Tai-Kadai languages

For the Indian cooking utensil, see Kadai.

The Tai-Kadai languages, also known as Kadai or Kradai, are a language family found in Southeast Asia and southern China. They were formerly considered to be part of the Sino-Tibetan family, but are now classified as an independent family. It is sometimes suggested that they are related to the Austronesian language family, in a family called "Austro-Tai", or even part of a larger Austric superfamily. However, proposals for the Austric relationship do not conform to the comparative method.

Roger Blench suggests that, if the more limited Austro-Tai connection is valid, the relationship is unlikely to be one of two sister families, as has traditionally been proposed. Rather, he suggests that the Kadai languages may be a branch of Austronesian that migrated from the Philippines to Hainan, and from there spread to mainland China, where the Daic branch of Kadai was "radically restructured" under the influence of the Hmong-Mien languages and Chinese.

The diversity of the Tai-Kadai languages in southeastern China suggests that this is close to their homeland. The Tai branch moved south into Southeast Asia only in historic times, founding the nations that later became Thailand and Laos in what had been Austroasiatic territory.