East Bodish languages

East Bodish
East Bodish
Geographic; distribution	Bhutan
Ethnicity	Monpa people etc.
Linguistic classification	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish East Bodish; ; ; ;
Language codes
Glottolog	main1269

Last updated July 06, 2025

The East Bodish languages are a small group of non-Tibetic Bodish languages spoken in eastern Bhutan and adjacent areas of Tibet and India. They include:

Overview

"Bod" (བོད) is the endonym for Tibet.

The term "East Bodish" first appeared in Shafer (1955).^[1] He classified "Dwags" (Takpa) into the "East Bodish Unit" within the Bodish Branch of Sino-Tibetan.^[2]

Bodic Section
- Bodish Branch
  - West Bodish Unit
  - Central Bodish Unit
  - South Bodish Unit
  - East Bodish Unit
- Gurung Branch
- Tshangla Branch
- Rgyalrong Branch

Michael Aris mentioned the "Bum-thang" language spoken in areas such as "Tongsa", "Mangdelung", Kheng, and "Kurtö", which retains "the most archaic features of all the Bhutanese languages"^[3] George van Driem states that Bumthang, Kheng and Kurtöp could be considered dialects of a single language.^[4] Bhutanese anthropologist Kelzang Tashi treats Bumthang, Kheng, and Kurtöp as dialects of the language spoken by Üchogpa, which translates to the people of Central Bhutan^[5]

The East Bodish languages do not share certain lexical innovations with Old Tibetan (e.g. Tibetan bdun ; Takpa nis for 'seven').^[6] The branch is not a subgroup of Tibetic as defined by Nicolas Tournadre.^[7]

George van Driem initially proposed that 'Ole belonged to the group, but later decided that it belonged to a group of its own.^[8]

Although the East Bodish languages are closely related, Tshangla and related languages of eastern Bhutan, also called "Monpa" and predating Dzongkha, form a sister branch not to the East Bodish group, but to its parent Bodish branch.^[9]^[10] Thus the ambiguous term "Monpa" risks separating languages that should be grouped together, whereas grouping languages together that are quite distinct.^[11] Zakhring is apparently also related, though strongly influenced by Miju or a similar language.^[12]

Timotheus Bodt excludes Dakpa and Dzala, which he considers to be a single language, from the East Bodish languages. He finds Dakpa–Dzala to be closer to Tibetan than to other East Bodish languages. His resulting taxonomy is as follows:

Bodic

Central Bodic

	Dakpa–Dzala

	"Bodish" (i.e. Tibetic)

East Bodic

	Bumthang

	Kheng

	Kurtöp

(non‑exhaustively)

Common characteristics in Bumthang, Kheng and Kurtöp

Bodt lists the following phonetic innovations undergone in Bumthang, Kheng, and Kurtöp in contrast to Dakpa–Dzala and Tibetan. Exceptions to these sound laws may be attributed to Tibetic contact.

Vowel height swaps

Proto-Bodic *u became o in open syllables, but also conversely Proto-Bodic *o became u in most syllables (including open syllables).
Proto-Bodic *i became e in open syllables.
Any Proto-Bodic vowel following a palatalized consonant became /i/.

Changes to lateral consonants and clusters

*l̥, which Bodt believes to be an outright /ɬ/, assibilated to /ɕ/.
*l became /j/ before *a, *o and *u.
*bl- became /(b)dʑ/, possibly through an intermediate /bj/.
*kl- simplifies to *l-.
*gl- becomes /ʑ/ and kʰl- becomes /ɕ/.
*pl- does not have a consistent outcome; it can in one word develop an affricate or fricative but in another word remain unchanged.

Other changes

*sw- > *kw- (in Bumthang, the *w is absorbed by the following vowel to form a rounded vowel and then lost).

Shared retentions

Bumthang, Kheng and Kurtöp preserve onset *w, instead of changing it to /j/ like in Tibetan.
They also do not palatalize *s before *i.

Internal classification

Hyslop (2010)^[13] classifies the East Bodish languages as follows.

