Humla Tibetan, also known as Humla Bhotiya, and Humli Tamang, is the

Sino-Tibetan language Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

of the

Tibetan people The Tibetan people (; ) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Tibet. Their current population is estimated to be around 6.7 million. In addition to the majority living in Tibet Autonomous Region of China, significant numbers of Tibetans live ...

Humla district Humla District ( ne, हुम्ला जिल्ला), a part of Karnali Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Simikot as its district headquarters, covers an area of and has population of 50,858 as ...

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

(ISO 639-3: ut GlottoCode: uml1238.

Language name

Humla Tibetan speakers self-identify using general

ethnic An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

terms such as Bhote,

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...

Tamang The Tamang (; Devanagari: तामाङ; ''tāmāṅ'') are an Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group of Nepal. In Nepal Tamang/Moormi people constitute 5.6% of the Nepalese population at over 1.3 million in 2001, increasing to 1,539,830 as of the 2011 c ...

Lama Lama (; "chief") is a title for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term ''guru'', meaning "heavy one", endowed with qualities the student will eventually embody. The Tibetan word "lama" means "hi ...

, and

Kham Kham (; ) is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The original residents of Kham are called Khampas (), and were governed locally by chieftains and monasteries. Kham ...

. This has led scholars to assign a variety of language names to the speech of these people (Humla Tibetan,de Vries, Klaas. (2014)
A sociolinguistic survey of Humla Tibetan in Northwest Nepal
Kathmandu: Linguistic Survey of Nepal (LinSuN), Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. Humla Bhotiya, and Humli Tamang). As Humla Tibetan speakers refer to their language either in general terms or at the level of village dialect, no truly native

glottonym Linguonym (from la, lingua / language, and gr, ὄνομα / name) also known as glossonym (from grc, γλῶσσα / language) or glottonym (from Attic Greek: γλῶττα / language), is a linguistic term that designates a proper name of an ...

can be assigned to the

Tibetic language The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptiv ...

spoken in this district.

Language classification

Humla Tibetan (Humli Tamang) is classified as:

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

Tibeto-Burman 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 spea ...

, Western Tibeto-Burman,

Bodish 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 ...

, Central Bodish, Central (Tibetan), and mNgahris. It is one of fifteen related languages that Tournadre classifies as South-western Tibetic under Old Tibetan, all of which are spoken in Nepal. These closely related languages are as follows: Mugom-Karmarong (ISO 639-3: muk),

Dolpo Dolpo ( bo, དོལ་པོ ) is a high-altitude culturally Tibetan region in the upper part of the Dolpa District of western Nepal, bordered in the north by China.. Part of the region lies in Shey Phoksundo National Park. The sparse, agro ...

(ISO 639-3:

dre DRE may refer to: * ''Dre'' (album), 2010 by American rapper Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, 2010 * Dre (name) **Dr. Dre, American rapper and producer * DRE voting machine * Digital rectal examination, in medicine * Director of religious education; for exam ...

), Gyalsumdo (ISO 639-3:

gyo , fully titled in Japan, is a horror ''seinen'' manga written and illustrated by Junji Ito, appearing as a serial in the weekly manga magazine ''Big Comic Spirits'' from 2001 to 2002. Shogakukan collected the chapters into two bound volume ...

), Hyolmo (ISO 639-3:

scp SCP may refer to: Organizations Political parties * Soviet Communist Party, the leading political party in the former Soviet Union * Syrian Communist Party * Sudanese Communist Party * Scottish Christian Party Companies * Seattle Computer Produ ...

Jirel The Jirels ( ne, जिरेल जाति) is an ethnic Kirat The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti, are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group. They are peoples of the Himalayas, mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from ...

(ISO 639-3:

jul Jul most commonly refers to: * July, as an abbreviation for the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian calendar Jul or JUL may also refer to: Celebrations * ''Jul'', Scandinavian and Germanic word for Yule * ''Jul (Denmark)'', the Danish Yu ...

]), Kyirong language, Kyirong (ISO 639-3: kgy), Lhomi (ISO 639-3: lhm), Lhowa ISO 639-3: loy),

Nubri Nubri ( Tibetan: ནུབ་རི; ) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 2000 ethnically Tibetan people living in Nubri Valley in northern Central Nepal, upper Gorkhā District of Gandaki Province. Nubri has at least three dialects as ...

