Bahing language
Encyclopedia
Bahing is a language spoken by 2,765 people (2001 census) of the Bahing ethnic group
in the Okhaldhunga district
of Nepal
. It belongs to the family of Kiranti languages
, a subgroup of Tibeto-Burman.
The Bahing language was described by Brian Houghton Hodgson
(1857, 1858) as having a very complex verbal morphology. By the 1970s, only vestiges were left, making Bahing a case study of grammatical attrition and language death.
Bahing and the related Khaling language
have synchronic ten-vowel systems. The difference of [mərə] "monkey" vs. [mɯrɯ] "man" is difficult to perceive for speakers of even neighboring dialects, which makes for "an unlimited source of fun to the Bahing people" (de Boer 2002 PDF).
Hodgson (1857) reported a middle voice formed by a suffix -s(i) added to the verbal stem, corresponding to reflexives in other Kiranti languages (Opgenort.nl).
Bahing
The Bahing are a subset of the Rai ethnic group, located widely in Solukhumbu District , in some of the villages like Bulaadi, Chisopani, Manebhanjyang, Ratmaate, Lekh Kharka of Okhaldhunga District, and in some other districts of eastern Nepal. Their language, also named Bahing, belongs to the...
in the Okhaldhunga district
Okhaldhunga District
Okhaldhunga District of 156,702.Okhaldhunga is part of area traditionally called Wallo Kirat,home to indigenous ethnic groups Rai and Sunuwar...
of Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
. It belongs to the family of Kiranti languages
Kiranti languages
The Mahakiranti or Maha-Kiranti languages are a proposed intermediate level of classification of the Tibeto-Burman languages. They are the languages most closely related to the Kiranti languages proper, which are spoken by the ethnic Kirat...
, a subgroup of Tibeto-Burman.
The Bahing language was described by Brian Houghton Hodgson
Brian Houghton Hodgson
Brian Houghton Hodgson was an early naturalist and ethnologist working in British India and Nepal where he was an English civil servant. He described many species, especially birds and mammals from the Himalayas, and several birds were named after him by others such as Edward Blyth...
(1857, 1858) as having a very complex verbal morphology. By the 1970s, only vestiges were left, making Bahing a case study of grammatical attrition and language death.
Bahing and the related Khaling language
Khaling language
Khaling is a Kiranti language spoken in Khotang district, Nepal-References:*Hale, Austin, editor. 1973. Collected papers on Khaling, Kulunge, Darai, Newari, Chitwan Tharu. Nepal Studies in Linguistics, 1. Kirtipur: Summer Institute of Linguistics and Institute for Nepal and Asian Studies. vii, 87...
have synchronic ten-vowel systems. The difference of [mərə] "monkey" vs. [mɯrɯ] "man" is difficult to perceive for speakers of even neighboring dialects, which makes for "an unlimited source of fun to the Bahing people" (de Boer 2002 PDF).
Hodgson (1857) reported a middle voice formed by a suffix -s(i) added to the verbal stem, corresponding to reflexives in other Kiranti languages (Opgenort.nl).