Sherpa (also Sharpa, Xiaerba, or Sherwa) is a Tibetic 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 ma ...

and the Indian state of Sikkim, mainly by the Sherpa. The majority speakers of the Sherpa language live in the Khumbu region of Nepal, spanning from the Chinese (Tibetan) border in the east to the Bhotekosi River in the west. About 200,000 speakers live in

(2001 census), some 20,000 in Sikkim (1997) and some 800 in Tibetan Autonomous Region (1994). Sherpa is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language. Sherpa is predominantly a spoken language, although it is occasionally written using either the

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the a ...

or Tibetan script.

Phonology

Sherpa is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

. Sherpa has the following consonants:

Consonants

* Stop sounds can be unreleased in word-final position. * Palatal sounds can neutralize to velar sounds when preceding . * can become a retroflex nasal when preceding a retroflex stop. * can have an allophone of when occurring in fast speech.

Vowels

* Vowel sounds have the allophones when between consonants and in closed syllables.

Tones

There are four distinct tones; high , falling , low , rising .

Grammar

Some grammatical aspects of Sherpa are as follows: * Nouns are defined by morphology when a bare noun occurs in the genitive and this extends to the noun phrase. They are defined

syntactically In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

by co-occurrence with the locative clitic and by their position in the noun phrase (NP) after

demonstratives Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...

. * Demonstratives are defined syntactically by their position first in the NP directly before the noun. * Quantifiers: Number words occur last in the noun phrase with the exception of the definite article. * Adjectives occur after the noun in the NP and morphologically only take genitive marking when in construct with a noun. * Verbs may morphologically be distinguished by differing or suppletive roots for the perfective, imperfective, and imperative. They occur last in a clause before the verbal auxiliaries. * Verbal auxiliaries occur last in a clause. * Postpositions occur last in a postpositional NP. Other

typological Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...

features of Sherpa include split ergativity based on aspect, SO & OV (SOV), N-A, N-Num, V-Aux, and N-Pos.

Vocabulary

The following table lists the days of the week, which are derived from the Tibetan language ("Pur-gae").

Sample Text

The following is a sample text in Sherpa of Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...

: Sherpa in Devanagari script :मि रिग ते रि रङ्वाङ् दङ् चिथोङ गि थोप्थङ डडइ थोग् क्येउ यिन्। गङ् ग नम्ज्योद दङ् शेस्रब् ल्हन्क्ये सु ओद्दुब् यिन् चङ् । फर्छुर च्यिग्गि-च्यिग्ल पुन्ग्यि दुशेस् ज्योग्गोग्यि। Sherpa in Tibetan script :མི་རིགས་ཏེ་རི་རང་དབང་དང་རྩི་མཐོང་གི་ཐོབ་ཐང་འདྲ་འདྲའི་ཐོག་སྐྱེའུ་ཡིན། གང་ག་རྣམ་དཔྱོད་དང་ཤེས་རབ་ལྷན་སྐྱེས་སུ་འོད་དུབ་ཡིན་ཙང་། ཕར་ཚུར་གཅིག་གིས་གཅིག་ལ་སྤུན་གྱི་འདུ་ཤེས་འཇོག་དགོས་ཀྱི། Sherpa in the Wylie Transliteration :mi rigs te ri rang dbang dang rtsi thong gi thob thang 'dra 'dra'i thog skyeu yin/ gang ga rnam dpyod dang shes rab lhan skyes su 'od dub yin tsang/ phar tshur gcig gis gcig la spun gyi 'du shes 'jog dgos kyi/ Translation :Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

References

External links

Himali Sherpa:Sherpa Culture dictionary

Sherpa-English and English-Sherpa Dictionary

Print edition

Omniglot Languages of Nepal South Bodish languages Subject–object–verb languages Languages of Sikkim Languages of Tibet Languages written in Devanagari {{st-lang-stub