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
Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares int ...
, and in northern
Trashigang District
Trashigang District ( Dzongkha: བཀྲ་ཤིས་སྒང་རྫོང་ཁག་; Wylie: ''Bkra-shis-sgang rdzong-khag''; also spelled "Tashigang") is Bhutan's easternmost dzongkhag (district).
Culture
The population of the district ...
in eastern
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 ...
, mainly in Kyaleng (Shongphu gewog),
Phongmed Gewog, Dangpholeng and Lengkhar near
Radi Gewog
Radi Gewog (Dzongkha: ར་དི་) is a gewog (village block) of Trashigang District, Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is s ...
.
Van Driem (2001) describes Takpa as the most divergent of Bhutan's
East Bodish languages
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:
* Dakpa (Tawang Monpa)
* Dzala
* Nyen, including Mangde and Phobjib
* Chali
* Bumthang
* ...
,
though it shares many similarities with
Bumthang.
SIL
SIL, Sil and sil may refer to:
Organizations
* Servis Industries Limited, Pakistan
* Smithsonian Institution Libraries
* SIL International, formerly Summer Institute of Linguistics
* Apex Silver Mines (former American Stock Exchange ticker symb ...
reports that Takpa may be a dialect of the
Brokpa language
The Brokpa language (Brokpa kay) ( dz , དྲོག་པ་ཁ།, དྲོགཔ་ཁ།, ''Dr˚okpakha'', ''Dr˚opkha''), also called the Merak-Sakteng language after its speakers' home regions, is a Southern Tibetic language spoken by abo ...
and that it been influenced by the
Dzala language
The Dzala language, also called Dzalakha, Dzalamat, or Yangtsebikha, is an East Bodish language spoken in eastern Bhutan, in the Lhuntse and Trashiyangtse District
Trashiyangtse District ( dz, བཀྲ་ཤིས་གཡང་རྩེ ...
whereas Brokpa has not.
[
Takpa is ]mutually unintelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
with Monpa of Zemithang
Zemithang or Zimithang, also called Pangchen, is a village and the headquarters of an eponymous circle in the Tawang district of Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It is on the bank of the Nyamjang Chu river, which originates in Tibet and enters In ...
and Monpa of Mago-Thingbu
Thingbu is a settlement in Tawang district in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Location
It is located on the proposed Mago-Thingbu to Vijaynagar Arunachal Pradesh Frontier Highway along the McMahon Line, alignment map ...
. Monpa of Zemithang is another East Bodish
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:
* Dakpa (Tawang Monpa)
* Dzala
* Nyen, including Mangde and Phobjib
* Chali
* Bumthang
...
language, and is documented in Abraham, et al. (2018).[Abraham, Binny, Kara Sako, Elina Kinny, Isapdaile Zeliang. 2018. ]
Sociolinguistic Research among Selected Groups in Western Arunachal Pradesh: Highlighting Monpa
'. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2018-009.
Wangchu (2002) reports that Tawang Monpa
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, m ...
is spoken in Lhou, Seru, Lemberdung, and Changprong villages, Tawang District
Tawang district (Pron:/tɑ:ˈwæŋ or təˈwæŋ/) is the smallest of the 26 administrative districts of Arunachal Pradesh state in northeastern India. With a population of 49,977, it is the eighth least populous district in the country (out of ...
, Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares int ...
.
Phonology
These tables represent the phonemes of the variety of Takpa spoken in China, in Tsona County
Tsona County () or
Cona County () is a county in Shannan prefecture in southern part of Tibet region of China. The county lies immediately to the north of the McMahon Line agreed as the mutual border between British India and Tibet in 1914. Chin ...
. [Huang, 1992, p. 634.]
Vowels
Consonants
Monba is a tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...
, with four contour tones: ''55'', ''53'', ''35'', and ''31''.[Huang, 1992, p. 634.]
See also
*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 wit ...
References
External links
Himalayan Languages Project
East Bodish languages
Languages of Bhutan
Languages of India
Languages of China
Articles citing ISO change requests
{{Bhutan-stub