Tai Nuea

Tai Nuea (ISO 639-3 code: tdd; Glottocode: tain1252) belongs to the Tai-Kadai languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is also known as ‘Tai Nüa’, or ‘Tai Le’, as it is a transliteration of the indigenous name (Luo 1998). Tai Nuea is one of the languages spoken by the Dai people in China, particularly in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, located in southwestern Yunnan Province, China (Yu & Luo 1980; Wang 1983). According to the data from China’s 2021 population census, the population of the Dai ethnicity in China is 1,329,985 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2021). Almost all speakers of Tai Nuea use Mandarin Chinese as a second language. In particular, the younger generation has received Mandarin education since early childhood and exhibits high proficiency in Mandarin.