The Kiranti languages are a major family of

Sino-Tibetan languages 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. ...

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 ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

(notably

Sikkim Sikkim (; ) is a state in Northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Province No. 1 of Nepal in the west and West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is also close to the Siligur ...

Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a town and municipality in the northernmost region of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the easternmost province of Nepal, ...

Kalimpong Kalimpong (Hindi: कलिम्पोंग) is a town and the headquarters of an eponymous district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located at an average elevation of . The town is the headquarters of the Kalimpong district. The re ...

, and

Kumai Kumai is a port in Central Kalimantan province in Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. It lies on the Kumai River. It was from here that the ''M/V Senopati Nusantara'' set out on its ill-fated voyage in December 2006. Administratively, Kumai is ...

) by the

Kirati people 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 ...

External relationships

George van Driem George "Sjors" van Driem (born 1957) is a Dutch linguist associated with the University of Bern, where he is the chair of Historical Linguistics and directs the Linguistics Institute. Education * Leiden University, 1983–1987 (PhD, ''A Grammar ...

had formerly proposed that the Kiranti languages were part of a Mahakiranti family, although specialists are not completely certain of either the existence of a Kiranti subgroup or its precise membership. LaPolla (2003), though, proposes that Kiranti may be part of a larger "

Rung Rung may refer to: * Rung (band), a Pakistan band * ''Rung'' (album), an album by Hadiqa Kiyani * Rung languages, a proposed group of Tibeto-Burman languages * Rung, an ethnic group of people inhabiting the Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand, ...

" group.

Languages

There are about two dozen Kiranti languages. The better known are Limbu,

Sunuwar The Sunuwar or Koinch (; ''Sunuwār Jāti'') is a Kirati tribe native to Nepal, parts of India (West Bengal and Sikkim) and southern Bhutan. They speak the Sunuwar language. According to the 2001 census of Nepal, 17% of the tribe follow the Kir ...

, Bantawa Rai, Chamling Rai, Khaling Rai, Bahing Rai,

Yakkha language Yakkha (also erroneously spelled as Yakha) is a language spoken in parts of Nepal, Darjeeling district and Sikkim. The Yakkha-speaking villages are located to the East of the Arun river, in the southern part of the Sankhuwasabha district and in t ...

Vayu Vayu (, sa, वायु, ), also known as Vata and Pavana, is the Hindu god of the winds as well as the divine massenger of the gods. In the ''Vedic scriptures'', Vayu is an important deity and is closely associated with Indra, the king of ...

, Dungmali Rai, Lohorung Rai and Kulung Rai. Kiranti verbs are not easily segmentable, due in large part to the presence of

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsmorpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

s, crowded

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

strings, and extensive (and often nonintuitive)

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

Classification

Overall, Kiranti languages are: * Limbu * Eastern Kiranti ** Greater Yakkha ***

Yakkha Yakkha may refer to: * Yakkha people, an ethnic group of South Asia * Yakkha language, a Sino-Tibetan language * Yaksha The yakshas ( sa, यक्ष ; pi, yakkha, i=yes) are a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent, but sometime ...

*** Belhare Rai *** Athpare Rai *** Chintang Rai *** Chulung Rai ** Upper Arun River *** Yamphu-Lohorung Rai **** Yamphu Rai **** Lohorung Rai *** Mewahang Rai *** ? Waling Rai † * Central ** Khambu (Rai) *** Kulung Rai *** Nachhiring Rai *** Sampang Rai *** Saam Rai ** Southern *** Bantawa Rai *** Puma Rai *** Chamling Rai *** Dungmali * Western ** Thulung Rai (perhaps a primary branch of Kiranti Rai) ** Chaurasiya *** Wambule Rai *** Jerung Rai ** Upper Dudhkosi River: *** Khaling Rai *** Dumi Rai *** Koi Rai ** Northwestern *** Bahing Rai ***

***

''Ethnologue'' adds Tilung Rai to Western Kiranti, based on Opgenort (2011).

Opgenort (2005)

Opgenort (2005) classifies the Kiranti languages as follows, and recognizes a basic east-west division within Kiranti. ; Kiranti * ''Western'' ** Hayu ** (branch) *** Thulung *** (branch) ****

Bahing The Bahing are a subset of the Indigenous Kirant ethnic group, which is located widely in Okhaldhunga and Solukhumbu District. They can be found in some of the villages like Bulaadi, Chisopani, Moli, Pankhu, Bhadaure, Aapsowra, Rangadeep, Bigutar, M ...

