Tamang (

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 ...

: तामाङ; ''tāmāng'') is a term used to collectively refer to a dialect cluster spoken mainly in

Nepal Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...

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 Silig ...

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

(

Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a town and municipality in the northernmost region of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the easternmost province of Nepal ...

) and North-Eastern India. It comprises Eastern Tamang, Northwestern Tamang, Southwestern Tamang, Eastern Gorkha Tamang, and Western Tamang.

Lexical similarity In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...

between Eastern Tamang (which is regarded as the most prominent) and other Tamang languages varies between 81% to 63%. For comparison, lexical similarity between

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

and

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

, is estimated at 89%. Ethnologue report for Spanish

Dialects

'' Ethnologue'' divides Tamang into the following varieties due to mutual unintelligibility. *Eastern Tamang: 759,000 in Nepal (2000 WCD). Population total all countries: 773,000. Sub-dialects are as follows. **Outer-Eastern Tamang (Sailung Tamang) **Central-Eastern Tamang (Temal Tamang) **Southwestern Tamang (Kath-Bhotiya, Lama Bhote, Murmi, Rongba, Sain, Tamang Gyoi, Tamang Gyot, Tamang Lengmo, Tamang Tam) *Western Tamang: 323,000 (2000 WCD). Sub-dialects are as follows. **Trisuli (Nuwakot) **Rasuwa **Northwestern dialect of Western Tamang (Dhading) — separate ISO code. Population 55,000 (1991 census). Spoken in the central mountainous strip of

Nuwakot District Nuwakot District ( ne, नुवाकोट जिल्ला, a part of Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Bidur as its district headquarters, covers an area of and had a population of 288 ...

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 ...

. **Southwestern dialect of Western Tamang *Eastern Gorkha Tamang: 4,000 (2000 WCD). Sub-dialects are as follows. **Kasigaon **Kerounja The Tamang language is the most widely spoken Sino-Tibetan language in Nepal.

Geographical distribution

'' Ethnologue'' gives the following location information for the varieties of Tamang. Eastern Tamang *

: Bhaktapur District, Chitwan District,

Dolkha District Dolakha, often known as Dolkha or Dholkha (Nepal Bhasa:दोलखा जिल्ला)), a part of Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Charikot as its district headquarters, covers an area of a ...

Kathmandu District Kathmandu District ( ne, काठमाडौं जिल्ला; Nepal Bhasa: ये: जिल्ला) is a district located in Kathmandu Valley, Bagmati Province of Nepal. It is one of the 77 districts of Nepal, covers an area of , ...

Kavrepalanchok District Kavrepalanchok District ( ne, काभ्रेपलाञ्चोक जिल्ला; ) is one of the 77 districts of Nepal. The district, with Dhulikhel as its district headquarters, covers an area of . It is a part of Bagmati Provinc ...

, Lalitpur District,

Makwanpur District Makwanpur District( ne, मकवानपुर जिल्ला; , a part of Bagmati Province, earlier a part of Narayani Zone, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Hetauda as its district headquarter, as well ...

, eastern

Ramechhap District Ramechhap District ( ne, रामेछाप जिल्ला), a part of Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, a landlocked country of South Asia. The district, known as wallo Kirat Ramechhap, with Manthali as ...

Sindhuli District Sindhuli District ( ne, सिन्धुली जिल्ला), a part of the Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, a landlocked country of South Asia. The district, with Sindhulimadhi Kamalamai as its district ...

and western

Sindhupalchowk District Sindhupalchowk District ( ne, सिन्धुपाल्चोक जिल्ला ) is a part of Bagmati Province and one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, with an area of . The district's headquarters is in Chautara. In 2006, 336, ...

* Province No. 1:

Okhaldhunga District Okhaldhunga District ( ne, ओखलढुङ्गा जिल्ला) is one of 14 districts of Province No. 1 in eastern Nepal. The district, with Okhaldhunga as its district headquarters, covers an area of and had a population of 156,702 ...

, western

Khotang District Khotang District ( ne, खोटाङ जिल्ला) is one of 14 districts of Province No. 1 of eastern Nepal. The district, with Diktel as its district headquarters, covers an area of and has a population (2021) of 206,312.Udayapur District Udayapur District ( ne, उदयपुर जिल्ला, is one of 14 districts of Province No. 1 of eastern Nepal. The district, with Triyuga as its district headquarters, covers an area of and in 2001 had a population of 287,689, in 20 ...

Southwestern Tamang *

: Chitwan District, southern Dhading District, western and northwestern

area and northwestern

* Province No. 2:

Bara District Bara District ( ne, बारा जिल्ला ) is one of the seventy–seven districts of Nepal, located in the western part of the Madhesh Province. The district is third richest district in Nepal after Kathmandu and Morang with 3.3% sh ...

, Parsa District and Rautahat District Western Tamang *

: western

Rasuwa District Rasuwa District ( ne, रसुवा जिल्ला is one of 13 districts of Bagmati Province and one of seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Dhunche as its district headquarters, covers an area of and has a population ( ...

, and Dhading District *central mountainous strip of

(''Northwestern Tamang'') *northeastern

Sindhupalchok District Sindhupalchowk District ( ne, सिन्धुपाल्चोक जिल्ला ) is a part of Bagmati Province and one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, with an area of . The district's headquarters is in Chautara. In 2006, 336, ...

: Bhote Namlan, and Bhote Chaur, on Trishuli river west bank toward Budhi Gandaki river *northwestern

: Phakel, Chakhel, Khulekhani, Markhu, Tistung, and Palung *northern

: Jhor, Thoka, and Gagal Phedi Eastern Tamang *south and east of Jagat, northern

Gorkha District Gorkha District ( ne, गोरखा जिल्ला ), a part of Gandaki Province, is one of the 77 districts of Nepal, which is the fourth largest district (by area) of Nepal and connected historically with the creation of the modern Nep ...

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 ...

Grammar

Some grammatical features of the Tamang languages include: *A canonical word order of SOV *Use of

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; *The genitives follow

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, ...

s; *

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 ...

word medial; *It is an ergative–absolutive language; *CV, CVC, CCV, V, CCVC; Phonetically Tamang languages are tonal.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Nasality only marginally occurs, and is typically transcribed with a mark.

Tones

Four tones occur as high falling , mid-high level , mid-low level , very low .Mazaudon (2003)

Writing system

Tamang language is written in

Tamyig script stub Tamyig script is used to write the Tamang language. The Tamyig script is a simplified version of the Tibetan script. The Tamang community has their own script which is known as ‘Tamyig’ script. Several literary books was published in Tam ...

References

Bibliography

* Perumal Samy P. (2013)
Tamang in LSI Sikkim
volume I Page Nos. 404–472. Published by Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner,India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. *

External links

Counting in Tamang
*ELAR archive o
Tamang

{{Languages of Northeast India Languages of Nepal Tamangic languages Languages of Sikkim Languages of Bhutan Subject–object–verb languages