The Lunana language, ''Lunanakha'' (
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 n ...
: ལུང་ནག་ན་ཁ་;
Wylie: ''lung-nag-na-kha'') is a
Tibetic
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 ...
language spoken in
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 ...
(
Lunana Gewog
Lunana Gewog is a gewog (village block) of Gasa District, Bhutan. The village Lunana is the administrative center of Lunana Gewog.
The gewog lies almost entirely within protected areas, mostly in Jigme Dorji National Park, though eastern sectio ...
,
Gasa District
Gasa District or Gasa Dzongkhag ( Dzongkha: མགར་ས་རྫོང་ཁག་; Wylie: ''Mgar-sa rdzong-khag'') is one of the 20 dzongkhags (districts) comprising Bhutan. The capital of Gasa District is Gasa Dzong near Gasa. It is loc ...
) by some 700 people in 1998. Most are
yak
The domestic yak (''Bos grunniens''), also known as the Tartary ox, grunting ox or hairy cattle, is a species of long-haired domesticated cattle found throughout the Himalayan region of the Indian subcontinent, the Tibetan Plateau, Kachin Sta ...
-herding pastoralists.
Lunana is a variety of
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 n ...
, the
national language
A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...
of Bhutan.
See also
*
Lunana Gewog
Lunana Gewog is a gewog (village block) of Gasa District, Bhutan. The village Lunana is the administrative center of Lunana Gewog.
The gewog lies almost entirely within protected areas, mostly in Jigme Dorji National Park, though eastern sectio ...
*
Lunana village
*
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
Languages of Bhutan
Languages written in Tibetan script
South Bodish languages
{{Bhutan-stub