Nubri (

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 ...

: ནུབ་རི; ) is a

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 ...

language spoken by about 2000 ethnically

people living in Nubri Valley in northern Central

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 ...

, upper Gorkhā District of

Gandaki Province Gandaki Province ( ne, गण्डकी प्रदेश ) ), is one of the seven federal provinces established by the current constitution of Nepal which was promulgated on 20 September 2015. Pokhara is the province's capital city. It borde ...

. Nubri has at least three

dialects The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

as typified by the Prok, Lho and Sama

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

varieties. Nubri is largely undocumented and undescribed, with the exception of a

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

. Nubri is perhaps most closely related to neighbouring Tsum language and the Kyirong variety of Tibetan spoken just across the border in

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

. It has also been claimed to be closely related to Gyalsumdo. Like these languages it is tonal and shares many

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 ...

grammatical features, but is uniquely different in many ways. Th
Nubri language project
started in 2017 at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) with the aim of studying and documenting this language. Recent work includes studies of the case marking and tone as well as a valley-wide sociolinguistic survey which confirmed its classification as "definitely endangered." Building from this, a recent effort towards language maintenance involved initiating community discussions about a writing system for Nubri. This was carried out in May 2019 in conjunction with
cataract clinic
funded by the same HKU Knowledge Exchange grant (PI Cathryn Donohue).

References

{{Languages of Nepal Languages of Nepal Sino-Tibetan languages Tibeto-Burman languages Bodish languages Definitely endangered languages