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According to what I know about the relationship between the 'Thai' people and 苏州 Soochow is ...
There were 3 group of people or tribes known as Tai Kradai or Tai-Kadai. These people were like the citizens of the British colony Singapore where the Malays, the Chinese and Indians had a British master like Sir Stanford Raffles. The master of these tribal people was 吴太伯 Wu Taibo. He was the eldest son of King Tai of the Zhou Dynasty and the ancestor of King Wu of Zhou.
In fact, Wu Taibo was known to the Japanese too. Some even claimed to be his descendants which I doubt so.
Languages of the Tai-Kadai family are spoken across a wide area of southern China and South-East Asia. The Tai languages are the most important members of the family and include Thai, Lao, Shan (spoken in parts of northern Burma) and numerous other related, but not mutually intelligible, languages spoken across a wide area that stretches from northern Vietnam, across southern China to northern India. Geographical location has influenced the way in which Tai languages have developed.
Some, due to their proximity to China, adopted Chinese written characters, while others, including Thai, Lao and Shan, were influenced by early Indian cultural developments in mainland South-East Asia; the latter group developed their writing systems from an Indian script and borrowed a large number of words from Pali and Sanskrit, the classical languages of India.
Tai-Kadai languages are tonal and basically monosyllabic. Verbs and nouns have a single fixed form and word order is normally subject-verb-object, with adjectives following nouns. While Thai, with more than 50 million speakers, is a vibrant national language with a centuries’ old tradition of writing, other languages within the family, by contrast, are spoken by tiny minorities and, with no writing system and little cultural prestige attached to them, are in serious danger of becoming extinct.
The modern Wu language is actually a Sinitic language descended from Chu (actually Xiang and Wu both descended from Chu...and possibly Min also...while the rest of the main languages descended from northern speech). Basically, Chu people began to migrate eastward to the Wu region and established the foundation of modern Wu. The Chu settlers mixed with the soldiers garrisoned there and with the Wu-Yue natives. The natives were dwindled down because there were successive campaigns to move them into the Jianghuai region. This new Wu population later mixed with northerners migrating south during upheavals in the north. However, because the Wu region was already heavily populated, the northerners usually moved further south as well as settling in the Gan River region (swamping out the Chu/Xiang-Wu speakers there), thus further cutting off Xiang and Wu, which was once one language.
吴越 Wu Yue area during the 春秋 Spring and Autumn period, the people or citizens were 百越人 100 Yues 侗台语族 Dong language ? After Wu state had conquered Yue, the language of Yue did not change much. However, this was not the case when Yue was later conquered by the mighty Chu, Wu state was one of the three Chu as the Eastern Chu. That means, the Chu people had brought with them the 华夏语 Hua Xia language to the Wu area.
There was speculation whether the Wu state was officially 中原雅音 original Han language or a neighbouring Chu state language. But, with reference to those who came form Chu like 伍子胥 Wu ZeXu, 伯嚭 Bo Pi, 文种 Wen Zhong, 范蠡 Fan Li entered this region was likely to be a Chu language.
