Language Families
Kra-Dai
Also Known As Tai-Kadai The older name, still used by Ethnologue and Glottolog, though some specialists consider it confusing.
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A family of roughly 93 million speakers across southern China, Hainan Island, Southeast Asia and northeast India, containing Thai and Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos; about 60 percent of Kra-Dai speakers speak Thai. Ethnologue counts 95 languages in the family, 62 of them in the Tai branch. Proto-Kra-Dai has been reconstructed, and the family's relationship to its neighbors is unsettled: Weera Ostapirat treats Kra-Dai and Austronesian as sister families descended from a shared ancestor, while Laurent Sagart argues instead that Kra-Dai is a branch nested within Austronesian, descended from a Formosan ancestral population he labels FATK.
Facts
RegionSouthern China, Hainan Island, mainland Southeast Asia (especially Thailand and Laos) and northeast India. 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusProto-Kra-Dai is reconstructed and the family's internal structure is well established. 1 The unsettled question is external, not internal: how Kra-Dai relates to Austronesian. Cross-Tradition Connections
Held Differently
Austronesian, Language Families Why this is disputed. Weera Ostapirat proposes Kra-Dai and Austronesian as sister families descended from a common ancestor, on the strength of regular sound correspondences.
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Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Associated With: Austronesian
Sagart argues Kra-Dai descended from a Formosan ancestral branch of Austronesian (FATK, Formosan Ancestor of Tai-Kadai), making Kra-Dai a subgroup nested within Austronesian rather than a sister family descended from an independent common ancestor, contrary to Ostapirat's sister-family account recorded on this edge.
A dissenting reading, from Laurent SagartWikipedia: Kra-Dai Languages, Wikimedia Foundation
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