****

Jero Jerome Charles White Jr. (born September 4, 1981), better known by his stage name , is an American enka singer of African-American and Japanese descent who is the first black enka singer in Japanese music history. In 2018, Jero announced that ...

, Wambule * ''Eastern'' ** Khaling, Dumi ** (branch) *** Yamphu, Limbu *** (branch) **** Kulung **** Chamling,

Bantawa The Bantawa Language (also referred to as An Yüng, Bantaba, Bantawa Dum, Bantawa Yong, Bantawa Yüng, Bontawa, Kirawa Yüng), is a Kirati languages spoken in the eastern Himalayan hills of eastern Nepal by Kirati Bantawa ethnic groups. They us ...

Gerber & Grollmann (2018)

Historical linguist Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

s, as early as 2012, do not consider Kiranti to be a coherent group, but rather a

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

one due to lack of

shared innovation In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

s. Gerber & Grollmann (2018) gave a formal proof of the paraphyletic nature of Kiranti. A Central-Eastern Kiranti group is considered to be valid by Gerber & Grollmann (2018), but they consider "Western Kiranti" unclassified within

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

. * Central-Eastern Kiranti ** Lhokpu,

Dhimal The Dhimal or Dhemal(in Nepali:धिमाल) are an Kirati ethnic group residing in the eastern Terai of Nepal. They are a Sino-Tibetan-speaking ethnic group of the eastern Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal a ...

, Toto ** Central Kiranti ** Upper Arun ** Greater Yakkha- Limbu Independent branches (formerly part of "Western Kiranti") that are unclassified within Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan): * Dumi- Khaling * Chaurasiya-Northwest: Wambule,

; ?

; ? Hayu * Thulung- Tilung- Kohi

Sound changes

Sound change A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...

s defining each subgroup (Gerber & Grollmann 2018): * Central-Eastern Kiranti (*voiceless > preglottalised; *voiced > voiceless; *ʔk > kʰ; *ʔc > cʰ) ** Lhokpu, Dhimal, Toto ** Central Kiranti (*ʔp > b; *ʔt > d) ** Upper Arun (*ʔp > b; *ʔt > d; *r > j) ** Greater Yakkha-Limbu (*ʔp > pʰ; *ʔt > tʰ; *r > j) Independent branches (formerly part of "Western Kiranti") that are unclassified within Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan): * Dumi-Khaling (innovative verbal dual marker -i) * Chaurasiya-Northwest (*kʷ > ʔw ~ ʔb) ** Wambule, Bahing, Sunuwar; ? Jero; ? Hayu * Thulung-Tilung-Kohi (*p > t; *b > d)

Reconstruction

Research on proto-Kiranti includes work on phonology and comparative morphology by van Driem, reconstructions by Michailovsky (1991) and Sergei Starostin 1994. Michailovsky and Starostin differ by the number of stop series reconstructed (three vs four) and the interpretation of the correspondences. Opgenort introduces the reconstruction of preglottalized resonants; his reconstruction is generally based on Starostin's four series system. More recently, Jacques proposed reconstruction of proto-Kiranti verb roots in a framework following Michailovsky's system, and analyzes the other initial correspondences (in particular, the series reconstructed as non-aspirated unvoiced stops by Starostin) as due to morphological alternations and inter-Kiranti borrowing. In addition, he presents a preliminary discussion of the reconstruction of stem alternation and stress patterns on the basis of Khaling and Dumi.

Notes

References

* George van Driem (2001) ''Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.'' Brill. * * Tara Mani Rai (2015) "A Grammar of Koyee" Ph.D. diss. Tribhuvan University. * * Graham Thurgood (2003) "A Subgrouping of the Sino-Tibetan Languages: The Interaction between Language Contact, Change, and Inheritance," ''The Sino-Tibetan Languages''. Routledge. pp. 3–21. * Karen H. Ebert (2003) "Kiranti Languages: An Overview," ''The Sino-Tibetan Languages''. Routledge. pp. 505–517. Reconstructions * Michailovsky, Boyd. 1991.
Big black notebook of Kiranti, proto-Kiranti forms
'. (unpublished ms. contributed to STEDT). * * A reconstruction of Proto-Kiranti verb roots
supplementary file
of Jacques (2017

External links

Kiranti Database Project
(Jean Robert Opgenort) {{Languages of Nepal Kiranti languages,