East Bodish
- Dakpa–Dzala
  - Dakpa
  - Dzala
- (core branch)
  - Phobjip
  - Chali–Bumthang
    - Chali
    - Bumthangic

She regards the Dakpa–Dzala and Bumthangic subgroups as secure, and the placement of Phobjip and Chali as more tentative.^[14]

Lu (2002) divides the "Menba language" (门巴语) into the following subdivisions:^[15]

Menba language
- Southern: 30,000 speakers in Cona County, Lhoka (Shannan) Prefecture, Tibet
  - Mama dialect 麻玛土语: Mama Township 麻玛乡 (or 麻麻乡), Lebu District 勒布区
  - Dawang dialect 达旺土语: Dawang Township 达旺镇, Mendawang District 门达旺地区
- Northern: 5,000 speakers in Mêdog County, Nyingchi Prefecture, Tibet
  - Wenlang dialect 文浪土语: Wenlang Township 文浪乡, Dexing District 德兴区
  - Banjin dialect 邦金土语: Bangjin District 邦金地区

Reconstruction

Hyslop (2014)^[16] reconstructs the following Proto-East Bodish forms.

*kwa 'tooth'
*kra 'hair'
*kak 'blood'
*kʰrat 'waist'
*lak 'hand'
*ná 'nose'
*pOskOm (?) 'knee'
*rOs 'bone'
*gO- 'head'
*mE- 'eye'
*kram 'otter'
*ta 'horse'
*kʰa- 'hen'
*wam 'bear'
*kʰwi 'dog'
*kʰaça 'deer'
*zV 'eat'
*ra 'come'
*gal 'go'
*lok 'pour'
*dot 'sleep'
*bi 'give'
*kʰar 'white'
*mla 'arrow'
*gor 'stone'
*kʰwe/*tsʰi 'water'
*rO (?) 'wind'
*On (?) 'baby'
*daŋ 'yesterday'
*néŋ 'year'
*da- 'today'
*tʰek 'one'
*sum 'three'
*ble 'four'
*laŋa 'five'
*grok 'six'
*nís 'seven'
*gʲat 'eight'
*dOgO 'nine'
*kʰal(tʰek) 'twenty'
*ŋa '1.SG'
*i/*nVn '2.SG'
*kʰi/*ba '3.SG'
*-ma 'FUT'
*lo 'Q.COP'

Additional reconstructions can be found in Hyslop (2016).^[17]

References

↑ Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2001). A Grammar of Kurtöp (PhD thesis). University of Oregon. p. 41. hdl:1794/11466 . Retrieved 2023-10-07.
↑ Shafer, Robert (1955). "Classification of the Sino-Tibetan Languages". WORD. 11 (1): 94–111. doi: 10.1080/00437956.1955.11659552 . ISSN 0043-7956.
↑ Aris, Michael Vaillancourt (1978). A Study on the Historical Foundations of Bhutan, with a Critical Edition and Translation of Certain Bhutanese Texts in Tibetan (PhD thesis). SOAS University of London. p. 14. Retrieved 2023-10-06.
↑ van Driem (1994), p. 91.
↑ Tashi, Tashi (2023). World of Worldly Gods: The Persistence and Transformation of Shamanic Bon in Buddhist Bhutan. Oxford University Press. p. 296. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
↑ Michailovsky, Boyd; Mazaudon, Martine. "Preliminary notes on the languages of the Bumthang group". In Kvaerne, Per (ed.). Proceedings of the 6th seminar of the international association for Tibetan studies, Fagernes 1992. The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. pp. 545–557.
↑ Tournadre, Nicolas (2014). "The Tibetic languages and their classification". Trans-Himalayan Linguistics. De Gruyter. pp. 103–129. doi:10.1515/9783110310832.105. ISBN 978-3-11-031074-0.
↑ van Driem, George (2011). "Tibeto-Burman subgroups and historical grammar". Himalayan Linguistics Journal. 10 (1): 31–39.
↑ van Driem, George L. (1994). "Language Policy in Bhutan" (PDF). Bhutan: aspects of culture and development. Kiscadale. pp. 87–105. ISBN 978-1-87083-817-7.
↑ van Driem, George (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill. p. 915. ISBN 978-90-04-12062-4.
↑ Andvik, Eric E. (2009). A Grammar of Tshangla. Tibetan Studies Library. Vol. 10. Brill. pp. 4–7. ISBN 978-90-04-17827-4.
↑ Blench, Roger; Post, Mark (2011), (De)classifying Arunachal languages: Reconstructing the evidence (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-26
↑ Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2010. On the internal phylogeny of East Bodish. Paper presented at the 5th NEILS meeting, Gauhati University 12–14 February 2010.
↑ Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2013). "On the internal phylogeny of East Bodish". In Hyslop, Gwendolyn; Morey, Stephen; Post, Mark W. (eds.). North East Indian Linguistics. Vol. 5. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India. pp. 91–112. ISBN 978-93-82264-72-9.
↑ Lu, Shaozun 陆绍尊 (2002). 门巴语方言研究[A study of Menba (Monpa) dialects] (in Chinese). Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House 民族出版社.
↑ Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2014). "A preliminary reconstruction of East Bodish". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.). Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 155–179. ISBN 978-3-11-031074-0.
↑ Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2016. East Bodish reconstructions in a comparative light Archived 2021-07-07 at the Wayback Machine . Fourth Workshop on Sino-Tibetan Languages of Southwest China (STLS-2016). University of Washington, Seattle, September 8–10, 2016.

Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2014). "A preliminary reconstruction of East Bodish". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.). Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 155–179. ISBN 978-3-11-031074-0.
Donohue, Mark (2021). "Language and dialect relations in Bumthang". Himalayan Linguistics. 19 (3). doi: 10.5070/H919247065 .

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[1] Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2001). A Grammar of Kurtöp (PhD thesis). University of Oregon. p. 41. hdl:1794/11466 . Retrieved 2023-10-07.

[2] Shafer, Robert (1955). "Classification of the Sino-Tibetan Languages". WORD. 11 (1): 94–111. doi: 10.1080/00437956.1955.11659552 . ISSN 0043-7956.

[3] Aris, Michael Vaillancourt (1978). A Study on the Historical Foundations of Bhutan, with a Critical Edition and Translation of Certain Bhutanese Texts in Tibetan (PhD thesis). SOAS University of London. p. 14. Retrieved 2023-10-06.

[FOOTNOTEvan_Driem199491-4] van Driem (1994), p. 91.

[5] Tashi, Tashi (2023). World of Worldly Gods: The Persistence and Transformation of Shamanic Bon in Buddhist Bhutan. Oxford University Press. p. 296. Retrieved 2023-11-04.

[6] Michailovsky, Boyd; Mazaudon, Martine. "Preliminary notes on the languages of the Bumthang group". In Kvaerne, Per (ed.). Proceedings of the 6th seminar of the international association for Tibetan studies, Fagernes 1992. The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. pp. 545–557.

[7] Tournadre, Nicolas (2014). "The Tibetic languages and their classification". Trans-Himalayan Linguistics. De Gruyter. pp. 103–129. doi:10.1515/9783110310832.105. ISBN 978-3-11-031074-0.

[8] van Driem, George (2011). "Tibeto-Burman subgroups and historical grammar". Himalayan Linguistics Journal. 10 (1): 31–39.

[vanDriem93-9] van Driem, George L. (1994). "Language Policy in Bhutan" (PDF). Bhutan: aspects of culture and development. Kiscadale. pp. 87–105. ISBN 978-1-87083-817-7.

[vanDriem1-10] van Driem, George (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill. p. 915. ISBN 978-90-04-12062-4.

[Andvik-11] Andvik, Eric E. (2009). A Grammar of Tshangla. Tibetan Studies Library. Vol. 10. Brill. pp. 4–7. ISBN 978-90-04-17827-4.

[12] Blench, Roger; Post, Mark (2011), (De)classifying Arunachal languages: Reconstructing the evidence (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-26

[13] Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2010. On the internal phylogeny of East Bodish. Paper presented at the 5th NEILS meeting, Gauhati University 12–14 February 2010.

[14] Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2013). "On the internal phylogeny of East Bodish". In Hyslop, Gwendolyn; Morey, Stephen; Post, Mark W. (eds.). North East Indian Linguistics. Vol. 5. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India. pp. 91–112. ISBN 978-93-82264-72-9.

[15] Lu, Shaozun 陆绍尊 (2002). 门巴语方言研究[A study of Menba (Monpa) dialects] (in Chinese). Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House 民族出版社.

[16] Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2014). "A preliminary reconstruction of East Bodish". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.). Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 155–179. ISBN 978-3-11-031074-0.

[17] Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2016. East Bodish reconstructions in a comparative light Archived 2021-07-07 at the Wayback Machine . Fourth Workshop on Sino-Tibetan Languages of Southwest China (STLS-2016). University of Washington, Seattle, September 8–10, 2016.

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