Gurung (

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 ...

: ), also known as Tamu Kyi (, ;

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 diale ...

: ) or Tamu Bhaasaa (, ), is a language spoken by the

Gurung people Gurung (exonym; ) or Tamu (endonym; Gurung: ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the hills and mountains of Gandaki Province of Nepal. Gurung people predominantly live around the Annapurna region in Manang, Mustang, Dolpo, Kaski, Lamjung, Gor ...

of Nepal. The total number of all Gurung speakers 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 ...

was 227,918 in 1991 and 325,622 in 2011. The official language of Nepal,

Nepali Nepali or Nepalese may refer to : Concerning Nepal * Anything of, from, or related to Nepal * Nepali people, citizens of Nepal * Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...

, is an

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

language, whereas Gurung is a

Sino-Tibetan 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. ...

language. Gurung is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, Bhutan, and by diaspora communities in countries such as

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

Geographical distribution

Gurung is spoken in the following districts of Nepal and India (''

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 comprehensi ...

''): *

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 ...

Kaski District Kaski District ( ne, कास्की जिल्ला, ), a part of Gandaki Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The name is disambiguated from Kaskikot, the ancient Kaski Kingdom. The district, with Pokhara as its d ...

, Syangja District,

Lamjung District Lamjung District ( ne, लमजुङ जिल्ला ), a part of Gandaki Province, is one of the 77 districts of Nepal. The district, with Besisahar as its district headquarters, covers an area of and had a population of 167,724. Lamjung ...

Tanahu District Tanahun District ( ne, तनहुँ जिल्ला , or ), a part of Gandaki Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Damauli as its district headquarters, covers an area of and has a population (2011 ...

, Gorkha District, Manang District and

Mustang The mustang is a free-roaming horse of the Western United States, descended from horses brought to the Americas by the Spanish. Mustangs are often referred to as wild horses, but because they are descended from once-domesticated animals, the ...

Dhawalagiri Zone Dhaulagiri ( ne, धौलागिरी अञ्चल ) was one of the fourteen zones which Nepal was divided into for administrative purposes, prior to the September 10, 2015 adoption of a new Constitution, which divided the nation instead ...

: Parbat district *

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 Sil ...

South Sikkim Namchi District is a district of the Indian state of Sikkim. Its headquarters is at Namchi. Geography South Sikkim lies at an altitude of 400 to 2000 metres and has a temperate climate for most of the year. Major urban centres include ...

West Sikkim Gyalshing District or Geyzing District is a district of the Indian state of Sikkim. Its headquarter is Geyzing, also known as Gyalshing. The district is a favourite with trekkers due to the high elevations. Other important towns include Pelli ...

East Sikkim Gangtok District, formerly the East Sikkim district, is an administrative district of the Indian state of Sikkim. It was renamed in 2021 as a result of administrative reorganisation of the state, which also saw three subdivisions of the East Si ...

Classification

At higher levels, Gurung is a member 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 ...

(or Trans-Himalayan) family. Robert Shafer classified Gurung within the Bodic division, sub-grouping that into Bodish and West Central Himalayish. Within the Bodish "Section", he located "Bodish" languages (including the Tibetan varieties) and also the " Gurung Branch", including Gurung, Tamang (Murmi), and Thakali (Thaksya). Based on lexical cognates established by Shafer and updated by

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 ...

, Shafer constructed the Bodish sub-grouping into three sub-divisions: (1) Western, (2) Central and Southern (a.k.a. “old Bodish”, including Tibetan), and (3) Eastern (containing “archaic” languages like Mönpa) and mainstream languages. Noonan referred to the Western sub-grouping within Bodish as Manange/Nyeshangte and Nar-Phu and Gurungic (containing Gurung, Thakali and Chantyal). He noted that Chantyal is structurally deviant due to more extensive contact-induced language change from Nepali. Sten Konow classified Himalayan T-B languages into pronominalized and non-prominalized, where Gurung is located. This classification is similar to Voeglin & Voeglin (1965), but within a " Gyarung- Mishmi" sub-family within Sino-Tibetan.

Grammar

Phonetically, Gurung languages are tonal. Some miscellaneous grammatical features of the Gurung languages are: * CV, CCV, CCCV syllables * Maximum of three

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 carr ...

es * SOV *

Postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s *

Grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

expressed with

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

Genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...

s *

Adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

s and

relatives Relatives can refer to: * Kinship * ''Relatives'' (1985 film), a 1985 Australian movie * ''Relatives'' (2006 film), a 2006 Hungarian movie * "Relatives", a song by Irving Berlin See also * Relative (disambiguation) Relative may refer to: Gene ...

before

head noun In linguistics, the head or nucleus of a phrase is the word that determines the syntactic category of that phrase. For example, the head of the noun phrase ''boiling hot water'' is the noun ''water''. Analogously, the head of a compound is th ...

