Təi 'Àng ("basin people") is an isolating, monosyllabic Northern Tai language exhibiting strong mainland Southeast Asian areal features through contact with Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Bunu (Hmongic), alongside its Proto-Tai (Southern Zhuang-adjacent) substrate. The speech community is placed in the karst river-basin country of southwestern Guangxi, around Daxin County and the wider Zuo River drainage near the Vietnam border — terrain of limestone peaks enclosing flat valley basins, which the language's own name reflects. It employs a strict SVO morphosyntactic alignment, utilizing compounding and sesquisyllabic derivation (inherited from Proto-Tai, per Pittayaporn 2009) for polysyllabic word formation. The phonological profile consists of an eight-vowel system with a close-mid and open-mid contrast, alongside a consonant inventory that lacks voiced stops entirely. The stops feature a two-way tenuis and aspirated contrast across five places of articulation, governed by a syllable struct
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