Nyenkha (
Dzongkha: འནྱེན་ཁ་;
Wylie: ''
'Nyen-kha''; also called "'Nyenkha", "Henkha", "Lap", "Nga Ked", and "Mangsdekha") is an
East Bodish language spoken by about 10,000 people in the eastern, northern, and western areas of the
Black Mountains.
Speakers live primarily between the
Tang Chuu
The Tang Chuu is a tributary of the Mo Chhu in western Bhutan.
Course
It originates in the Himalayas near Thowadra Gompa. It receives numerous hill streams, including the Yenyer Chhu. It joins the Mo Chhu, which later takes on the name of Sank ...
to the east and
Mangde Chhu
Mangde Chhu or Tongsa river flows in central Bhutan traversing roughly north–south. The river rises in Wangdue Phodrang district (or dzongkhag in Dzongkha), near Gangkhar Puensum, Bhutan's highest peak at . Bhutan's main east–west highway c ...
to the west, from the town of
Trongsa
Trongsa, previously Tongsa (, ), is a Thromde or town, and the capital of Trongsa District in central Bhutan. The name means "new village" in Dzongkha. The first temple was built in 1543 by the Drukpa lama Ngagi Wangchuck, who was the great-gra ...
in
Trongsa District
Trongsa District (Dzongkha: ཀྲོང་གསར་རྫོང་ཁག་; Wylie transliteration: ''Krong-gsar rdzong-khag'') is one of the districts of Bhutan. It is the most central district of Bhutan and the geographic centre of Bhutan is ...
; along
Black River passes in the Trongsa District villages of Taktse and Usar; to in Ridha and Tashiding villages, and
Phobji,
Dangchu, and
Sephu Gewogs and surrounding villages in southeast
Wangdue Phodrang District
Wangdue Phodrang District ( Dzongkha: དབང་འདུས་ཕོ་བྲང་རྫོང་ཁག་; Wylie: ''Dbang-'dus Pho-brang rdzong-khag''; previously spelled "Wangdi Phodrang") is a dzongkhag (district) of central Bhutan. This ...
.
Nyenkha is related to the East Bodish
Bumthangkha and
Kurtöpkha,
[ with 75–77% and 69% lexical similarity, respectively,][ however they are not mutually intelligible. Dialects within Nyenkha show variation in tone and vocabulary. Dialects are generally named for their ]villages
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...
, such that names for the overall language are largely confined to academia.[
]
Population
The 1991 census revealed 11,472 Nyenkha speakers in six gewogs of Bhutan
A gewog ( dz, རྒེད་འོག ''geok'', block), in the past also spelled as geog, is a group of villages in Bhutan. The head of a ''gewog'' is called a ''gup'' ( ''gepo''). Gewogs form a geographic administrative unit below dzongkhag dis ...
. In 1993, the number of speakers was around 10,000 according to van Driem.[ A 2010 study showed about 8700 speakers in 10 gewogs, which had been redrawn several times since 1991. The decline in numbers may be attributed to population shifts as landless families and former ]slash-and-burn
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed veget ...
agriculturalists relocate to areas opened for settlement. In addition to migration and movement, modernization trends have served to limit the practicality of Nyenkha as a fully functional language. Despite the decline in numbers and a shift toward bilingualism, the majority of young people remain fluent in the language.[
Many speakers of Nyen have extensive contact with other ]languages of Bhutan
There are two dozen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family except for Nepali, which is an Indo-Aryan language, and Bhutanese Sign Language. Dzongkha, the national language, is the only native language of Bhutan with ...
, often through trade. Traditionally, Nyen speakers raised sheep and other livestock for Labi speakers in exchange for cereals from lower altitudes. The communities also traditionally shared Bon
''Bon'', also spelled Bön () and also known as Yungdrung Bon (, "eternal Bon"), is a Tibetan religious tradition with many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism and also many unique features.Samuel 2012, pp. 220-221. Bon initially developed in t ...
po orators.[
]
Vocabulary
Nyenkha basic vocabulary shows significant difference to Kurtöp (Zhake), a sister East Bodish language, and to Dzongkha, the national language.[
]
Grammar
Nyenkha has no grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
. Nouns and pronouns may be singular or plural.[
Unlike Dzongkha and most other ]languages of Bhutan
There are two dozen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family except for Nepali, which is an Indo-Aryan language, and Bhutanese Sign Language. Dzongkha, the national language, is the only native language of Bhutan with ...
, Nyenkha verbs inflect according to subject number: སྔ་ལཱེག་དོ་ ''nga laeg-do'', "I am going;" ནེ་ལཱ་ཆུག་དོ་ ''ney laachhug-do'', "We are going;" ཁི་ལས་ཤི་ ''khi las-shi'', "He/she has gone"; བོས་ལཱ་ཆུག་ཤི་ ''boe laachhug-shi'', "They have gone."[
]
See also
*Languages of Bhutan
There are two dozen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family except for Nepali, which is an Indo-Aryan language, and Bhutanese Sign Language. Dzongkha, the national language, is the only native language of Bhutan with ...
References
External links
Himalayan Languages Project
{{Languages of Bhutan
Languages of Bhutan
East Bodish languages