Dura is a recently extinct language of

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 ...

. It has been classified in the West Bodish branch of

Tibetan 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 ...

, though more recent work separates it out as an independent branch of

Sino-Tibetan 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. ...

. Many of the Dura have switched to speaking

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 ...

, and the Dura language has sometimes been thought to be extinct. Some of the people who have switched to Nepali for their daily speech still use Dura for prayer. The

Himalayan Languages Project The Himalayan Languages Project, launched in 1993, is a research collective based at Leiden University and comprising much of the world's authoritative research on the lesser-known and endangered languages of the Himalayas, in Nepal, China, Bhutan, ...

is working on recording additional knowledge of Dura.Programme Description , Himalayan Languages Project
Around 1,500 words and 250 sentences in Dura have been recorded. The last known speaker of the language was the 82-year-old Soma Devi Dura.

Classification

Schorer (2016:293)Schorer, Nicolas. 2016. ''The Dura Language: Grammar and Phylogeny''. Leiden: Brill. classifies Dura as part of his newly proposed Greater Magaric branch.

Distribution

The ethnic Dura people mostly live in

Lamjung District Lamjung District ( ne, लमजुङ जिल्ला ), a part of Gandaki Province, is one of the 77 districts of Nepal. The district, with Besisahar as its district headquarters, covers an area of and had a population of 167,724. Lamjung ...

, with some in neighboring

Tanahu District Tanahun District ( ne, तनहुँ जिल्ला , or ), a part of Gandaki Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Damauli as its district headquarters, covers an area of and has a population (2011 ...

Gandaki Province Gandaki Province ( ne, गण्डकी प्रदेश ) ), is one of the seven federal provinces established by the current constitution of Nepal which was promulgated on 20 September 2015. Pokhara is the province's capital city. It borde ...

in central Nepal.Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) - Dura
They mostly live on farms in the hilly countryside. Different recent census counts have reported the number of Dura people anywhere from 3,397 to 5,676. Dura villages include: *बाँग्रे Bāṅgre *बेसी बाँग्रे Besī Bāṅgre *बेसी फाँट Besī Phā̃ṫ *सिन्दुरे Sindure *धुसेनी Dhusenī *नस्के Naske (Dura majority) *नेटा Neṭā *चन्दि गाउँ Candigāũ *भाँगु Bhāṅgu *मालिङ Māliṅ *आरीकोसे Ārīkose *ठूलो स्वाँरा Ṭhūlo Svā̃rā (Dura majority) *खजे गाउँ Khaje Gāũ *तुर्लुङ Turluṅ (Dura majority) *तान्द्राङ्कोट Tāndrāṅkoṫ *Kunchha *Bhorletar Other ethnic groups in the Dura region include the Gurung, Brahmins, Chetrīs, Kāmī, and Damāi.

Tandrange

A closely related language variety called '' Tandrange'' (Nepali: Tāndrāṅe; IPA: tandraŋe) is spoken in a few

Gurung Gurung (exonym; ) or Tamu (endonym; Gurung: ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the hills and mountains of Gandaki Province of Nepal. Gurung people predominantly live around the Annapurna region in Manang, Mustang, Dolpo, Kaski, Lamjung, Go ...

villages. Tandrange is spoken in the villages of Tāndrāṅ तान्द्राङ, Pokharī Thok पोखरी थोक, and Jītā जीता. However, Tandrange speakers adamantly consider themselves as not related to the stigmatized Dura people.

Reconstruction

Schorer (2016:286-287) reconstructs the following Proto-Dura words. * *hāyu ‘blood’ * *cʰiũŋ ‘cold’ * *kim ‘house’ * *ti ‘water’ * *krut ‘hand’ * *kyu ‘stomach’ * *yāku ‘night’ * *mamī ‘sun’ * *lām- ‘path’ * *luŋ ‘stone’ * *daŋ- ‘to see’ * *rā- ‘to come’ * *khāC- ‘to go’ * *yʱā ‘to give’ * *cʰi- ‘to say’

Vocabulary

Schorer (2016:126-127) provides the following 125-word

Swadesh list The Swadesh list ("Swadesh" is pronounced ) is a classic compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatednes ...

of Dura.

Numerals

Dura numerals are (Schorer 2016:146-147): *0. liