Tadahiko Shintani (Japanese: 新谷 忠彦, romanized: Shintani Tadahiko, born October 1946) is a Japanese linguist and Professor Emeritus of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, specializing in the phonology of New Caledonian languages and Southeast Asian languages.
[citation needed] In the 1990s, he led a group of Japanese linguists researching the languages of northern Laos.
[2] He is a prominent advocate of the concept of a Tai Cultural Area, which he uses to refer to the area of continental Southeast Asia―including Yunnan and Guangxi in China and Assam in India―that is inhabited by ethnic groups that speak Tai languages.
[3][4][5] Shintani has also recorded word lists of dozens of lesser-known Karenic languages.
The Linguistic survey of Tay cultural area (LSTCA) series of vocabularies by Tadahiko Shintani is published by the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).