Gurung | |
---|---|
गुरुङ, ཏམུ་ཀི | |
Tamu Kyi, Manangi, Mustangi and Seke | |
Native to | Nepal, India, Bhutan |
Ethnicity | Gurung people |
Native speakers | 325,622 (2011 census)[1] |
Sino-Tibetan
| |
Khema (Devanagari) and Tibetan | |
Official status | |
Official language in | India |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | gvr |
Glottolog | guru1261 |
ELP |
Gurung language differs from place to place. Gurung of Nepal not only speak Tamu Kyi but also speaks Manangi, Mustangi and Seke. The total number of all Gurung speakers in Nepal was 227,918 (1991 census). Nepal's official language Nepali, is an Indo-European language, whereas Gurung is a Sino-Tibetan language. Gurung is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, Bhutan, and by diaspora communities in other countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong.
Geographical distribution
Gurung is spoken in the following districts of Nepal (Ethnologue):
- Gandaki Province: Kaski District, Syangja District, Lamjung District, Tanahu District, Gorkha District, Manang District and Mustang
- Dhawalagiri Zone: Parbat district
- Sikkim: South Sikkim, West Sikkim
Grammar
Some miscellaneous grammatical features of the Gurung languages are:
- SOV
- Postpositions
- Genitives
- Adjectives relatives before noun heads
- numerals after noun heads
- Rising intonation in bipolar questions
- 1 prefix on negative verbs
- Maximum number of suffixes 3
- case of noun phrase shown by preposition
- No subject or object referencing in verbs
- split ergative system according to tense
- Causatives
- Benefactives
- CV, CCV, CCCV
Phonetically, Gurung languages are tonal.
See also
References
- ^ Official Summary of Census (2011), Central Bureau of Statistics, Nepal Archived 2012-12-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "50th Report of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in India" (PDF). 16 July 2014. p. 109. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 January 2018. Retrieved 6 November 2016.
Bibliography
- J. Burton-Page. (1955). Two studies in Gurungkura: I. tone; II. Rhotacization and retroflexion. Bulletin of the Society of Oriental and African Studies 111–19.
- Viktor S.Doherty. (1974). "The Organizing Principles of Gurung Kinship." Kailash. 2.4: 273–301.
- Warren W. Glover. (1970). Gurung tone and higher levels. Occasional Papers of the Wolfenden society on Tibeto-Burman Linguistics III, Tone systems of Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, Pt. I, ed. by Austin Hale and Kenneth L. Pike, 52–73. Studies in tone and phonological segments. Urbana: University of Illinois.
- Warren W. Glover. (1974). Sememic and Grammatical Structures in Gurung (Nepal). Publication No. 49. Norman, OK: SIL Publications.
- Warren W. Glover and Jessie Glover. (1972). A Guide to Gurung Tone. Kathmandu: Tribhuvan University and Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- Warren W. Glover and John K. Landon. (1980). "Gurung Dialects." In Papers in Southeast Asian Languages No. 7, edited by R.L. Trail et al., 9-77. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Kristine A. Hildebrandt, D.N. Dhakal, Oliver Bond, Matt Vallejo and Andrea Fyffe. (2015). “A sociolinguistic survey of the languages of Manang, Nepal: Co-existence and endangerment.” NFDIN Journal, 14.6: 104–122.
- Pettigrew, Judith. (1999). "Parallel Landscapes: Ritual and Political Values of a Shamanic Soul Journey" in Himalayan Space: Cultural Horizons and Practices, edited by Balthasar Bickel and Martin Gaenszle, 247–271. Zürich: Völkerkundsmuseum
- Nishi 西, Yoshio 義郎 (1993c). "グルン語" [Gurung (=LSI), Gūrung; Gurungkura]. In 亀井 Kamei, 孝 Takashi; 河野 Kōno, 六郎 Rokurō; 千野 Chino, 栄一 Eichi (eds.). 三省堂言語学大辞典 The Sanseido Encyclopaedia of Linguistics (in Japanese). Vol. 5. Tokyo: 三省堂 Sanseido Press. pp. 135b–143b.
External links
- Manang Language Project of Kristine A. Hildebrandt
- Manange, Western Gurung at Language Archive at the University of Virginia's Tibetan and Himalayan Library