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Sunuwar, Sunuwar, or Kõinch (; ; other spellings are Koinch and Koincha), is a
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 ...
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 ...
by the
Sunuwar people 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 ...
. It was first comprehensively attested by the
Himalayan Languages Project The Himalayan Languages Project, launched in 1993, is a research collective based at Leiden University and comprising much of the world's authoritative research on the lesser-known and endangered languages of the Himalayas, in Nepal, China, Bhutan, ...
. It is also known as Kõits Lo ( ; ), Kiranti-Kõits ( ; ), Mukhiya ( ; ). The Sunwar language is one of the smaller members of the
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 family. About 40,000 speakers are residing in eastern Nepal.


Names

The language is commonly known as ''Koic,'' for many ethnic Sunwar and Sunwar speakers also refer to the language as “''Sunuwar, Kõinch'' '', Koinch'' or ''Koincha'' (कोँइच); ''Kõits Lo'' (कोँइच लो), ''Kiranti-Kõits'' (किराँती-कोँइच) or ''Mukhiya'' (मुखिया).” Moreover, most Sunwar speakers have the surname (सुनुवार), ''Sunuvār'' in
Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
. Many affiliated Sunwar with Sunar; they share the initial syllable, ''sun'', “gold,” in Nepali, similar to the Sunar community of India, who are goldsmiths. However, the ethnonym ''Sunuvār'' is believed to be connected with Sunkosi, a river nearby the Sunwar villages.


Geographic distribution

The Sunwar language is commonly spoken in a cluster of Sunwar villages, located around the region of the core spoken language. These villages are scattered alongside the river banks of Likhu Khola, in two bordering central-eastern districts of Nepal, distant from the main Nepalese road system: in the Okhaldhū۠ngā District (part of
Province No. 1 Province No. 1 (proposed names: Kirat Autonomous State, Kirat, Limbuwan, Khambuwan Rashtriya Morcha, Nepal, Khambuwan, Mount Everest, Sagarmatha, Virata, Birat and Koshi River, Koshi) is the easternmost of the seven Provinces of Nepal, province ...
), around the village of Vacul; and in the Rāmechāp District (part of
Bagmati Province Bagmati Province ( ne, बाग्मती प्रदेश, ''Bagmati Pradesh'') is one of the seven provinces of Nepal established by the constitution of Nepal. The province is Nepal's second-most populous province and fifth largest provinc ...
), around the villages of Pahare and of Kũbhu Kãsthālī for a smaller group of Sunwar speakers. The majority of the Sunwar speakers live on the southern border area of this region, between the villages of Pahare and Vacul. Located 1,800 meters above sea level, their fields aren’t all fallow from year round cultivation (Borchers, 2008). Therefore, many Sunwar households are farmers, own a small lot of land and livestock. Moreover, each village often visits their neighboring village markets to purchase inaccessible goods such as spices, sugar, tea, and salt. In the winter, they experience no snow but freezing temperatures. In warmer weather, they experience a lot of rainfall, in the summer, monsoon rainfall. Especially between June and August, it is when they experience the most rain, more so monsoon rainfall. According to Borchers, there are other villages located outside of the core region. The Surel are claimed to be Sunwar speakers however there are no certainties that it is true.


Written language


Sunuwar (or Jenticha, Koĩts, Mukhiya) native alphabet in Sikkim, India

Sunuwar speakers from
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 ...
, northeastern
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 ...
, use the Sunuwar alphabet (
ISO 15924 ISO 15924, ''Codes for the representation of names of scripts'', is an international standard defining codes for writing systems or ''scripts'' (a "set of graphic characters used for the written form of one or more languages"). Each script is given ...
script code: Sunu) for printed materials such as newspapers and literature. The alphabet, also known as Jenticha alphabet, Sunuwar Lipi, Koĩts Lipi or Mukhiya script, or जेँःतिच ब्रेःसे (''jẽtica brese''), was developed in 1942 by Karna Bahadur Sunuwar (1926-1991), and got official recognition in Sikkim and Eastern Nepal where it is taught in schools. The Sunuwar or Jenticha script, is unrelated to any other scripts (even if some letter shapes have some resemblance to Latin and Limbu letter forms with similar phonetic value), and behaves like an alphabet with 35 base letters, written left-to-right, with syllabic features, extended with combining diacritics. The script also features its own set of decimal digits. Unlike other Indic scripts derived from Brahmic, the Sunuwar alphabet includes no combining vowel signs: the script was initially a pure alphabet and the base consonants initially did not have any inherent vowel. But a second version of the script modified the orthographic rules to imply its presence, where the inherent vowel would be altered when appending any independent vowel letters, or suppressed by using a virama (or halant) sign in some consonant clusters or for consonants in final position of syllables. The independent letter form for the inherent vowel is now removed in most cases from the normal orthography in the middle of words, only used in isolation (i.e. no longer written when following a leading consonant, unless it is at end of words). A number of glyphic forms (conjuncts using consonants in half forms) were added to the script after this orthographic change for more easily writing consonant clusters, instead of writing multiple consonants with virama signs.


