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For the Indian cooking utensil, see Kadai.

The Tai-Kadai languages, also known as Kadai or Kradai, are a tonal 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.

A recent proposal^[1] by Laurent Sagart, which may have some support from human population genetics, is that the proto-Tai-Kadai language was fundamentally an early Austronesian language that may have back-migrated from northeastern Taiwan to the southeastern coast of China thousands of years ago, subsequent to the migration of a pre-Austronesian population or populations from coastal East China to the island of Taiwan and the evolution of the proto-Austronesian language on that island. The apparently cognate forms in Tai-Kadai and Austronesian could then be explained as either commonly inherited vocabulary or prehistoric loanwords from this hypothetical and unknown (but perhaps proto-Malayo-Polynesian-related) Austronesian language into proto-Tai-Kadai. Sagart also suggests that the Austronesian language family (of which he claims proto-Tai-Kadai is one subgroup) is ultimately related to the Sino-Tibetan languages and probably has its origin in a Neolithic community of the coastal regions of prehistoric North China or East China.

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.

The classification of Edmondson & Solnit (1997) is as follows. Note however that there is no consensus classification. An alternative is given at Ethnologue.

• Hlai languages
  • Jiamao (Hainan)
  • Hlai (Hainan)
• Geyan languages
  • Yerong (mainland China)
  • Gelao (Vietnam)
  • Lachi (Vietnam)
  • White Lachi (Vietnam)
  • Buyang (mainland China)
  • Cun (Hainan)
  • En (Vietnam)
  • Qabiao (Vietnam)
  • Laqua (Vietnam)
  • Laha (Vietnam)
• Kam-Tai languages
  • Be-Tai languages
    • Be (Hainan)
    • Tai languages
    • Saek (Laos)
  • Lakkia-Kam-Sui languages
    • Lakkia-Biao languages (mainland China)
      • Lakkia
      • Biao
    • Kam-Sui languages (mainland China)
      • Ai-Cham
      • Cao Miao
      • Northern Dong
      • Southern Dong
      • Kang
      • Mak
      • Mulam
      • Maonan
      • Sui
      • T’en

• Edmondson, J.A. and D.B. Solnit eds. 1997. Comparative Kadai: the Tai branch. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. ISBN 0883120666
• Blench, Roger. 2004. Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology? Paper for the Symposium "Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan: genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence". Geneva June 10-13, 2004. Université de Genèv.

• Tai-kadai Languages. (2007). Curzon Pr. ISBN 9780700714575
• Diller, A. (2005). The Tai-Kadai languages. London [etc.]: Routledge. ISBN 070071457X
• Edmondson, J. A., & Solnit, D. B. (1988). Comparative Kadai: linguistic studies beyond Tai. Summer Institute of Linguistics publications in linguistics, no. 86. [Arlington, Tex.]: Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN 0883120666

1. ^ Sagart, L. 2004. The higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai. Oceanic Linguistics 43.411-440.