Languages of Bhutan

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Languages of Bhutan
National Library of Bhutan sign.jpg
Sign in Dzongkha and English at the National Library of Bhutan
Official Dzongkha
Recognised Tshangla (Sharchop), Nepali, Dzala, Kheng, Bantawa
Minority Brokkat, Brokpa, Chocangacakha, Khams Tibetan, Lakha, Sikkimese, Bumthang, Chali, Dakpa, Nyenkha, Gurung, Kiranti, Lepcha, Newar, Tamang, Gongduk, Lhokpu, 'Ole
Foreign English, Hindi
Signed Bhutanese Sign Language
Keyboard layout
Languages of Bhutan.svg
Languages of Bhutan.svg
Major languages of Bhutan

There are two dozen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family except for Nepali, which is an Indo-Aryan language, and Bhutanese Sign Language. [1] Dzongkha, the national language, is the only native language of Bhutan with a literary tradition, though Lepcha and Nepali are literary languages in other countries. [2] Other non-Bhutanese minority languages are also spoken along Bhutan's borders and among the primarily Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community in South and East Bhutan. Chöke (or Classical Tibetan) is the language of the traditional literature and learning of the Buddhist monastics.

Contents

Sino-Tibetan languages

Geographically, since Bhutan is predominantly located on the Tibetan plateau, almost all spoken languages of the country belong to the family of Sino-Tibetan languages, or more specifically, the Bodish sprachbund.

Dzongkha and other Tibetic languages

The Central Bodish languages are a group of related Tibetic languages descended from Old Tibetan. Most Bhutanese varieties of Central Bodish languages are of the Southern subgroup. At least six of the nineteen languages and dialects of Bhutan are Central Bodish languages.

Dzongkha is a Central Bodish language [2] with approximately 160,000 native speakers as of 2006. [3] It is the dominant language in Western Bhutan, where most native speakers are found. It was declared the national language of Bhutan in 1971. [4] Dzongkha study is mandatory in schools, and the majority of the population speaks it as a second language. It is the predominant language of government and education. [2] The Chocangaca language, a "sister language" to Dzongkha, is spoken in the Kurichu Valley of Eastern Bhutan by about 20,000 people. [2]

The Lakha (8,000 speakers) and Brokkat languages (300 speakers) in Central Bhutan, as well as the Brokpa language (5,000 speakers) in far Eastern Bhutan, are also grouped by Van Driem (1993) into Central Bodish. These languages are remnants of what were originally pastoral yakherd communities. [2]

The Laya dialect, closely related to Dzongkha, is spoken near the northwestern border with Tibet by some 1,100 Layaps. Layaps are an indigenous nomadic and semi-nomadic people who traditionally herd yaks and dzos. [5] [6] [7] Dzongkha speakers enjoy a limited mutual intelligibility, mostly in basic vocabulary and grammar. [8]

Khams Tibetan is spoken by about 1,000 people in two enclaves in Eastern Bhutan, also the descendants of pastoral yakherding communities. [2] Although it also is a by all accounts a Tibetic language, its exact subgrouping is uncertain.

East Bodish languages

Eight of the languages of Bhutan are East Bodish languages, not members of the closely related Tibetic group but still likely descended from a close kin. [9]

The Bumthang language, or Bumthangkha, is the dominant language in Central Bhutan. It has approximately 30,000 speakers. The Kheng and Kurtöp languages are closely related to Bumthang. They have 40,000 and 10,000 speakers, respectively.

The Dzala language, or Dzalakha, has about 15,000 speakers. The Nyen language, also called Henkha or Mangdebikha, and the 'Ole language (also called the "Black Mountain language" or "Mönkha") are spoken in the Black Mountains of Central Bhutan by about 10,000 and 1,000 speakers, respectively. Van Driem (1993) describes 'Ole as the remnant of the primordial population of the Black Mountains before the southward expansion of the ancient East Bodish tribes. [2]

The Dakpa (Dakpakha), also known as Brami in Bhutan, [10] and Chali (Chalikha) languages are each spoken by about 1,000 people in Eastern Bhutan. [2]

Other Tibeto-Burman languages

SinoTibetanTree.svg
Part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, largely following Thurgood and La Polla (2003). [11] Here, the Monpa and Lepcha languages are shown as sister languages to Old Tibetan (all are grouped into the Bodic languages).