Devanagari-based abugida for the Sunwar language in Nepal

Although Sunwar has no traditional written language in Nepal, most literate speakers use 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 systems#Segmental syste ...
abugida, also used for writing Nepali. ; Independent vowels and diphthongs ; Consonants with inherent vowel ; Combining diacritics : The sign ्, known in Sunwar as ''sangmilu'', represents a
virama Virama ( ्) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either # halanta, hasanta or explicit virā ...
or halant; it is used to silent the inherent
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
after the
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
.https://unicode.org/L2/L2011/11218-n4028-jenticha.pdf : The sign ँ, known in Sunwar as ''taslathenk'', corresponds to the
candrabindu Chandrabindu (IAST: , in Sanskrit) is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali-Assamese (), Gujarati (ઁ), Odia (ଁ), Telugu (ఁ), Javanese ( ꦀ) and other sc ...
in
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 systems#Segmental syste ...
; it is used to nasalize the vowel.


Tikamuli native abugida (since 2005)

In 2005, another syllabic alphabet or abugida was developed for Sunuwar; it is known as Tikamuli.


Phonology

Sunwar
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
is significantly influenced by the language of Nepali.


Consonants

The Sunwar language has a mid-sized arrangement of thirty-two
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
al
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s: * Sound in parentheses only are heard in words borrowed from Nepali. Sounds in brackets are only heard as allophones. * The implosive sound [] was heard phonemically until recently among dialects. It is now heard as a plosive [] in the village of Saipu, and as an approximant [] in the village of Kũbhu. It is only heard rarely in word-initial position among the speakers of Saipu.


Vowels

According to Borchers, there are eleven vowel phonemes in Sunwar: /ā / ː /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ / ū/ ː~y /ã/ ~ɑ̃ /ã̄/ ː /ẽ/ ~ɛ̃ /ĩ/ * Vowels with bar - Represents long vowels * Vowels with tilde -  Represents short nasalized vowels * Vowels with bar and tilda - Represents long and nasalized vowels


Diphthongs

There are a total of eight
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s in Sunwar: /ai/ ɪ /aĩ/ ɪ̃ /au/ u /eu/ u /oi/ i /oĩ/ ĩ /ui/ i /uĩ/ ĩ According to Borchers, a principled way to distinguish diphthongs from a sequence of two
monophthong A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
s does not exist in the Sunwar language. As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of examples of contrasts between
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s:


Syllable structure

Syllable Structure of Sunwar: C(C)V(V)(C)(C)


Morphology


Markers


Case-marking suffixes

According to Borchers, “all
case marker In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word, phrase, or sentence. Most characteristically, markers occur as clitics or inflectional affixes. In analytic languages and agglutinat ...
s in the Sunwar language are
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es.” As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of the noun case markers.


Dual marker

A dual marker can be associated with dual/pair or the cardinal number ‘two’. Example of dual marker by Borchers:


Plural marker

In the Sunwar language, both
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s and
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s can be marked as dual or plural. In addition items in a group can be marked plural. Examples of the plural marker used to point at items in a group by Borchers:


Absent marker

According to Borchers, the Sunwar language does not have a zero morpheme, but it can still indicate the number amount of something through verbal agreement markers or numerals. Example of the absent marker by Borchers:


Suffixes


Possessive suffix: (Animate Agent)

According to Borchers, the possessive
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
is attached to a human or animate agent to indicate a possessive relationship. Examples of the possessive by Borchers:


Possessive suffix: (inanimate subject)

According to Borchers, inanimate subjects are marked with the possessive
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
to indicate what it is "made of". Example of possessive indicating what it is "made of" by Borchers:


Quantifiers

Quantifiers in the Sunwar language are loaned from Nepali. Quantifiers are used for amounts or masses. As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of quantifiers; including some that are loaned from Nepali. Examples of quantifiers that indicate amounts or masses by Borchers:


Syntax


Adjectives:

According to Borchers,
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s can belong to the verbal noun form, with an attached . In the Sunwar language, some
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s are borrowed from Nepali.


Adjectives: Color forms

Borchers also notes that
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s can belong to the form/term color. As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of the color form/terms.


Adjectives: Non-verbal nouns without attached

The Sunwar language has a category for
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s under the form ‘others’, that are not
verbal noun A verbal noun or gerundial noun is a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English grammar, English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The sacking of the city was an epochal event" (''sacking'' is a noun formed from the ...
s. In addition, some adjectives may be interchangeable as an
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
. As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of the adjectives that are not verbal nouns ending in form/terms. Examples of adjectives that are not
verbal noun A verbal noun or gerundial noun is a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English grammar, English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The sacking of the city was an epochal event" (''sacking'' is a noun formed from the ...
s ending in by Borchers:


Particles

As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of
particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from su ...
in correlation to various relationships.


Postpositional particles

According to Borchers, the Sunwar language borrows particles from Nepali that indicate the relationship between clauses. Examples of postpositional
particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from su ...
by Borchers:


My stomach v.s. your stomach

Example by Borchers:


Order: Subject-object-verb

Examples of order: Subject/
Object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
/
Verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
by Borchers.


Vocabulary

Seu+wa+la (Sewala)


Language structure

In
linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...
, a subject+object+verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject,
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
, and
verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
were SOV, "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual
Standard English In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone substantial regularisation and is associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and official print publications, such as public service a ...
"Sam ate oranges". (A Grammar of Sunwar) Sunwar people called "Khangsa" sign language with voice and direct action, for foreign people who don't understand a sunuwar language.


Numerals (Devanagari)


References


External links


Sunwar language website
{{Languages of Nepal Languages of Nepal Kiranti languages Languages of Sikkim Brahmic scripts