(ISO 639-3: kte),

Sherpa Sherpa may refer to: Ethnography * Sherpa people, an ethnic group in north eastern Nepal * Sherpa language Organizations and companies * Sherpa (association), a French network of jurists dedicated to promoting corporate social responsibility * ...

(ISO 639-3: xsr), Syuba (ISO 639-3: syw), Tichurong (ISO 639-3:

tcn TCN is the flagship (television), flagship television station of the Nine Network in Australia. The station is currently located at 1 Denison Street, North Sydney, New South Wales, North Sydney. The licence, issued to a company named Television C ...

), Tsum (ISO 639-3: ttz), Walungge (ISO 639-3: ola).

Speakers

Humla Tibetan is spoken by roughly 5,000 people originating from the

Namkha Namkha (Tibetan: ནམ་མཁའ་ ''nam mkha' '' "sky", "space", " aether"," heaven"), also known as ''Dö''; (Tibetan ''mdos'' (མདོས) ) is a form of yarn or thread cross composed traditionally of wool or silk and is a form of the End ...

and Simkot municipalities of

, along the

Humla Karnali River This is a list of rivers of Nepal, east to west. This list is arranged by drainage basin, indented to show the structure of confluences. Tributaries rising inside India are not shown. The basin is generally categorized into ten major basins as li ...

.Central Bureau of Statistics. (2014). National population and housing census 2011. Kathmandu: Government of Nepal. Diaspora communities of Humla Tibetan can be found in the capital city of

Kathmandu , pushpin_map = Nepal Bagmati Province#Nepal#Asia , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = Bagmati Prov ...

( Bouddha).

Dialects

At least four dialects of Humla Tibetan have been identified. Various authors use different names to distinguish between groups/varieties, generally related to geographical location. Speakers often self-identify using village or dialect-specific names, and these are usually unrelated to the names scholars attribute to these sub-groups. A semi-nomadic group, the Humli Khyampa, also lives and travels in the Humla district. The relationship between the language spoken by Humla Tibetans and the language of the Humli Khyampa is unclear, though Wilde lists it as a possible fifth dialect of Humla Tibetan, saying that some speakers believe it is related and mutually intelligible. The various names of the four sub-groups are present in the following table.

Humla Tibetan groups/varieties

Lexical similarity between Humla Tibetan varieties

Language vitality

In 2014, a sociolinguistic study found that Humla Tibetan is used extensively in all domains of daily life in their native villages. Ninety-three percent of participants said their first language was their own Humla Tibetan variety. The study also found that local Humla Tibetan was being transmitted to children. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' has assigned

EGIDS The Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), developed by Lewis and Simons (2010), measures a language's status in terms of endangerment Endangerment is a type of crime involving conduct that is wrongful and reckless or wanto ...

level 6a “vigorous” to Humla Tibetan (ISO 639-3 hut). However, the

Atlas of the world's languages in danger The UNESCO ''Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger'' is an online publication containing a comprehensive list of the world's endangered languages. It originally replaced the ''Red Book of Endangered Languages'' as a title in print after a ...

, 3rd edition has Limirong (Limi valley Tibetan) listed as (DE) Definitely endangered.

Resources

* Language documentation: Greninger, David E. (2014). Preliminary Documentation of the Humla Tibetan Language. Report submitted to Centre for International Relations and Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal. Ms. * Language documentation: Greniger, David E. (2018). Text Interlinearization and Glossary Production in the Limi Dialect of Humla Tibetan. Report submitted to Centre for International Relations and Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal. ms. * Phonology: Greniger, David E. (2021). Preliminary Segmental Phonology and Glossary Production in the Nyinba Subdialect of Humla Tibetan. Report submitted to Centre for International Relations and Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal. ms. * Phonology: Wilde, Christopher Pekka. (2001). Preliminary phonological analysis of the Limi dialect of Humla Bhotiya. (MA thesis, University of Helsinki; 91pp.) * Sociolinguistic study: de Vries, Klaas. 2014
A sociolinguistic survey of Humla Tibetan in Northwest Nepal.
Kathmandu: Linguistic Survey of Nepal (LinSuN), Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal.

References

{{Reflist Languages of Nepal Central Bodish languages Endangered Sino-Tibetan languages Humla District