(The following is a post by Ryan Wolfson-Ford, Junior Fellow, Asian Division, Summer 2019)
The Tai language family traverses national boundaries and encompasses a variety of scripts. In addition to Thai, the official language of Thailand, it also includes Lao, the lingua franca of Laos, as well as Shan, spoken by the Shan people in Burma (Myanmar). Tai languages can also be found in northern Vietnam and southwestern China, where a group of related dialects collectively known as Zhuang are widely spoken in the autonomous region of Guangxi.