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*[[Shan]] (including the [[Khamti]] people)<ref name="Joshua Project">[http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-clusters.php Joshua Project]</ref>
*[[Shan]] (including the [[Khamti]] people)<ref name="Joshua Project">[http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-clusters.php Joshua Project]</ref>
*[[Dai people|Dai]] (including the [[Lu people|Lu]] people)<ref name="Joshua Project">[http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-clusters.php Joshua Project]</ref>
*[[Dai people|Dai]] (including the [[Lu people|Lu]] people)<ref name="Joshua Project">[http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-clusters.php Joshua Project]</ref>
*[[Lao people|Lao]]<ref name="Joshua Project">[http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-clusters.php Joshua Project]</ref>
*[[Tai Khun]]<ref name="Joshua Project">[http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-clusters.php Joshua Project]</ref>
*[[Tai Khun]]<ref name="Joshua Project">[http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-clusters.php Joshua Project]</ref>
*[[Tai Yong]]
*[[Tai Yong]]

Revision as of 14:54, 31 October 2007

Tai
Tai women and man in Guizhou, China.
Regions with significant populations
China, Thailand, India, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Burma
Languages
Tai-Kadai languages

The Tai or Tai-Kadai ethnicity refers collectively to the ethnic groups of southern China and Southeast Asia, stretching from Hainan to eastern India and from southern Sichuan to Thailand, that speak the Tai-Kadai languages and share similar traditions and festivals, including Songkran.[1] Despite never having a unified nation-state of their own, the peoples also share or historically shared a vague idea of a "Siam" nation, corrupted to Shan or Assam in some places, and most self-identify as "Tai".

Origin of the Tai

Comparative linguistic research seems to indicate that the Tai people were a proto Tai-Kadai speaking culture of southern China, and that they may have originally been of Austronesian descent.[2] Prior to inhabiting mainland China, the Tai are suspected to have migrated from a homeland on the island of Taiwan where they spoke a dialect of Proto-Austronesian or one of its descendant languages.[2] After the arrival of Sino-Tibetan speaking ethnic groups from mainland China to the island of Taiwan, the Tai would have then migrated into mainland China, perhaps along the Pearl River, where their language greatly changed in character from the other Austonesian languages under influence of Sino-Tibetan and Hmong-Mien language infusion. The coming of the Han Chinese to this region of southern China may have prompted the Tai to migrate in mass once again, this time southward over the mountains into Southeast Asia.[3] While this theory of the origin of the Tai is currently the leading theory, there is insufficient archaeological evidence to prove or disprove the proposition at this time, and the linguistic evidence alone is not conclusive. However, in further support of the theory, it is believed that the O1 Y-DNA haplogroup is associated with both the Austronesian people and the Tai.

See also: Austronesian people

Subdivisions of the Tai Ethnic Group

The following is a list of clades of the Tai Ethnicity, as proposed by the Faculty of Arts at Chulalongkhorn Univsersity:

Many of the known ethnic groups, however, are missing from the list.

Present Geographical Distribution and Demographics

The various Tai ethnic groups are prevalent in the Southeast Asian countries of Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as China, India, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the United Arab Emirates and North America. Greatest ethnic diversity within the Tai people occurs in China. The following list demonstrates the distribution of significant populations of individual Tai ethnic groups throughout Asia:

Tai of Thailand

Tai of China

Thai of Vietnam

Tai of Burma

Tai of Laos

Tai of Cambodia

Tai of India

Tai of Sri Lanka

Tai of Malaysia

Tai of Singapore

Tai of Japan

Tai of Taiwan

Tai of North America

United States of America

Canada

Tai of Europe

United Kingdom

Iceland

Finland

Norway

France

Tai of Australia

Tai of New Zealand

Tai of the United Arab Emirates

Tai of Argentina

Common Culture

Language

Main article: Tai languages

The languages spoken by the Tai people, or Tai languages, are a subgroup of the Tai-Kadai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai-Kadai languages, including Thai, the national language of Thailand, Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos, Myanmar's Shan language, and Zhuang, a group of languages of southern China. Thes languages are tonal languages, meaning variations in tone of a word can change that word's meaning.

Festivals

The Tai throughout Asia celebrate a number of common festivals, including a holiday known as Songkran, which originally marked the vernal equinox, but is now celebrated on the 14th of January every year.

References

  1. ^ Strictly speaking, the Tai ethnicity is actually a clade of the Tai-Kadai ethnicity, although there is currently not a consensus as to the exact arrangement of the component ethnic groups into clades
  2. ^ a b Sagart, L. 2004. The higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai. Oceanic Linguistics 43.411-440.
  3. ^ Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology?
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx by bz ca cb cc cd ce cf cg ch ci cj ck cl cm cn co cp cq cr cs ct cu cv cw cx cy cz da db dc dd de df dg dh di dj dk dl dm dn do dp dq dr ds dt du dv dw dx dy dz ea eb ec Joshua Project
  5. ^ a b c d e f g The Thai and Other Tai-Speaking Peoples
  6. ^ a b c d e f Thai Ethnic Group in Vietnam
  7. ^ Vets With a Mission
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