Other Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in Bhutan. These languages are more distantly related to the Bodish languages, and are not necessarily members of any common subgroup.

The Tshangla language, a subfamily of its own of the Bodish languages, has approximately 138,000 speakers. It is the mother tongue of the Tshangla people, generally known by its exonym Sharchops. It is the dominant language in Eastern Bhutan and was formerly spoken as a lingua franca in the region. [2]

The Gongduk language is an endangered language that has approximately 1,000 speakers in isolated villages along the Kuri Chhu river in Eastern Bhutan. It appears to be the sole representative of a unique branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family, [12] and retains the complex verbal agreement system of Proto-Tibeto-Burman. [13] Van Driem (1993) describes its speakers as a remnant of the ancient population of Central Bhutan before the southward expansion of the East Bodish tribes. [2]

The Lhokpu language has approximately 2,500 speakers. It is one of the autochthonous languages of Bhutan and is yet unclassified within Tibeto-Burmese. Van Driem (1993) describes it as the remnant of "the primordial population of Western Bhutan," and comments that Lhokpu or a close relative appears to have been the substrate language for Dzongkha, explaining the various ways in which Dzongkha diverged from Tibetan. [2] It is spoken by the Lhop people.

Border languages

The Lepcha language has approximately 2,000 ethnic Lepcha people in Bhutan. [2] It has its own highly stylized Lepcha script.

The Sikkimese and Groma languages, both Tibetan languages, are spoken along the Sikkim-Bhutan and Tibet-Bhutan borders in Western Bhutan. [ citation needed ]

The Toto language is generally classified as belonging to the sub-Himalayan branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. [14] It is spoken by the isolated Toto tribe in Totopara and along the West Bengal-Bhutan border in South Bhutan. The total Toto population was about 1,300 people in 2006, [14] mainly on the Indian side of the border.

Indo-European languages

Indic languages

The Nepali language is the only Indo-Aryan language spoken by native Bhutanese. Inside Bhutan, it is spoken primarily in the south by the approximately 265,000 resident Lhotshampa as of 2006. [15] While the Lhotshampa are generally regarded as Nepali speakers (linguistically), the Lhotshampa include many smaller non-Indo-Aryan (esp. non-Gorkhali) groups such as the Tamang [16] and Gurung [16] in Southern Bhutan, and the Kiranti groups (including the Rai and Limbu peoples) found in Eastern Bhutan. Among these minorities are speakers of Chamling, Limbu, and Nepal Bhasa.

European languages

Although the English language does not have an official status, practically it is considered as a second language of the educated class of Bhutanese people, as a language of administration, education, media, businesses, etc. [17] [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dzongkha</span> Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Bhutan

Dzongkha is a Sino-Tibetan language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bumthang District</span> District of Bhutan

Bumthang District is one of the 20 dzongkhag (districts) comprising Bhutan. It is the most historic dzongkhag if the number of ancient temples and sacred sites is counted. Bumthang consists of the four mountain valleys of Ura, Chumey, Tang and Choekhor ("Bumthang"), although occasionally the entire district is referred to as Bumthang Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mongar District</span> District of Bhutan

Mongar District is one of the 20 dzongkhags (districts) comprising Bhutan. Mongar is the fastest-developing dzongkhag in eastern Bhutan. A regional hospital has been constructed and the region is bustling with many economic activities. Mongar is noted for its lemon grass, a plant that can be used to produce an essential oil. It also has a hydroelectric power-plant on the Kuri Chhu river. Mongar is notable for having the longest work time in all the dzongkhags of Bhutan.

