Sikkimese language
| Sikkimese | |
|---|---|
| Drenjong | |
| Lhokä | |
| Region | Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan |
| Ethnicity | Bhutia |
Native speakers | 70,000 (2001)[1] |
| Tibetan alphabet | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Sikkim |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
sip |
| Glottolog |
sikk1242[2] |
The Sikkimese language, also called "Sikkimese Tibetan", "Bhutia", "Drenjongké" (Tibetan: འབྲས་ལྗོངས་སྐད་, Wylie: 'bras ljongs skad "Rice Valley language"[3]), Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke, and Denzongke, belongs to the Southern Tibetic languages. It is spoken by the Bhutia in Sikkim and northeast Nepal. The Sikkimese people refer to their own language as Drendzongké and their homeland as Drendzong (Tibetan: འབྲས་ལྗོངས་, Wylie: 'bras-ljongs ; "Rice Valley").[4]
Script
Sikkimese is written using Tibetan alphabet, which it inherited from Classical Tibetan. Sikkimese phonology and lexicon differ markedly from Classical Tibetan, however. SIL International thus describes the Sikkimese writing system as "Bodhi style". According to SIL, 68% of Sikkimese Bhutia were literate in the Tibetan script in 2001.[4][5][6]
Sikkimese and its neighbors
Speakers of Sikkimese can understand some Dzongkha, with a lexical similarity of 65% between the two languages. By comparison, Standard Tibetan, however, is only 42% lexically similar. Sikkimese has also been influenced to some degree by the neighboring Yolmowa and Tamang languages.[4][5]
Due to more than a century of close contact with speakers of Nepali and Tibetan proper, many Sikkimese speakers also use these languages in daily life.[4]
Phonology
Consonants
Below is a chart of Sikkimese consonants, largely following Yliniemi (2005) and van Driem (1992).[6]
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Retroflex | Alveolo-palatal/ Palatal |
Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | voiceless | n̥ ན /n/ | ŋ̥ ང /ng/ | ||||
| voiced | m མ /m/ | n ན /n/ | n~ŋ ཉ /ny/ | ŋ ང /ng/ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless unaspirated |
p པ /p/ | t ཏ /t/ | ʈ ཏྲ /tr/ | k ཀ /k/ | ʔ འ /ʔ/ | |
| voiceless aspirated |
pʰ ཕ /ph/ | tʰ ཐ /th/ | ʈʰ ཐྲ /thr/ | kʰ ཁ /kh/ | |||
| voiced | b བ /b/ | d ད /d/ | ɖ དྲ /dr/ | ɡ ག /g/ | |||
| devoiced | p̀ʱ བ /p'/ | t̀ʱ ད /t'/ | ʈ̀ʱ དྲ /tr'/ | k̀ʱ ག /k'/ | |||
| Affricate | voiceless unaspirated |
ts ཙ /ts/ | tɕ ཅ /c/ | ||||
| voiceless aspirated |
tsʰ ཚ /tsh/ | tɕʰ ཆ /ch/ | |||||
| voiced | dz ཛ /dz/ | dʑ ཇ /j/ | |||||
| devoiced | tɕ̀ʱ ཇ /c'/ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s ས /s/ | ɕ ཤ /sh/ | h ཧ /h/ | |||
| voiced | z ཟ /z/ | ʑ ཞ /zh/ | |||||
| Liquid | voiceless | l̥ ལ /l/ | r̥ ར /r/ | ||||
| voiced | l ལ /l/ | r~ɹ~ɾ ར /r/ | |||||
| Approximant | w ཝ /w/ | j ཡ /y/ | w ཝ /w/ | ||||
Devoiced consonants are pronounced with a slight breathy voice, aspiration, and low pitch. They are remnants of voiced consonants in Classical Tibetan that became devoiced. Likewise, the historical Tibetan phoneme /ny/ is realized as an allophone of /n/ and /ng/, which themselves have mostly lost contrast among speakers.[6]
Vowels
Below is a chart of Sikkimese vowels, also largely following Yliniemi (2005).[6]
| Front | Middle | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | i ི /i/ | ɹ ུ /u/ | u ུ /u/ | |
| Mid | e ེ /e/ | ø ོ /o/ | o ོ /o/ | |
| Open | ɛ ེ /e/ | ɐ /a/ | ||
In the Tibetan script, an abugida, the inherent vowel /a/ is unmarked. In the above table, italicized [ɛ] /e/ is an allophone of [e] /e/, confined to appearing after [dʑ] /j/ in closed syllables.[6]
See also
References
- ↑ Sikkimese at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Sikkimese". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ "Lost Syllables and Tone Contour in Dzongkha (Bhutan)" in David Bradley, Eguénie J.A. Henderson and Martine Mazaudon, eds, Prosodic analysis and Asian linguistics: to honour R. K. Sprigg, 115-136; Pacific Linguistics, C-104, 1988
- 1 2 3 4 Lewis, M. Paul, ed. (2009). "Sikkimese". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (16 ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Retrieved 2011-04-16.
- 1 2 Norboo, S. (1995). "The Sikkimese Bhutia" (PDF). Bulletin of Tibetology. Gangtok: Namgyal Institute of Tibetology. pp. 114–115.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Yliniemi, Juha (2005). Preliminary Phonological Analysis of Denjongka of Sikkim (PDF) (Masters, General Linguistics thesis). University of Helsinki. Retrieved 2011-04-17.
Further reading
- van Driem, George (1992). The grammar of Dzongkha. Dzongkha Development Commission, Government of Bhutan.
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