Vayu (वायु), Wayu or Hayu (हायु) is a
Sino-Tibetan language spoken in
Nepal
Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne,
सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is ma ...
by about 1740 people in
Province No. 3
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 ...
. Dialects include Pali gau (पालि गाउ) Mudajor Sukajor Ramechhap Sindhuli and Marin Khola.
The Vayu language features
SOV ordering. There are strong
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 ...
influences in its phonology, lexicon, and grammar. Its writing system uses 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 a ...
script. There are no known
monolingual speakers of the language, as its speaking population also uses
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 ...
.
Despite a lack of monolingual children, use of Vayu has survived into the 21st century
Phonology
Geographical distribution
Vayu is spoken in the following locations of Nepal.
*
Ramechhap District,
Province No. 3
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 ...
:
Mudajor and
Sukajor villages
*
Sindhuli District:
Manedihi village
Vayu is spoken in the Sun Koshi valley, southwards across the Mahabharat range. Ethnic Vayu live on the hills on both sides of the Sun Kosi River but the language is only spoken in the villages listed.
References
Bibliography
* Boyd Michailovsky (1988) ''La langue hayu.'' Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
* Boyd Michailovsky (2003) "Hayu". In Graham Thurgood & Randy LaPolla (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 518–532. London & New York: Routledge.
* George van Driem (2001) ''Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.'' Brill.
Further reading
Hodgson, B. (1857). Váyu Vocabulary. ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 26.'' 372-485.
Hodgson, B. (1858). On the Vayu tribe of the Central Himalaya. ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 27.'' 443-6.
Michailovsky, B. (1973). Notes on the Hayu language. ''Kailash : A Journal of Himalayan Studies, 1(2)'', 135-152.
Michailovsky, B. (1974). Hayu Typology and Verbal Morphology. ''Linguistics Of The Tibeto-Burman Area'', 11-26.
Michailovsky, B. (1976). A Case of Rhinoglottophilia in Hayu. ''Linguistics Of The Tibeto-Burman Area'', 2293.
Park, I. (1995). Grammaticalization of Verbs in Three Tibeto-Burman Languages. ''Dissertation Abstracts International, 55(8)'', 2369A.
Sherard, M. (1986). Morphological Structure of the Pronominal and Verb Systems in Two Pronominalized Himalayan Languages. In J. McCoy, T. Light (Eds.), ''Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies'' (pp. 172–199). Leiden: Brill.
Yadava, Y. P., Glover, W. W. (1999). Topics in Nepalese Linguistics. In Yadava, Yogendra P. and Warren W. Glover (eds.) Kamaladi, Kathmandu: Royal Nepal Academy. p. 603.
External links
Vayu recordings from COCOON, COllections de COrpus Oraux NumériquesEndangered Languages Profile for Vayu
Articles in class projects/Rutgers
Kiranti languages
Languages of Nepal
Subject–object–verb languages
Endangered Sino-Tibetan languages
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