Sikkimese language
Encyclopedia
The Sikkimese language, also called Sikkimese Tibetan, Bhutia, Dranjongke , Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke, and Denzongke, belongs to the Southern Tibetan language family. It is spoken by the Bhutia
(Denzongpa) nationality in Sikkim
. Sikkimese people
refer to their own language as Dranjongke and their homeland as Denzong .
, which it inherited from Classical Tibetan
. Sikkimese phonology and lexicon differ markedly from Classical Tibetan, however. SIL
thus describes the Sikkimese writing system as "Bodhi style." According to SIL, 68% of Sikkimese Bhutia
were literate in the Tibetan script in 2001.
, however, is only 42% lexically similar. Sikkimese has also been influenced to some degree by the neighboring Yolmo
wa and Tamang language
s.
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.
Devoiced consonants are pronounced with a slight breathy voice
, aspiration (phonetics)
, 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.
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.
Bhutia
The Bhutia are ethnic Tibetans who speak Sikkimese, a Tibetan dialect fairly mutually intelligible to standard Tibetan. In 2001, the Bhutia numbered around 70,300...
(Denzongpa) nationality in Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...
. Sikkimese people
Sikkimese people
Sikkimese people inhabit the Indian state of Sikkim. The indigenous peoples of Sikkim consist of the Lepcha, Limbu, migrating from Tibet, Bhutias, descendants of Buddhists who arrived from Nepal in 15th century, who migrated from the Kham district of Tibet in the 14th century, and Nepali,...
refer to their own language as Dranjongke and their homeland as Denzong .
Script
Sikkimese is written using Tibetan scriptTibetan script
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...
, which it inherited from Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetan after the Old Tibetan period and before the modern period, but in particular refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from other languages, especially Sanskrit...
. Sikkimese phonology and lexicon differ markedly from Classical Tibetan, however. SIL
SIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
thus describes the Sikkimese writing system as "Bodhi style." According to SIL, 68% of Sikkimese Bhutia
Bhutia
The Bhutia are ethnic Tibetans who speak Sikkimese, a Tibetan dialect fairly mutually intelligible to standard Tibetan. In 2001, the Bhutia numbered around 70,300...
were literate in the Tibetan script in 2001.
Sikkimese and its neighbors
Speakers of Sikkimese can understand some Dzongkha, with a lexical similarity of 65% between the two languages. By comparison, Standard TibetanStandard Tibetan
Standard Tibetan is the most widely used spoken form of the Tibetan languages. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect belonging to the Central Tibetan languages. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Central Tibetan...
, however, is only 42% lexically similar. Sikkimese has also been influenced to some degree by the neighboring Yolmo
Yolmo
The people of Hyolmo or Hyolmopa are ethnically Buddhist people whose ancestors migrated in Hyolmo region at some 13/15th centuries from the Kyerong region of Tibet to the forested foothills of the Hyolmo region.-Origins:...
wa and Tamang language
Tamang language
Tamang is a term used to collectively refer to a dialect cluster spoken in parts of Nepal and Sikkim. It comprises Eastern Tamang, Northwestern Tamang, Southwestern Tamang, Eastern Gorkha Tamang, and Western Tamang...
s.
Due to more than a century of close contact with speakers of Nepali
Nepali language
Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
and Tibetan proper
Standard Tibetan
Standard Tibetan is the most widely used spoken form of the Tibetan languages. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect belonging to the Central Tibetan languages. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Central Tibetan...
, many Sikkimese speakers also use these languages in daily life.
Consonants
Below is a chart of Sikkimese consonants, largely following Yliniemi (2005) and van Driem (1992).| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Dental/ Alveolar |
Retroflex Retroflex consonant A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology... |
Alveolo-palatal Alveolo-palatal consonant In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar sounds, usually fricatives and affricates, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate... / Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
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 Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
voiceless unaspirated |
ts ཙ /ts/ | tɕ ཅ /c/ | ||||
| voiceless aspirated |
tsʰ ཚ /tsh/ | tɕʰ ཆ /ch/ | |||||
| voiced | dz ཛ /dz/ | dʑ ཇ /j/ | |||||
| devoiced | tɕ' ཇ /c'/ | ||||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
voiceless | s ས /s/ | ɕ ཤ /sh/ | h ཧ /h/ | |||
| voiced | z ཟ /z/ | ʑ ཞ /zh/ | |||||
| Liquid Liquid consonant In phonetics, liquids or liquid consonants are a class of consonants consisting of lateral consonants together with rhotics.-Description:... |
voiceless | l̥ ལ /l/ | r̥ ར /r/ | ||||
| voiced | l ལ /l/ | r~ɹ~ɾ ར /r/ | |||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
w ཝ /w/ | j ཡ /y/ | w ཝ /w/ | ||||
Devoiced consonants are pronounced with a slight breathy voice
Breathy voice
Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them. This produces an audible noise...
, aspiration (phonetics)
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
, and low pitch
Pitch accent
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
. They are remnants of voiced consonants in Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetan after the Old Tibetan period and before the modern period, but in particular refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from other languages, especially Sanskrit...
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.
Vowels
Below is a chart of Sikkimese vowels, also largely following Yliniemi (2005).| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... | Middle Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... | Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | i ི /i/ | y ུ /u/ | u ུ /u/ | |
| Mid | e ེ /e/ | ø ོ /o/ | o ོ /o/ | |
| Open | ɛ ེ /e/ | ɐ /a/ |
In the Tibetan script
Tibetan script
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...
, an abugida
Abugida
An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
, the inherent vowel /a/ is unmarked. In the above table, italicized [ɛ] /e/ is an allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
of [e] /e/, confined to appearing after [dʑ] /j/ in closed syllables.
See also
- Bhutia peopleBhutiaThe Bhutia are ethnic Tibetans who speak Sikkimese, a Tibetan dialect fairly mutually intelligible to standard Tibetan. In 2001, the Bhutia numbered around 70,300...
- Lepcha peopleLepcha peopleThe Lepcha or Róng people , also called Róngkup , Mútuncí Róngkup Rumkup , and Rongpa , are the aboriginal people of Sikkim, who number between 30,000 and 50,000...
- Lepcha languageLepcha languageLepcha language, or Róng language , is a Himalayish language spoken by the Lepcha people in Sikkim and parts of West Bengal, Nepal and Bhutan.-Population:...
- Indigenous peoples of Sikkim
- History of SikkimHistory of SikkimThe history of Sikkim begins with ancient Hindu and Tibetan contacts, followed by the establishment of a Tibetan kingdom in the 17th century. Sikkim emerged as a polity in its own right against a backdrop of incursions from Tibet and Bhutan, during which the kingdom enjoyed varying degrees of...