Basum (autonym: ''brag gsum'' 'three cliffs'; Basong 巴松话; Bake) is a divergent Bodish language spoken by about 2,500 people in Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, Nyingtri Prefecture, Tibet, China. Basum is spoken by 13.5% of the population of Gongbo'gyamda County.

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute f ...

lists Basum as unclassified within Bodish. Basum is spoken in Cuogao Township 错高乡 and Xueka Township 雪卡乡 of Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, Nyingtri Prefecture, Tibet, China (Qu, et al. 1989).

Classification

Qu, et al. (1989) notes that Basum is mutually unintelligible with and quite different from Gongbu Tibetan (; 11,600 speakers), which is a Central Tibetan language variety closely related to

Nyingchi Nyingchi (), also known as Linzhi and as Nyingtri, is a prefecture-level city in the southeast of the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. The administrative seat of Nyingchi is Bayi District. Nyingchi is the location of Buchu Monastery. Economy ...

Tibetan (). Basum is also unintelligible with Niangpu 娘蒲话 (also called Muqu 牧区话), which is a

Khams Tibetan Khams Tibetan () is the Tibetic language used by the majority of the people in Kham. Khams is one of the three branches of the traditional classification of Tibetic languages (the other two being Amdo Tibetan and Ü-Tsang). In terms of mutual i ...

language variety spoken by 4,310 people in Jiaxing 加兴 and Niangpu 娘蒲 townships of Gongbo'gyamda County. Qu, et al. (1989:61) notices some lexical similarities between Basum and Cuona Menba (Tawang Monpa), an

East Bodish The East Bodish languages are a small group of non-Tibetic Bodish languages spoken in eastern Bhutan and adjacent areas of Tibet and India. They include: * Dakpa (Tawang Monpa) * Dzala * Nyen, including Mangde and Phobjib * Chali * Bumthang * ...

language. Suzuki & Nyima (2016)Suzuki, Hiroyuki and Tashi Nyima. 2016.
’Bo skad, a newly recognised non-Tibetic variety spoken in mDzo sgang, TAR: a brief introduction to its sociolinguistic situation, sounds, and vocabulary
'. Fourth Workshop on Sino-Tibetan Languages of Southwest China (STLS-2016). University of Washington, Seattle, September 8–10, 2016. consider Basum to be a non- Tibetic language. Tournadre (2014)Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. classifies Basum (Bake) as an unclassified Bodish language that does not belong to the Tibetic branch. Tournadre (2014: 112) notes that Basum has the negator ''a''-, as opposed to the negator ''ma''- or ''myi''- in

Tibetic languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descripti ...

. Also, unlike Tibetic languages, Basum does not palatalize Proto-Bodish *ti- and *si-.

Lexicon

Qu, et al. (1989: 50–51) list the following Basum words with no cognates in neighboring

. Other divergent Basum words are (Suzuki & Nyima 2016):

References

*Qu, Aitang and Gong, Que and Yi, Xi and Jie, Ang 瞿霭堂; 共确; 益西; 结昂. 1989
Wèi cáng fāngyán de xīn tŭŭ: Bāsōng huà 卫藏方言的新土语——记最近发现的巴松话
Minzu Yuwen 3. 39–61. {{Languages of China Languages of Tibet Unclassified Sino-Tibetan languages Nyingchi