Tilung ( ne, तिलुङ) is a moribund
Kiranti 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 ...
. According to Opgenort (2011, 2013), Tilung occupies an independent position within the Kiranti language family, and can be placed roughly between the Western languages Thulung, Khaling and Dumi, on the one side, and the Southern Central Kiranti languages Kulung, Chamling and Bantawa, on the other. Even though Tilung is spoken directly to the south of the
Wambule speaking area, Tilung and Wambule are not mutually intelligible. The Choskule and Dorungkecha "dialects" may be related languages.
Locations
Tilung is spoken by a few elderly people living in several small settlements in
Chyasmitar (च्यास्मिटार) Village Development Committee (VDC), southern
Khotang (खोटाङ) district,
Sagarmatha Zone
Sagarmāthā Zone ( ne, सगरमाथा अञ्चल) or Sagarmatha Anclal ( ne, सगरमाथा अञ्चल) was one of the fourteen zones of Nepal until the restructuring of zones into provinces. The headquarters of Sagarmat ...
, Nepal (Opgenort 2011, ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...
''). It is located on the northern bank of the Sunkosi (सुनकोशी) River, on the last ridge of the Halesi Range. According to the 2001 Census of Nepal (with data from 1991),
Chyasmitar VDC had a population of 2,167 persons living in 412 households, and there were 310 speakers of Tilung. However, Opgenort's (2011, 2013) more recent investigations have shown that there are only a few fluent speakers of Tilung remaining. These people are all older than 60 years and fully bilingual in Nepali, which is the dominant language among the Tilung ethnic community.
References
*Opgenort, Jean Robert. 2011.
A note on Tilung and its position within Kiranti'. Himalayan Linguistics 10.1:253-271.
*Opgenort, Jean Robert. 2013. ‘Initial grammatical sketch of Tilung’, pp. 329–392 in ''Trans-Himalayan Linguistics. Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 266''. Thomas Owen-Smith, Nathan Hill, eds. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
*Central Bureau of Statistics. 2001. ''Population census''. Kathmandu: National Planning Commission.
Kiranti languages
Languages of Nepal
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