Sunuwar, Sunuwar, or Kõinch (; ; other spellings are Koinch and Koincha), is a
Kiranti
The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti, are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group. They are peoples of the Himalayas, mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from Nepal to North East India (predominantly in the Indian state of Sikkim ...
language spoken in
Nepal and
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
by the
Sunuwar people
The Sunuwar or Koinch (; ''Sunuwār Jāti'') is a Kirati tribe native to Nepal, parts of India ( West Bengal and Sikkim) and southern Bhutan. They speak the Sunuwar language. According to the 2001 census of Nepal, 17% of the tribe follow th ...
. It was first comprehensively attested by the
Himalayan Languages Project. It is also known as Kõits Lo ( ; ), Kiranti-Kõits ( ; ), Mukhiya ( ; ).
The Sunwar language is one of the smaller members of the
Tibeto-Burman language family. About 40,000 speakers are residing in eastern Nepal.
Names
The language is commonly known as ''Koic,'' for many ethnic Sunwar and Sunwar speakers also refer to the language as “''Sunuwar, Kõinch''
'', Koinch'' or ''Koincha'' (कोँइच); ''Kõits Lo'' (कोँइच लो), ''Kiranti-Kõits'' (किराँती-कोँइच) or ''Mukhiya'' (मुखिया).”
Moreover, most Sunwar speakers have the surname (सुनुवार), ''Sunuvār'' in
Latin script.
Many affiliated Sunwar with Sunar; they share the initial syllable, ''sun'', “gold,” in
Nepali
Nepali or Nepalese may refer to :
Concerning Nepal
* Anything of, from, or related to Nepal
* Nepali people, citizens of Nepal
* Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...
, similar to the Sunar community of India, who are goldsmiths. However, the ethnonym ''Sunuvār'' is believed to be connected with Sunkosi, a river nearby the Sunwar villages.
Geographic distribution
The Sunwar language is commonly spoken in a cluster of Sunwar villages, located around the region of the core spoken language. These villages are scattered alongside the river banks of
Likhu Khola, in two bordering central-eastern districts of Nepal, distant from the main Nepalese road system:
in the
Okhaldhū۠ngā District (part of
Province No. 1
Province No. 1 (proposed names: Kirat, Limbuwan, Khambuwan, Sagarmatha, Birat and Koshi) is the easternmost of the seven provinces established by the new constitution of Nepal which was adopted on 20 September 2015. The province covers an ...
), around the village of Vacul; and in the
Rāmechāp District (part of
Bagmati Province
Bagmati Province ( ne, बाग्मती प्रदेश, ''Bagmati Pradesh'') is one of the seven provinces of Nepal established by the constitution of Nepal. The province is Nepal's second-most populous province and fifth largest provin ...
), around the villages of
Pahare and of
Kũbhu Kãsthālī for a smaller group of Sunwar speakers. The majority of the Sunwar speakers live on the southern border area of this region, between the villages of Pahare and Vacul.
Located 1,800 meters above sea level, their fields aren’t all fallow from year round cultivation
(Borchers, 2008). Therefore, many Sunwar households are farmers, own a small lot of land and livestock. Moreover, each village often visits their neighboring village markets to purchase inaccessible goods such as spices, sugar, tea, and salt. In the winter, they experience no snow but freezing temperatures. In warmer weather, they experience a lot of rainfall, in the summer, monsoon rainfall. Especially between June and August, it is when they experience the most rain, more so monsoon rainfall.
According to Borchers, there are other villages located outside of the core region. The Surel are claimed to be Sunwar speakers however there are no certainties that it is true.
Written language
Sunuwar (or Jenticha, Koĩts, Mukhiya) native alphabet in Sikkim, India
Sunuwar speakers from
Sikkim, northeastern
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
, use the Sunuwar alphabet (
ISO 15924 script code:
Sunu) for printed materials such as newspapers and literature. The alphabet, also known as Jenticha alphabet, Sunuwar Lipi, Koĩts Lipi or Mukhiya script, or जेँःतिच ब्रेःसे (''jẽtica brese''), was developed in 1942 by Karna Bahadur Sunuwar (1926-1991), and got official recognition in Sikkim and Eastern Nepal where it is taught in schools. The Sunuwar or Jenticha script, is unrelated to any other scripts (even if some letter shapes have some resemblance to Latin and Limbu letter forms with similar phonetic value), and behaves like an alphabet with 35 base letters, written left-to-right, with syllabic features, extended with combining diacritics. The script also features its own set of decimal digits.
Unlike other Indic scripts derived from Brahmic, the Sunuwar alphabet includes no combining vowel signs: the script was initially a pure alphabet and the base consonants initially did not have any inherent vowel. But a second version of the script modified the orthographic rules to imply its presence, where the inherent vowel would be altered when appending any independent vowel letters, or suppressed by using a virama (or halant) sign in some consonant clusters or for consonants in final position of syllables. The independent letter form for the inherent vowel is now removed in most cases from the normal orthography in the middle of words, only used in isolation (i.e. no longer written when following a leading consonant, unless it is at end of words). A number of glyphic forms (conjuncts using consonants in half forms) were added to the script after this orthographic change for more easily writing consonant clusters, instead of writing multiple consonants with virama signs.
Devanagari-based abugida for the Sunwar language in Nepal
Although Sunwar has no traditional written language in Nepal, most literate speakers use the
Devanagari abugida,
also used for writing
Nepali
Nepali or Nepalese may refer to :
Concerning Nepal
* Anything of, from, or related to Nepal
* Nepali people, citizens of Nepal
* Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...
.
