Languages Of Bhutan
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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. 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. 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. 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 Tibeta ...
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Dzongkha
Dzongkha (; ) is a Sino-Tibetan language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script. The word means "the language of the fortress", from ' "fortress" and ' "language". , Dzongkha had 171,080 native speakers and about 640,000 total speakers. Dzongkha is considered a South Tibetic language. It is closely related to and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocha Ngacha, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha. It has a more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50 to 80 percent mutually intelligible. Usage Dzongkha and its dialects are the native tongue of eight western districts of Bhutan (''viz.'' Wangdue Phodrang, , Thimphu, Gasa, Paro, Ha, Dagana and Chukha). There are also some native speakers near the Indian town of Kalimpong, once part of Bhutan but now in North Bengal and in Sikkim. Dzongkha was declared the national language of Bhutan ...
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Gurung Language
Gurung (Devanagari: ), also known as Tamu Kyi (, ; Tibetan: ) or Tamu Bhaasaa (, ), is a language spoken by the Gurung people of Nepal. The total number of all Gurung speakers in Nepal was 227,918 in 1991 and 325,622 in 2011. The official language of Nepal, Nepali, is an Indo-European language, whereas Gurung is a Sino-Tibetan language. Gurung is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, Bhutan, and by diaspora communities in countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Geographical distribution Gurung is spoken in the following districts of Nepal and India (''Ethnologue''): *Gandaki Province: Kaski District, Syangja District, Lamjung District, Tanahu District, Gorkha District, Manang District and Mustang *Dhawalagiri Zone: Parbat district *Sikkim: South Sikkim, West Sikkim, East Sikkim Classification At higher levels, Gurung is a member of the Tibeto-Burman (or Trans-Himalayan) family. Robert Shafer classified Gurung within the Bodic division, sub-gro ...
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Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainous country, Bhutan is known as "Druk Yul," or "Land of the Thunder Dragon". Nepal and Bangladesh are located near Bhutan but do not share a land border. The country has a population of over 727,145 and territory of and ranks 133rd in terms of land area and 160th in population. Bhutan is a Constitutional Democratic Monarchy with King as head of state and Prime Minister as head of government. Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism is the state religion and the Je Khenpo is the head of state religion. The subalpine Himalayan mountains in the north rise from the country's lush subtropical plains in the south. In the Bhutanese Himalayas, there are peaks higher than above sea level. Gangkhar Puensum is Bhutan's highest peak and is the highest uncl ...
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Dzongkha Keyboard Layout
The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme is designed as a simple means for inputting Dzongkha (རྫོང་ཁ) and classical Tibetan (ཆོས་སྐད) text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) and the Department of Information Technology and Telecom (DITT) of the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2000. It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the Unicode & ISO 10646 standards since the initial version. Since the arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongkha and Tibetan alphabet, the layout can be quickly learned by anyone familiar with this alphabet. Subjoined (combining) consonants are entered using the Shift key. The Dzongkha (dz) keyboard layout is included in the XFree86 XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and plat ...
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Bhutanese Sign Language
Bhutan set up the program for the deaf in a hearing school in Thimpu ca. 2000, and the first dedicated school, in Paro, was approved in 2013. Part of government funding for deaf education includes developing Bhutanese Sign Language as the language of instruction. Development includes at least creating vocabulary for technical subjects, and deciding on which regional signs to use where they differ. It is not clear if there are multiple sign languages in Bhutan, or merely local differences in vocabulary. It is unknown whether Bhutanese Sign Language is related to the Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ... or Nepali sign languages. References {{authority control Languages of Bhutan Sign languages ...
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Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of North India. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India. Hindi is the '' lingua franca'' of the Hindi Belt. It is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside India, several ot ...
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English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
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ʼOle Language
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. Locations According to the ''Ethnologue'', ʼOlekha is spoken in the following locations of Bhutan. *Trongsa District: 3 enclaves west of Mangde river *Wangdue Phodrang District: Adha, Jangji, Rukha, Thrumzur, and Wangling villages Dialects are separated by the Black Mountains. Varieties Black Mountain Monpa is spoken in at least 6 villages. The variety spoken in Rukha village, south-central Wangdi is known as ʼOlekha.Gwendolyn Hyslop. 2016. Worlds of knowledge in Central Bhutan: Documentation of ʼOlekha. Language Documentation & Conservation 10. 77-106. Out of a population of 100-150 people (about 15 households) in Rukha village, there is only one elderly female fluent speaker and two semi-fluent speakers of ʼOlekha. George van ...
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Lhokpu Language
Lhokpu, also ''Lhobikha'' or ''Taba-Damey-Bikha'', is one of the autochthonous languages of Bhutan spoken by the Lhop people. It is spoken in southwestern Bhutan along the border of Samtse and Chukha Districts. Van Driem (2003) leaves it unclassified as a separate branch within the Sino-Tibetan language family. Classification George van Driem (2001:804) notes that Lhokpu, although unclassified, may be more closely related to the Kiranti languages than to Lepcha. Gerber, et al. (2016) also notes a particularly close relationship between Lhokpu and Kiranti. Furthermore, van Driem (2001:804-805) notes that Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, may in fact have a Lhokpu substratum. Grollmann & Gerber (2017) consider Lhokpu to have a particularly close relationship with Dhimal and Toto. Name Lhokpu is spoken by the Lhop—a Dzongkha term meaning "Southerners"—, who "represent the aboriginal dungDung population of western Bhutan. Locations According to the ''Ethnologue'', ...
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Gongduk Language
Gongduk or Gongdu (, it is also known as Gongdubikha) 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''). Gongduk has complex verbal morphology, which Ethnologue considers a retention from Proto-Tibeto-Burman, and is lexically highly divergent.Blench, R. & Post, M. W. (2013)Rethinking Sino-Tibetan phylogeny from the perspective of Northeast Indian languages/ref> On this basis, it is apparently not part of any major subgroup and will probably have to be assigned to its own branch. The people are said to have come from hunters that would move from place to place at times. The language is notable for only being discovered by linguists in 1991. Currently, George van Driem is working towards the completion of a description of Gongduk based on his w ...
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Tamang Language
Tamang (Devanagari: तामाङ; ''tāmāng'') is a term used to collectively refer to a dialect cluster spoken mainly in Nepal, Sikkim, West Bengal (Darjeeling) and North-Eastern India. It comprises Eastern Tamang, Northwestern Tamang, Southwestern Tamang, Eastern Gorkha Tamang, and Western Tamang. Lexical similarity between Eastern Tamang (which is regarded as the most prominent) and other Tamang languages varies between 81% to 63%. For comparison, lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese, is estimated at 89%. Ethnologue report for Spanish Dialects ''Ethnologue'' divides Tamang into the following varieties due to mutual unintelligibility. *Eastern Tamang: 759,000 in Nepal (2000 WCD). Population total all countries: 773,000. Sub-dialects are as follows. **Outer-Eastern Tamang (Sailung Tamang) **Central-Eastern Tamang (Temal Tamang) **Southwestern Tamang (Kath-Bhotiya, Lama Bhote, Murmi, Rongba, Sain, Tamang Gyoi, Tamang Gyot, Tamang Lengmo, Tamang Tam) *Western T ...
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