The Mahakiranti or Maha-Kiranti languages are a proposed intermediate level of classification of the Sino-Tibetan languages, consisting of the Kiranti languages and neighbouring languages thought to be closely related to them. Researchers disagree on which languages belong in Mahakiranti, or even whether Mahakiranti is a valid group. The group was originally proposed by George van Driem, who retracted his proposal in 2004 after a field study in Bhutan.

The Sharchops are the populations of mixed Tibetan, Southeast Asian and South Asian descent that mostly live in the eastern districts of Bhutan.

The Kheng people are found primarily in the Zhemgang, Trongsa, Bumthang, Dagana, and Mongar Districts of central Bhutan. They speak the Kheng language, a member of the extended Sino-Tibetan language family belonging to the East Bodish languages group; it is mutually intelligible with the Bumthang language and Kurtöp language to the north. The Kheng people are ethnolinguistically same as the Bumthang people and Kurtöp people of central Bhutan and are more closely related to Ngalop people of western Bhutan than to their neighbors in eastern Bhutan, who are primarily Sharchops and speak Tshangla language. SIL International estimates there are 50,000 Kheng speakers as of 2009.

Tshangla is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Bodish branch closely related to the Tibetic languages. Tshangla is primarily spoken in Eastern Bhutan and acts as a lingua franca in the region; it is also spoken in the adjoining Tawang tract in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Pemako region of Tibet. Tshangla is the principal pre-Tibetan language of Bhutan.

The Himalayan Languages Project, launched in 1993, is a research collective based at Leiden University and comprising much of the world's authoritative research on the lesser-known and endangered languages of the Himalayas, in Nepal, China, Bhutan, and India. Its members regularly spend months or years at a time doing field research with native speakers. The Director of the Himalayan Languages Project is George van Driem; other top authorities include Mark Turin and Jeroen Wiedenhof. It recruits grad students to collect new field research on little-known languages as the topics for their Ph.D. dissertations.

Numerous ethnic groups inhabit Bhutan, but the Ngalop people who speak the Dzongkha language constitute a majority of the Bhutanese population. The Bhutanese are of four main ethnic groups, which themselves are not necessarily exclusive – the politically and culturally dominant Ngalop of western and northern Bhutan, the Sharchop of eastern Bhutan, the Lhotshampa concentrated in southern Bhutan, and Bhutanese tribal and aboriginal peoples living in villages scattered throughout Bhutan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of Bhutan</span> Overview of and topical guide to Bhutan

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Bhutan:

The Khengkha language, or Kheng, is an East Bodish language spoken by ~40,000 native speakers worldwide, in the Zhemgang, Trongsa, and Mongar districts of south–central Bhutan.

Bodish, named for the Tibetan ethnonym Bod, is a proposed grouping consisting of the Tibetic languages and associated Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Tibet, North India, Nepal, Bhutan, and North Pakistan. It has not been demonstrated that all these languages form a clade, characterized by shared innovations, within Sino-Tibetan.

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:

The Kurtöp language is an East Bodish language spoken in Kurtoe Gewog, Lhuntse District, Bhutan. In 1993, there were about 10,000 speakers of Kurtöp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tibeto-Burman languages</span> Group of the Sino-Tibetan language family

The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail.

Gongduk or Gongdu is an endangered Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 1,000 people in a few inaccessible villages located near the Kuri Chhu river in the Gongdue Gewog of Mongar District in eastern Bhutan. The names of the villages are Bala, Dagsa, Damkhar, Pam, Pangthang, and Yangbari (Ethnologue).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ʼOle language</span> Sino-Tibetan language of western Bhutan

ʼOle, also called ʼOlekha or Black Mountain Monpa, is possibly a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 1,000 people in the Black Mountains of Wangdue Phodrang and Trongsa Districts in western Bhutan. The term ʼOle refers to a clan of speakers.