; Independent vowels and diphthongs
; Consonants with inherent vowel
; Combining diacritics
: The sign ्, known in Sunwar as ''sangmilu'', represents a
virama or halant; it is used to silent the inherent
vowel after the
consonant.
[https://unicode.org/L2/L2011/11218-n4028-jenticha.pdf ]
: The sign ँ, known in Sunwar as ''taslathenk'', corresponds to the
candrabindu
Chandrabindu (IAST: , in Sanskrit) is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali-Assamese (), Gujarati (ઁ), Odia (ଁ), Telugu (ఁ), Javanese ( ꦀ) and other ...
in
Devanagari; it is used to nasalize the vowel.
Tikamuli native abugida (since 2005)
In 2005, another syllabic alphabet or abugida was developed for Sunuwar; it is known as Tikamuli.
Phonology
Sunwar
phonology is significantly influenced by the language of
Nepali
Nepali or Nepalese may refer to :
Concerning Nepal
* Anything of, from, or related to Nepal
* Nepali people, citizens of Nepal
* Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...
.
Consonants
The Sunwar language has a mid-sized arrangement of thirty-two
consonanta
l
phonemes:
* Sound in parentheses only are heard in words borrowed from Nepali. Sounds in brackets are only heard as allophones.
* The implosive sound [] was heard phonemically until recently among dialects. It is now heard as a plosive [] in the village of Saipu, and as an approximant [] in the village of Kũbhu. It is only heard rarely in word-initial position among the speakers of Saipu.
Vowels
According to Borchers,
there are eleven vowel phonemes in Sunwar:
~ɑ /ā /
ː /e/
~ɛ /i/
/o/
/u/
/ ū/
ː~y /ã/
�~ɑ̃ /ã̄/
�ː /ẽ/
��~ɛ̃ /ĩ/
�
* Vowels with bar - Represents long vowels
* Vowels with tilde - Represents short nasalized vowels
* Vowels with bar and tilda - Represents long and nasalized vowels
Diphthongs
There are a total of eight
diphthongs in Sunwar: /ai/
ɪ /aĩ/
ɪ̃ /au/
u /eu/
u /oi/
i /oĩ/
ĩ /ui/
i /uĩ/
ĩ
According to Borchers,
a principled way to distinguish diphthongs from a sequence of two
monophthongs does not exist in the Sunwar language.
As exemplified by Borchers,
this table consists of examples of contrasts between
diphthongs:
Syllable structure
Syllable Structure of Sunwar: C(C)V(V)(C)(C)
Morphology
Markers
Case-marking suffixes
According to Borchers,
“all
case markers in the Sunwar language are
suffixes.”
As exemplified by Borchers,
this table consists of the noun case markers.
Dual marker
A dual marker can be associated with dual/pair or the cardinal number ‘two’.
Example of dual marker by Borchers:
Plural marker
In the Sunwar language, both
nouns and
pronouns can be marked as dual or plural.
In addition items in a group can be marked plural.
Examples of the plural marker used to point at items in a group by Borchers:
Absent marker
According to Borchers,
the Sunwar language does not have a zero morpheme, but it can still indicate the number amount of something through verbal agreement markers or numerals.
Example of the absent marker by Borchers:
Suffixes
Possessive suffix: (Animate Agent)
According to Borchers,
the possessive
suffix is attached to a human or animate agent to indicate a possessive relationship.
Examples of the possessive by Borchers:
Possessive suffix: (inanimate subject)
According to Borchers,
inanimate subjects are marked with the possessive
suffix to indicate what it is "made of".
Example of possessive indicating what it is "made of" by Borchers:
Quantifiers
Quantifiers in the Sunwar language are loaned from Nepali. Quantifiers are used for amounts or masses.
As exemplified by Borchers,
this table consists of quantifiers; including some that are loaned from Nepali.
Examples of
quantifiers that indicate amounts or masses by Borchers:
Syntax
Adjectives:
According to Borchers,
adjectives can belong to the verbal noun form, with an attached . In the Sunwar language, some
adjectives are borrowed from
Nepali
Nepali or Nepalese may refer to :
Concerning Nepal
* Anything of, from, or related to Nepal
* Nepali people, citizens of Nepal
* Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...
.
Adjectives: Color forms
Borchers also notes that
adjectives can belong to the form/term color.
As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of the color form/terms.
Adjectives: Non-verbal nouns without attached
The Sunwar language has a category for
adjectives under the form ‘others’, that are not
verbal nouns. In addition, some adjectives may be interchangeable as an
adverb.
As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of the adjectives that are not verbal nouns ending in form/terms.
Examples of adjectives that are not
verbal nouns ending in by Borchers:
Particles
As exemplified by Borchers, this table consists of
particles in correlation to various relationships.
Postpositional particles
According to Borchers, the Sunwar language borrows particles from Nepali that indicate the relationship between clauses.
Examples of postpositional
particles by Borchers:
My stomach v.s. your stomach
Example by Borchers:
Order: Subject-object-verb
Examples of order:
Subject/
Object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
/
Verb by Borchers.
Vocabulary
Seu+wa+la (Sewala)
Language structure
In
linguistic typology, a subject+object+verb (SOV) language is one in which the
subject,
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
, and
verb of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
were SOV, "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual
Standard English "Sam ate oranges". (A Grammar of Sunwar)
Sunwar people called "Khangsa" sign language with voice and direct action, for foreign people who don't understand a sunuwar language.
Numerals (Devanagari)
References
External links
Sunwar language website
{{Languages of Nepal
Languages of Nepal
Kiranti languages
Languages of Sikkim
Brahmic scripts