Thangmi, also called Thāmī, Thangmi Kham, Thangmi Wakhe, and Thani, is a

Sino-Tibetan language Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

spoken in central-eastern Nepal and northeastern India by the Thami people. The Thami refer to their language as ''Thangmi Kham'' or ''Thangmi Wakhe'' while the rest of Nepal refers to it as ''Thāmī''. The majority of these speakers, however, live in

Nepal Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...

in their traditional homeland of Dolakhā District. In

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, the Thami population is concentrated mostly in

Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a town and municipality in the northernmost region of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the easternmost province of Nepal ...

. The Thangmi language is written using the

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

script. Thangmi has been extensively documented by

Mark Turin Mark Turin (born 1973) is a British anthropologist, linguist and occasional radio broadcaster who specializes in the Himalayas and the Pacific Northwest. From 2014–2018, he served as Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program ...

Distribution

Thangmi is spoken in

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 provinc ...

, mainly in the region of Dolakha; villages on Sailung Khola (The northern panhandle of the

Ramechhap District Ramechhap District ( ne, रामेछाप जिल्ला), a part of Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, a landlocked country of South Asia. The district, known as wallo Kirat Ramechhap, with Manthali as ...

; mainly in Gokulganga); eastern regions of Sindhupalchowk District; and by some elders among the population who migrated to the cities in the Kathmandu Valley. Very few ethnic Thami outside Dolakha and Sindhupalcok districts speak Thangmi.

Classification

The Thangmi language seems to have many similarities with other languages in Nepal. For example, Barām, Kiranti and Newar. Studies from Konow (1909), Shafer (1966), Stein (1970), Toba (1990), van Driem (1992) and Turin demonstrate that Thangmi is closely related to the Rai and Newar languages.

Grammar

Dialects

Dolakhā vs. Sindhupālchok

Thangmi consists of two dialects, Dolakhā (East) and Sindhupālchok (West). They differ in terms of phonology, nominal, and verbal morphology and in lexicon. The majority of the Thangmi speaking population use the Dolakhā dialect while only a handful speak in Sindhupālcok. The Dolakhā dialect offers a more complete verbal agreement system while the Sindhupālcok dialect has a more complex nominal morphology.

Thangmi songs

The Thami population are people who are rich in cultural and traditions. Their language is a large part of who they are and they portray this in their cultural, mostly in music. The Nepal Tham Society (NTS) produced a handful of Thangmi songs that were recorded in 2007. The lyrics were written by Singh Bahadur Thami, Devendra Thami and Lok Bahadur Thami. Here are some examples:

Comparative vocabulary

The following 210-word list of five Thami dialects is from Regmi, ''et al.'' (2014). The dialects covered are: * Babare, Babre VDC,

Dolakha District Dolakha, often known as Dolkha or Dholkha (Nepal Bhasa:दोलखा जिल्ला)), a part of Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Charikot as its district headquarters, covers an area of a ...

* Lapilang VDC,

* Suspa Kshamavati VDC,

* Daduwa VDC,

* Chokati VDC,

Sindhupalchok District Sindhupalchowk District ( ne, सिन्धुपाल्चोक जिल्ला ) is a part of Bagmati Province and one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, with an area of . The district's headquarters is in Chautara. In 2006, 336, ...

Baram words from Kansakar (2010)Kansakar, Tej Ratna. 2010.
Baram wordlist
'. (unpublished ms. contributed to STEDT). are also provided for comparison.

References

*. 2012. * Saxena, A. (Ed.). (2004). ''Himalayan languages: past and present'' (Vol. 149). Walter de Gruyter. * * * * * * *Shneiderman, S. B. (2009). Rituals of ethnicity: Migration, mixture, and the making of Thangmi identity across Himalayan borders (Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University). *Sara, S. (2015). Epilogue: Thami ke ho?What Is Thami?. In, Rituals of Ethnicity : Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (p. 252). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. *Sara, S. (2015). 3. Origin Myths and Myths of Originality. In, Rituals of Ethnicity : Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (p. 61). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. *Grierson, G. A. (1909). Tibeto-Burman Family: General Introduction, Specimens of the Tibetan Dialects, the Himalayan Dialects, and the North Assam group. (Linguistic Survey of India, III(I).) Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing. 669pp. *Shneiderman, S. (2010). ‘Producing’ Thangmi Ritual Texts: Practice, performance and collaboration. In Imogen Gunn and Mark Turin (eds.) Language Documentation and Description, Vol 8, 159-174 London: SOAS. *Turin, M. (2011). Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region, Volume 6: A Grammar of the Thangmi Language (2 vols): With an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture. Brill.

External links

OLAC resources in and about the Thangmi language
* http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/music/rengpatangko/ *http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/4838 {{Languages of Nepal Articles in class projects/Rutgers Mahakiranti languages Languages of Nepal Languages of India