Jerung or Jero is a moribund

Kiranti 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 Nepal to North East India (predominantly in the Indian state of Sikkim ...

language spoken in

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 ...

. The native language consultants whom Opgenort (2005) consulted, preferred the term ‘Jero’ to designate the language. The term ‘Jerung’, by contrast, is a toponym used in the names of several villages within the language area as well as the name of a village in the Wambule-speaking area. The Jerung language is mutually intelligible with Wambule. Jerung is spoken by more than 2,000 people living in Okhalḍhuṅgā and Sindhulī districts of eastern Nepal. Gerd Hanßon (1991) claims that there are three to four dialects of Jerung: Madhavpur, Balkhu-Sisneri, and Ratnawati (Sindhuli). However, according to Opgenort's (2005) consultants, there are only two major dialects: a northern dialect, which is spoken in

Okhaldhunga District Okhaldhunga District ( ne, ओखलढुङ्गा जिल्ला) is one of 14 districts of Province No. 1 in eastern Nepal. The district, with Okhaldhunga as its district headquarters, covers an area of and had a population of 156,702 ...

(ओखलढुङ्गा), and a southern dialect, which is spoken in

Sindhuli District Sindhuli District ( ne, सिन्धुली जिल्ला), a part of the Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, a landlocked country of South Asia. The district, with Sindhulimadhi Kamalamai as its district ...

(सिनधुली).

Geographical distribution

Jerung is spoken in the following locations of Nepal (''

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 ...

''). *

Janakpur Zone Janakpur ( ne, जनकपुर अञ्चल ) was one of the fourteen zones of Nepal, reaching from the Indian border in the south to the Tibetan border in the north and Sagarmatha Zone in the east and Bagmati and Naryani Zones in the we ...

: Bahadur (बहादुर) khola west bank villages, Sunkosi (सुनकोशी) River south to Mohantar (मोहनटार) village (''Southern dialect'') *

Sagarmatha Zone Sagarmāthā Zone ( ne, सगरमाथा अञ्चल) or Sagarmatha Anclal ( ne, सगरमाथा अञ्चल) was one of the fourteen zones of Nepal until the restructuring of zones into provinces. The headquarters of Sagarmat ...

: Maulang Khola river area, north of the Sunkosi River (''Northern dialect'')

References

Sources

* Hanßon, Gerd. 1991. ''The Rai of eastern Nepal: ethnic and linguistic grouping. Findings of the Linguistic Survey of Nepal. Edited and provided with an introduction by Werner Winter.'' Kirtipur/Kathmandu: Linguistic Survey of Nepal and Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University. * Opgenort, Jean Robert. 2005. ''A grammar of Jero. With a historical comparative study of the Kiranti languages''. Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library. Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region, 3. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. Kiranti languages Languages of Nepal {{st-lang-stub