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The Southwestern Tai or Thai languages are a branch of the Tai languages of Southeast Asia. Its languages include Central Thai (Siamese), Northern Thai (Lanna), Lao (including Isan ), Shan and others.
Many Southwestern Tai languages are written using Brahmi-derived alphabets. Zhuang languages are traditionally written with Chinese characters called Sawndip, and now officially written with a romanized alphabet, though the traditional writing system is still in use to this day. Thai script; Lao script; Sawndip; Shan script; Ahom script
Tai peoples are the populations who speak (or formerly spoke) the Tai languages. There are a total of about 93 million people of Tai ancestry worldwide, with the largest ethnic groups being Dai, Thais, Isan, Tai Yai (Shan), Tai Lai (Shanni), Lao, Tai Ahom and Northern Thai peoples .
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.
Tai Lue is a Southwestern Tai language spoken in China, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar by about 555,760 people. There are about 280,000 speakers of Tai Lue in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and Jiangcheng Hani and Yi Autonomous County in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. There are about 126,000 Tai Lue speakers in Bokeo, Luang Prabang ...
The Southwestern group includes Thai, the national language of Thailand; northeastern Thai and Lao, spoken in eastern Thailand and Laos; Pak Tay (South Thai), spoken in southern Thailand; Shan, spoken in eastern and northern Myanmar; and Tai Dam (Black Tai) and Tai Don (Tai Khaw, or White Tai), spoken mainly in North Vietnam.
In Tai languages: The distribution and classification of Tai languages …divided into three linguistic groups—the Southwestern, the Central, and the Northern. Thai and Lao, the official languages of Thailand and Laos, respectively, are the best known of the languages.
