Bantawa language

Bantawa
Region	Nepal
Native speakers	170,000 (2001 & 2011 censuses)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Mahakiranti ? Kiranti Central Kirati Southern Bantawa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bap
Glottolog	bant1281[2]

The Bantawa language is an endangered Kiranti language spoken in the eastern Himalayan hills of eastern Nepal by Rai ethnic groups. According to the 2001 National Census, at least 1.63% of the Nepal's total population speaks Bantawa. About 370,000 speak Bantawa Language mostly in eastern hilly regions of Nepal (2001). It is experiencing language shift to Nepali.

Dialects

Most of the Bantawa clan are now settled in Bhojpur, Dharan, Illam, and Dhankuta. Recent figures show most of them are settled in Dharan. Bantawa is spoken in the following districts of Nepal.

• Kosi Zone: Morang District, Dhankuta District, Bhojpur District, and Sunsari District
• Sagarmatha Zone: Khotang District, Okhaldhunga District, and Udayapur District
• Mechi Zone: Ilam District, Jhapa District, Panchthar District, and Taplejung District

Dialects are as follows.

• Northern Bantawa (Dilpali)

Northern subdialects: Mangpahang, Rungchenbung and Yangma

• Southern Bantawa (Chewali, Okhreli, Hatuwali, Hangkhim)

Southern and Northern Bantawa, similar, could be united as 'Intermediate Bantawa'.

• Eastern Bantawa (Dhankuta)

Eastern dialect is the most divergent. It is most closely related to Dungmali language, though also related to Puma language, Sampang language, and Chhintange language.

• Western Bantawa (Amchoke, Amchauke)

Amchaucke dialects: Sorung, Saharaja, Lulam, and Sukita

• Wana Bantawa (also called simply Bantawa), spoken by the Bantawa subcaste. The Amchoke dialect is spoken in the Limbu area, especially in Ilam district.

Bantawa is also considered as a superior clan in Kirantian family. Bantawa is also reportedly in use as a lingua franca among Rai minorities in Himalayan India and Bhutan. Meanwhile the language is just being introduced in a few schools at the primary level (Year 1- Year 5) ^[3] using Devanagari script.^{[4] [5]}

References

1. Bantawa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Bantawa". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Jadranka Gvozdanovic. "Morphosyntactic transparency in Bantawa" (.pdf). Himalyan Languages: Past and Present, by Anju Saxena. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
4. "The Bantawa Rai of Nepal". Retrieved 2007-09-12.
5. "Bantawa, A language of Nepal". Archived from the original on 22 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-12.

Further reading

• Winter, Werner. 2003. A Bantawa Dictionary. Trends in Linguistics - Documentation 20. Mouten de Gruyter: New York.

External links

• Bantawa: observations of a threatened language