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The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan. According to Tournadre (2014), there are 50 languages, which split into over 200 dialects or could be grouped into 8 dialect continua. These languages are spoken in the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas in Gilgit-Baltistan, Aksai Chin, Ladakh, Nepal, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Bhutan. Classical Tibetan is the major literary language, particularly for its use in Buddhist literature.
The Tujia language is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken natively by the Tujia people in Hunan Province, China. It is unclassified within the Sino-Tibetan language family, due to pervasive influence from neighboring languages. There are two mutually unintelligible variants, Northern and Southern. Both variants are tonal languages with the tone contours of. Northern Tujia has 21 initials, whereas Southern Tujia has 26. As for the finals, Northern Tujia has 25 and Southern Tujia has 30, 12 of which are used exclusively in loanwords from Chinese. Its verbs make a distinction of active and passive voices. Its pronouns distinguish the singular and plural numbers along with the basic and possessive cases. As of 2005, the number of speakers was estimated at 70,000 for Northern Tujia and 1,500 for Southern Tujia, out of an ethnic population of 8 million.
Khams Tibetan is the Tibetic language used by the majority of the people in Kham. Khams is one of the three branches of the traditional classification of Tibetic languages. In terms of mutual intelligibility, Khams could communicate at a basic level with the Ü-Tsang branch.
Qiangic is a group of related languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family. They are spoken mainly in Southwest China, including Sichuan and northern Yunnan. Most Qiangic languages are distributed in the prefectures of Ngawa, Garzê, Ya'an and Liangshan in Sichuan with some in Northern Yunnan as well.
Jomda County, is a county of the Chamdo Prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
Mêdog, or Metok, or Motuo County, also known as Pemako, is a county as well as a traditional region of the prefecture-level city of Nyingchi in the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Pemako is considered famous as the Nyingma master Dudjom Rinpoche's birthplace, and as a prophesied refuge for Tibetan Buddhists by Padmasambhava.
The Gyalrongic languages constitute a branch of the Qiangic languages of Sino-Tibetan, although some propose that it may be part of a larger Rung languages group, and do not consider it to be particularly closely related to Qiangic, suggesting that similarities between Gyalrongic and Qiangic may be due to areal influence. However, other work suggests that Qiangic as a whole may in fact be paraphyletic, with the only commonalities of the supposed "branch" being shared archaisms and areal features that were encouraged by contact. Jacques & Michaud (2011) propose that Qiangic including Gyalrongic may belong to a larger Burmo-Qiangic group based on some lexical innovations.
Baima is a language spoken by 10,000 Baima people, of Tibetan ethnicity, in north-central Sichuan Province and Gansu Province, China. Baima is passed on from parents to children in Baima villages. It is spoken within the home domain and is not used in any media of mass communication.
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:
Zamthang County or Ndzamthang County, or Rangtang County is a county in the northwest of Sichuan Province, China, bordering on the Banma County of Qinghai Province to the north. It is one of 13 counties under the administration of and lies the westernmost county-level division of the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. Zamthang is on the upper reaches of the Dadu River, bordering the Barkam County and Aba County on the east and northeast, and adjoining Jinchuan County on the south, and Sêrtar County, Luhuo County and Dawu County in the west and south. Zamthang, which means "The field of Caishen" in Tibetan, lies in the southeast of the Tibetan Plateau and in the historical region of Amdo. The vast majority of the population is Tibetan(30200), followed by Han people(3949), Qiang people(269) and Hui people(78).
Gakog (Hongyuan) County is a county in the north of Sichuan Province, China. It is under the administration of the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. There is a river called Ka Chu/Gaqu in the area and kog means "valley" or "area"; thus it means the area of the Ga River.
Horpa are a cluster of closely related Gyalrongic languages of China. Horpa is better understood as a cluster of closely related yet unintelligible dialect groups/languages closely related to Horpa Shangzhai or Stodsde skad. The term Stodsde skad is a Tibetan name meaning "language of the upper village".
Zhongu (Zhonggu) Tibetan is a Tibetic language of Sichuan, China, once considered a dialect of Khams. It is spoken in Songpan County.
Gserpa is an eastern Tibetic language of Sichuan. It is spoken by a few hundred or thousand people in Sêrba District, Sêrtar County, Sichuan, China and is different from the Amdo Tibetan language, the dominant Tibetan language in the surrounding region.
Zbu, or Showu, is a Rgyalrong language spoken in Sichuan, China.
Basum is a divergent Bodish language spoken by about 2,500 people in Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, Nyingtri Prefecture, Tibet, China. Basum is spoken by 13.5% of the population of Gongbo'gyamda County. Glottolog lists Basum as unclassified within Bodish.
Lamo is an unclassified Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Tshawarong, Zogang County, Chamdo Prefecture, Tibet. It was recently documented by Suzuki & Nyima (2016). sMad skad, a closely related language variety, is also spoken in Tshawarong.
Larong or Zlarong is a recently documented Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Zogang and Markam counties of southeastern Chamdo, Tibet. It was recently documented by Zhao (2018) and Suzuki & Nyima (2018). Zhao (2018) tentatively classifies Zlarong as a Qiangic language.
Drag-yab is a Sino-Tibetan language recently documented by Suzuki & Nyima. It is spoken in the southern half of Zhag'yab County, Chamdo, eastern Tibet.
mDungnag Tibetan is a divergent Tibetic language of western Gansu, China.
References
- 1 2 Sun, Jackson T.-S. 2021. Gser-Rdo: A New Tibetic Language Across the Rngaba-Dkarmdzes Border .
- ↑ Tournadre, Nicolas (2005). "L'aire linguistique tibétaine et ses divers dialectes." Lalies, 2005, n°25, p. 7–56.
