Shintani Tadahiko

Tadahiko Shintani (Japanese: 新谷 忠彦, 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.

Shintani is from Ishikawa Prefecture. He graduated from Department of French Studies at Sophia University in 1970, and completed his studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1974. In 1977 he was appointed assistant professor at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and was promoted to associate professor in 1987 and full professor in 1995. He retired in 2011.

In the 1990s, he led a group of Japanese linguists researching the languages of northern Laos. 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.

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