The Chocha Ngacha language or Chochangachakha or Tsamang is a Southern Tibetic language spoken by about 20,000 people in the Kurichu Valley of Lhuntse and Mongar Districts in eastern Bhutan.

The Bumthang language ; also called "Bhumtam", "Bumtang(kha)", "Bumtanp", "Bumthapkha", and "Kebumtamp") is an East Bodish language spoken by about 20,000 people in Bumthang and surrounding districts of Bhutan. Van Driem (1993) describes Bumthang as the dominant language of central Bhutan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takpa language</span> Bodish language spoken in Tibet and Bhutan

The Takpa or Dakpa language, Dakpakha, known in India as Tawang Monpa, also known as Brami in Bhutan, is an East Bodish language spoken in the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh, and in northern Trashigang District in eastern Bhutan, mainly in Kyaleng, Phongmed Gewog, Dangpholeng and Lengkhar near Radi Gewog. Van Driem (2001) describes Takpa as the most divergent of Bhutan's East Bodish languages, though it shares many similarities with Bumthang. SIL reports that Takpa may be a dialect of the Brokpa language and that it been influenced by the Dzala language whereas Brokpa has not.

References

  1. ↑ Van Driem, George L.; Tshering, K. (1998). Dzongkha. Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region. Vol. 1. Research CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies. ISBN   90-5789-002-X.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 van Driem, George L. (1993). "Language Policy in Bhutan". London: SOAS. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-09-11. Retrieved 2011-01-18.
  3. ↑ Dzongkha at Ethnologue (15th ed., 2005) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  4. ↑ Van Driem, George (1991). Guide to Official Dzongkha Romanization (PDF). Sherub Lham Press. OCLC   65799020. Archived from the original on 2017-02-28. Retrieved 2019-10-26.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  5. ↑ Wangdi, Kencho (2003-11-04). "Laya: Not Quite a Hidden Land". Kuensel . Archived from the original on 2003-12-07. Retrieved 2011-09-26.
  6. ↑ Layakha at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  7. ↑ van Driem, George; Tshering, Karma (1998). Dzongkha. Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region. Vol. 1. Research CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies. p. 1. ISBN   90-5789-002-X . Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  8. ↑ "Tribe – Layap". BBC Online. 2006-05-01. Retrieved 2011-09-26.
  9. ↑ van Driem, page 18
  10. ↑ Tshering, Karma (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.
  11. ↑ Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (ed.s) (2003). Sino-Tibetan Languages. London: Routledge. ISBN   0-7007-1129-5.
  12. ↑ Himalayan Languages Project. "Gongduk". Himalayan Languages Project. Archived from the original on 2011-07-26. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
  13. ↑ "Gongduk: A language of Bhutan". Ethnologue Online. Dallas: SIL International . Retrieved 2009-11-06.
  14. 1 2 Biswas, Samar Kumar (2009). "Socio-Economic Crisis and Its Consequenceson a Little Known Tribal Community inWest Bengal, India". In Kolig, Erich; Angeles, Vivienne SM.; Wong, Sam (eds.). Identity in Crossroad Civilisations: Ethnicity, Nationalism and Globalism in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. p. 99. doi: 10.5117/9789089641274 . hdl: 20.500.12657/35305 . ISBN   978-90-8964-127-4.
  15. ↑ Lewis, M. Paul, ed. (2009). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (16th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
  16. 1 2 Repucci, Sarah; Walker, Christopher (2005). Countries at the Crossroads: A Survey of Democratic Governance. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 92. ISBN   0-7425-4972-0.
  17. ↑ Tshering, Karma (23 October 2020). "The Status and Role of English as a Language of Administration in Bhutan". Journal of World Englishes and Educational Practices. 2 (4): 31–43. doi: 10.32996/jweep.2020.2.4.4 .
  18. ↑ Hays, Jeffrey. "Languages in Bhutan". Facts and Details. Retrieved 2024-01-18.
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