khammouan, Xiengkhouang, and Houaphan (just outside the town of Xam Neua) provinces of Laos. Their language is reportedly similar to Tai Dam and Tai Men.
• Tai Nyo – 13,000 people in Pakkading District, Borikhamxai Province, Laos; 50,000 people in northeastern Thailand, where they are better known as Nyaw. Similar to Lao of Luang Prabang.
• Tai Pao – 4,000 people in Viangthong, Khamkeut and Pakkading districts of Borikhamxai Province, Laos. They live near the Tai He and may be related to them. Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Peung – 1,000 people in Kham District, Xiengkhouang Province, Laos. They live near the Tai Laan and Tai Sam. Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Pong 傣棚 – perhaps as many as 100,000 people in along the Honghe River of southeastern, Yunnan, China, and possibly also in northern Vietnam. Subgroups include the Tai La, Tai You, and probably also Tai Ya (which includes Tai Ka and Tai Sai). Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Sam – 700 people in Kham District, Xiengkhuoang Province, Laos. Neighboring peoples include the Tai Peung and Tai Laan. Unclassified Tai language.
• Tai Song – 45,000+ people in Phetchabun, Phitsanulok, Nakhon Sawan (Tha Tako District), Ratchaburi (Chom Bung District), Suphan Buri (Song Phinong District), Kanchanaburi, Chumphon and Nakhon, and Pathom (Muang District). Also called Lao Song. They are a subgroup of the Tai Dam.
• Tai Wang – 10,000 people in several villages in Viraburi District, Savannakhet Province, Laos; 8,000 in and around the city of Phanna Nikhom, Sakhon Nakhon Province, Thailand. Their language is related to but distinct from Phutai.
• Tai Yuan ('Northern Thai') – 6,000,000 people in Northern Thailand and possibly 10,000 people in Houayxay and Pha-Oudom districts of Bokeo Province, Luang Namtha District of Luang Namhta Province, Xai District of Oudomxai Province, and Xaignabouri District of Xaignabouri Province. They speak a Southwestern Tai language.
• Tak Bai Thai – 24,000 people in southern Thailand (in Narathiwat, Pattani, and Yala provinces) and northern Malaysia. Their name comes from the town of Tak Bai in Narathiwat Province. Their language is highly different from nearby Southern Thai dialects, and may be related to the Sukkothai dialect further up north.
• Yang – 5,000 people in Phongsaly, Luang Namtha, and Oudomxay provinces, Laos (Chazee 1998).
• Kap Kè ('gekko' people) now refer to themselves as Nyo. The Nyo proper reside mostly along the Mekong between Hinboun and Pakxanh and also in Thailand. The Kap Kè claim they are the same as the Nyo of Ban Khammouane in Khamkeut District, Bolikhamsai province, Laos. Another Kap Kè group of about 40 households originally from Sop Khom has now resettled in Sop Phouan. This group claims to be from Ban Faan, about 1 kilometer from Sop Khom.
• Phuk (sometimes pronounced without the final –k as Phu') – According to themselves as well as other ethnic groups, the Phuk closely resemble the Kap Kè and originally came from nearby locations, referred to as phiang phuk and phiang Kap Kè. They were originally from the villages of Fane, Ka'an and Vong Khong.
• Thay Bo – located on the Nakai plateau in central Laos, along the middle Hinboun River, east of the Kong Lo cave and the Phon Tiou tin mine, and in Ban Na Hat and near Na Pè, close to the Vietnamese border. Bo means 'a mine,' referring people who worked either in the salt mines on the Nakai Plateau, or at the tin mine. Many older generation people speak a Vietic language as well, apparently Maleng, as spoken in the village of Song Khone on the Nam Sot River, a main tributary of the Nam Theun, although this has not been verified.
• Kha Bo – In 1996, the Bo of Sop Ma village reported that they were "born from the Kha," a reference to their Vietic origins, and in that village there was intermarriage with the Maleng of Song Khone. They are distinct from the Thay Bo of Hinboun. The Kha Bo on the Nakai plateau speak Nyo, whereas nowadays the Thay Bo of Hinboun speak Lao or Kaleung. The Ahoe, original inhabitants of the northwestern part of the Nakai Plateau, had also been relocated to Hinboun during the Second War of Indochina, and returned to their homeland speaking Hinboun Nyo as a second language.

In Burma, there are also various Tai peoples that are often categorized as part of a larger Shan ethnicity (see Shan people#Tai groups).