* Numerals after head *

Rising intonation The high rising terminal (HRT), also known as upspeak, uptalk, or high rising intonation (HRI) is a feature of some variants of English where declarative sentences can end with a rising pitch similar to that typically found in yes-or-no question ...

in bipolar

question A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interroga ...

s *

Prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...

on negative verbs * No subject or object

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting ...

in verbs *

Split ergativity In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative. The conditions in which ergat ...

based on tense *

Causative In linguistics, a causative ( abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...

s * Benefactives

Writing system

For indigenous languages of Nepal, including Gurung, the rise of pluralism and ethnic consciousness has resulted in movements to develop and deploy community orthographies, but it has also resulted in variation and disagreements. As Noonan (2005) reports, in Gurung, writing primarily has been done through the medium of another language, and so community orthographies tend to be based on pre-existing models of languages of wider communication. According to Glover (2004), attempts at developing an orthography in Gurung go back to 1976, with work to compile the first dictionary of the language. Glover describes the different scripts that have been under consideration by the community, each with their own potential benefits and challenges. Four scripts have been proposed: a system based on the

Tibetan script The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (''abugida'') of Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. It has also been used for some non-Tibetic language ...

, a '' Khemaa lipi'' script (also known as ''Tamu Khema Phri'' or ''Khema Phri''), which is a unique alphasyllabary adaptation of Tibetan and Devanagari, and a Romanized script. Glover reported that a plan was in place in 2002 for a forthcoming dictionary of Gurung which included both an (adapted) Devanagari script and also a Roman script, benefitting both literate Gurungs in Nepal and diaspora Gurungs (28-29). Examples of Gurung language publications that employ orthographies include three books published by Tamu. These use a modified Devanagari orthography, which include subscript dots for nasalized vowels and other special symbols for

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

s and tonal and

phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defin ...

distinctions that are found in Gurung, but not in Nepali. Also included is a 2000 Gurung-Nepali-English dictionary produced by the Tamu Bauddha Sewa Samiti Nepal (Gurung Culture Organization), which also uses a modified Devanagari, and which also includes numerals (e.g., मी1 // 'eye' vs. मी2 // 'name') to indicate tone category for individual words. A 2020 Gurung-English-Nepali dictionary, based on the Sikkim variety of Gurung also makes use of a modified Devanagari script, but does not indicate tone.

References

Bibliography

* J. Burton-Page. (1955). Two studies in Gurungkura: I. tone; II. Rhotacization and retroflexion. ''Bulletin of the Society of Oriental and African Studies'' 111–19. * Viktor S.Doherty. (1974). "The Organizing Principles of Gurung Kinship.
''Kailash''
2.4: 273–301. * Warren W. Glover. (1970). Gurung tone and higher levels. Occasional Papers of the Wolfenden society on Tibeto-Burman Linguistics III, Tone systems of Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, Pt. I, ed. by Austin Hale and Kenneth L. Pike, 52–73. Studies in tone and phonological segments. Urbana: University of Illinois. * Warren W. Glover. (1974). Sememic and Grammatical Structures in Gurung (Nepal). Publication No. 49. Norman, OK: SIL Publications. * Warren W. Glover and Jessie Glover. (1972). A Guide to Gurung Tone. Kathmandu: Tribhuvan University and Summer Institute of Linguistics. * Warren W. Glover and John K. Landon. (1980). "Gurung Dialects." In Papers in Southeast Asian Languages No. 7, edited by R.L. Trail et al., 9-77. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. * Kristine A. Hildebrandt, D.N. Dhakal, Oliver Bond, Matt Vallejo and Andrea Fyffe. (2015). “A sociolinguistic survey of the languages of Manang, Nepal: Co-existence and endangerment.”
NFDIN Journal
'' 14.6: 104–122. * Pettigrew, Judith. (1999). "Parallel Landscapes: Ritual and Political Values of a Shamanic Soul Journey" in Himalayan Space: Cultural Horizons and Practices, edited by Balthasar Bickel and Martin Gaenszle, 247–271. Zürich: Völkerkundsmuseum *

External links

Manang Language Project of Kristine A. HildebrandtManangeWestern Gurung
at Language Archive at the University of Virginia'
Tibetan and Himalayan Library
{{Incubator, code= gvr Languages of Nepal Languages of Bhutan Tamangic languages Languages of Sikkim