The History of the Kra-Dai (Tai-Kadai) Languages

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The Kra-Dai languages, also known as the Tai-Kadai languages, are a language family widely spoken across southern China and Mainland Southeast Asia. The Tai branch, which contains Thai and Lao, constitutes the bulk of the family.

These languages are tonal. They also share many lexical similarities with the Chinese languages due to centuries of language contact. There are also hypotheses proposing that Kra-Dai may be related to the Austronesian or Hmong-Mien families.

This video presents the history and evolution of the Kra-Dai languages from 2000 BCE to the present.

Disclaimer: all dates are approximations, and there are many hypotheses regarding the development and classification of these languages that are not represented in this video.


Music by Brandon Fiechter
Thai Folk Music - Khao Yai