It was relatively free of both Mon-Khmer and Indo-Aryan influences and has a written tradition dating back to the 13th century.

The language was only partially known by a small group of traditional priests of the Ahom religion, and it was being used only for ceremonial or ritualistic purposes.

[7][3] Tai-Ahom is classified in a Northwestern subgrouping of Southwestern Tai owing to close affinities with Shan, Khamti and, more distantly, Thai.

[12] After increasing their power in Upper Assam, the Ahom people extended their power to the south of the river Brahmaputra and east of the river Dikho, which corresponds to the modern day districts of Dibrugarh and Sibsagar, Assam, where the Ahom still reside today.

[15] In the 16th and 17th centuries, the small Ahom community expanded their rule dramatically toward the west and they successfully saw off challenges from the Mughal Empire and other invaders.

[14] The rapid expansion resulted in the Ahom people becoming a small minority in their own kingdom, of which they kept control.

During the 17th century, the Assamese language entered the Ahom court and co-existed with the Tai-Ahom for some time before finally replacing it.

[citation needed] The language today is used chiefly for liturgical purposes, and is no longer used in daily life.

Several publications were created based on the fabricated samples, leading to incorrect grammatical analysis and dictionary resources that acted as a barrier to future researchers.

Despite these difficulties, along with the lack of native speakers and specific text, studies in Ahom have prevailed, and certain available scripts have been translated and transliterated, using known words, characters and context.

[21] In 1954, at a meeting of Ahom people at Patsaku, Sibsagar District, the Tai Historical and Cultural Society of Assam was founded.

In 1981 the Eastern Tai Literary Organization has been founded in Dhemaji, which produced language text books and publications in the Ahom script.

Upon further investigation, it was determined that the priests could decipher the Ahom script and read the words aloud.

The scholar Terwiel recommended in 1992 to base neo-Ahom on the grammar and tones of the very closely related Aiton language, which is still spoken in Assam.

In revived Ahom, they are now differentiated by compounding them with another word: tu for animal and pha for cloth respectively.

[32][33] An online dictionary containing nearly 5,000 entries (see External links) has been created by analyzing old manuscripts, especially the Bar Amra.

[34] The Tai Ahom consonants have been reconstructed as the following, by analyzing old texts:[11] The semi-vowel /w/ is missing from the system, however it is an allophone of /b/ that occurs only in the word final position.