This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{ lang }}, {{ transliteration }} for transliterated languages, and {{ IPA }} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used - notably dhi for Dhimal.(February 2021) |
Dhimal | |
---|---|
धिमाल | |
Region | Nepal |
Ethnicity | Dhimal |
Native speakers | 20,000 (2011 census) [1] |
Dham script | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | dhi |
Glottolog | dhim1246 |
ELP | Dhimal |
Dhimal is a Sino-Tibetan language of Nepal spoken by about 20,000 people, mainly in the Terai of Koshi Province. There is an eastern and western dialect, which are separated by the Kankai River. Most people transcribe Dhimal into Devanagari and there are standard conventions for extra phonological distinctions.
Dhimal is spoken in the southern Terai of eastern Nepal, specifically in the districts of Morang, Jhapa and Sunsari. In the region the Dhimal make up slightly more than 1% of the population. [2]
The eastern and western dialects are separated by the Kankai River in Jhapa District. [1] The main areas of concentration for the western dialect is between the towns of Belbari and Damak, while the eastern dialect is concentrated along the Mechi River bordering India. [3]
Until the early 20th century, the Terai was considered a hostile environment for non-indigenous peoples and the Dhimal were thus left undisturbed. With the mass migration of hill people to the Terai came the destruction of most of the forest cover and thus the Dhimals were displaced and forced into a marginal position in society. The Dhimals have been thrust into a cash economy without specific skills or land, and their culture is thus rapidly eroding due to intermarriage with other groups and assimilation to the dominant Pahadi culture. Many Dhimal parents, especially in the eastern region, have stopped teaching their children Dhimal making the language highly endangered, likely to go extinct in two generations without revitalization efforts. Since the return of democracy to Nepal in the 1990s, the Dhimal have joined the struggle for linguistic and cultural equality being done by other Janjatis. In 1993 the Dhimal People's Development Centre in Damak was formed to revitalize Dhimal culture and in 2001 was given some government land to build a facility. Some literature has been published in the language and many of the youth are recording and posting Dhimal songs on sites like Youtube. [4]
Dhimal has 16 primary vowel phonemes, distinguished by length and nasality, and six diphthongs. [5]
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i / iː / ĩ | u / uː / ũ | |
Mid | e / eː / ẽ | ə | o / oː / õ |
Open vowel | a / aː / ɑ̃ |
The diphthongs of Dhimal are /iu,ui,eu,oi,au,ai/.
Dhimal has 31 consonants, including a four-way distinction between voiced & voiceless, aspirated (breathy in the case of voiced) and unaspirated.
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | mʱ | n | nʱ | ŋ | |||||
Plosive | voiceless | p | pʰ | t | tʰ | c | k | kʰ | ʔ | |
voiced | b | bʱ | d | dʱ | ɟ | ɟʱ | g | gʱ | ||
Fricative | s | h | ||||||||
Approximant | w | wʱ | l | lʱ | ||||||
Trill | r | rʱ |
Dhimal also has other consonants that only appear in loanwords from Indo-Aryan languages. These are /ɖ/, /ɖʱ/, /ʈ/, /ʈʱ/, /cʰ/, /ɳ/, /ɽ/, and /ʂ/. Depending on age, these may also be realized as their nearest Dhimal equivalents. [4]
Dhimal nouns can have one or multiple morphemes. Many polymorphemic nouns are made up of recognizable parts. For instance human relations are often made as a compound of the words for the two people involved in the relation. For instance aba-amai means 'parents', and is composed of the words aba meaning 'father' and amai meaning 'mother', the combination indicating their combined relationship.
Gender is marked morphologically, but only with body parts of human beings and on animate nouns. Animals may be marked for gender with distinct lexical items. Nouns are unmarked for number, except for personal pronouns. For personal pronouns, singular and plural are unmarked, and only the dual number is marked or distinguished. [2]
The following Dhimal (Western dialect) basic vocabulary word list is from Regmi, et al. (2014: 92-98). [6]
Madí—also known as Jamamadí after one of its dialects, and also Kapaná or Kanamanti (Canamanti)—is an Arawan language spoken by about 1,000 Jamamadi, Banawá, and Jarawara people scattered over Amazonas, Brazil.
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects whose ancestor was Old Dutch. It was spoken and written between 1150 and 1500. Until the advent of Modern Dutch after 1500 or c. 1550, there was no overarching standard language, but all dialects were mutually intelligible. During that period, a rich Medieval Dutch literature developed, which had not yet existed during Old Dutch. The various literary works of the time are often very readable for speakers of Modern Dutch since Dutch is a rather conservative language.
Niuean is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Māori, Samoan, and Hawaiian. Together, Tongan and Niuean form the Tongic subgroup of the Polynesian languages. Niuean also has a number of influences from Samoan and Eastern Polynesian languages.
Northern Sámi or North Sámi is the most widely spoken of all Sámi languages. The area where Northern Sámi is spoken covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. The number of Northern Sámi speakers is estimated to be somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000. About 2,000 of these live in Finland and between 5,000 and 6,000 in Sweden, with the remaining portions being in Norway.
The Terai or Tarai is a lowland region in parts of southern Nepal and northern India that lies to the south of the outer foothills of the Himalayas, the Sivalik Hills and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. This lowland belt is characterised by tall grasslands, scrub savannah, sal forests and clay rich swamps. In North India, the Terai spreads from the Yamuna River eastward across Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. The Terai is part of the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands ecoregion. Nepal's Terai stretches over 33,998.8 km2 (13,127.0 sq mi), about 23.1% of Nepal's land area, and lies at an elevation of between 67 and 300 m. The region comprises more than 50 wetlands. North of the Terai rises the Bhabar, a narrow but continuous belt of forest about 8–12 km (5.0–7.5 mi) wide.
