In 1981, the linguist Wei Qingwen proposed an interpretation by comparing the words of the song with several Tai languages, particularly Zhuang varieties spoken today in Guangxi province.
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Zhengzhang's interpretation remains controversial, both because of the gap of nearly two millennia between the date of the song and written Thai and because Thai belongs to the more geographically distant Southwestern Tai languages.
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A competing Austro-Tai proposal linking Austronesian and Tai–Kadai is supported by Weera Ostapirat, Roger Blench, and Laurent Sagart, and is based on the traditional comparative method.
The Lao language is descended from Tai languages spoken in what is now southern China and northern Vietnam (probably by some of the various peoples referred to as the Baiyue) in areas believed to be the homeland of the language family and where several related languages are still spoken by scattered minority groups.
From this point on, he performed field studies of several Tai languages (including the Zhuang people's Longzhou and Wuming dialects), while at the same time conducting deep investigations into Old Chinese and Tibetan.
Tai Viet is a Unicode block containing characters for writing the Tai languages Tai Dam, Tai Dón, and Thai Song.