Haida is the language of the Haida people, spoken in the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the coast of Canada and on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. An endangered language, Haida currently has 24 native speakers, though revitalization efforts are underway. At the time of the European arrival at Haida Gwaii in 1774, it is estimated that Haida speakers numbered about 15,000. Epidemics soon led to a drastic reduction in the Haida population, which became limited to three villages: Masset, Skidegate, and Hydaburg. Positive attitudes towards assimilation combined with the ban on speaking Haida in residential schools led to a sharp decline in the use of the Haida language among the Haida people, and today almost all ethnic Haida use English to communicate.
Jhapa District is a district of Koshi Province in eastern Nepal named after a Rajbanshi Surjapuri language word "Jhapa", meaning "to cover" (verb). The 2021 Nepal Census, puts the total population of the district at 994,090. The total area of the district is 1,606 square kilometres.
Morang District is located in Koshi Province in eastern Nepal. It is an Outer Terai district, which borders Jhapa to the east, Dhankuta and Panchthar to the north, Sunsari to the west, and Bihar, India, to the south. Morang has one metropolitan city (Biratnagar), eight municipalities and eight rural municipalities. The total area of the district is 1,855 km2 (716 sq mi). The lowest elevation point is 60 meters and the highest is 2,410 meters above sea level. The headquarters of Morang is connected by the Koshi National Highway to the east–west Mahendra National Highway at Itahari, Sunsari. Morang is also connected to the Hill parts of the eastern region of Nepal. Morang is the core industrial sector for the eastern region of Nepal.
Yakkha is a language spoken in parts of Nepal, Darjeeling district and Sikkim. The Yakkha-speaking villages are located to the East of the Arun river, in the southern part of the Sankhuwasabha district and in the northern part of the Dhankuta district of Nepal. About 14,000 people still speak the language, out of 17,003 ethnic Yakkha in Nepal. Genealogically, Yakkha belongs to the Eastern Kiranti languages and is in one subgroup with several Limbu languages, e.g. Belhare, Athpare, Chintang and Chulung. Ethnically however, the Yakkha people perceive themselves as distinct from the other Kiranti groups such as Limbu.
Tauya is a Rai Coast language spoken in the Ramu River valley, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea by approximately 350 people. The Linguistics Department at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, has Tauya language resources.
Garo, also referred to by its endonym A·chikku, is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Northeast Indian states of Meghalaya, Assam, and Tripura. It is also spoken in certain areas of the neighbouring Bangladesh. According to the 2001 census, there are about 889,000 Garo speakers in India alone; another 130,000 are found in Bangladesh.
Damak is one of the oldest municipalities in Jhapa District of Koshi Province in eastern Nepal. It is situated between the Ratuwa River in the east and the Maawa River in the west. It has Sivalik Hills in its north and ends with the intersection of Ratuwa River and Maawa River in the south. Mahendra Highway, the longest highway of Nepal, bisects the municipality. It is the largest city in Jhapa District with a population of 107,410 in 2021.
The Wuvulu-Aua language is an Austronesian language which is spoken on the Wuvulu and Aua Islands and in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea.
Lau, also known as Mala, is an Oceanic language spoken on northeast Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. In 1999, Lau had about 16,937 first-language speakers, with many second-language speakers through Malaitan communities in the Solomon Islands, especially in Honiara.
The Dhimal or Dhemal are ethnic group residing in the eastern Terai of Nepal and West Bengal of India. They are a Sino-Tibetan-speaking ethnic group of the eastern Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal and Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. They are respected as the "First Nepalese Citizens" of Damak municipality and are also Scheduled Indian tribes in West Bengal.
Surunga is a trade center of Jhapa District. It is located in Kankai Municipality in Jhapa District in the Koshi Province of south-eastern Nepal. At the time of the 1991 Nepal census it had a population of 16,747 people living in 2996 individual households. Surunga is one of the rapidly developing towns of Jhapa district. It is situated on the bank of the Kankai River.
Yolmo (Hyolmo) or Helambu Sherpa, is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Hyolmo people of Nepal. Yolmo is spoken predominantly in the Helambu and Melamchi valleys in northern Nuwakot District and northwestern Sindhupalchowk District. Dialects are also spoken by smaller populations in Lamjung District and Ilam District and also in Ramecchap District. It is very similar to Kyirong Tibetan and less similar to Standard Tibetan and Sherpa. There are approximately 10,000 Yolmo speakers, although some dialects have larger populations than others.
The Limba language, Hulimba, is a Niger–Congo language of Sierra Leone and Guinea. It is not closely related to other languages and appears to form its own branch of the Niger–Congo family. Dialects include Tonko, Sela, Kamuke, Wara-wara, Keleng, Biriwa, and Safroko. The eastern variety, spoken primarily in Guinea, is quite distinct. Limba has a system of noun classes, marked by an old, eroded set of prefixes augmented by a newer set of enclitics.
Zotung (Zobya) is a language spoken by the Zotung people, in Rezua Township, Chin State, Burma. It is a continuum of closely related dialects and accents. The language does not have a standard written form since it has dialects with multiple variations on its pronunciations. Instead, Zotung speakers use a widely accepted alphabet for writing with which they spell using their respective dialect. However, formal documents are written using the Lungngo dialect because it was the tongue of the first person to prescribe a standard writing, Sir Siabawi Khuamin.
Shivasatakshi is a municipality in the southeastern part of Jhapa District in the Koshi Province of eastern Nepal. The new municipality was formed by merging four existing VDCs—Shivaganj, Satasidham, Dharampur, and Panchgachhi—on 2 Dec 2014. The office of the municipality is that of the former Satasidham village development committee (VDC).
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)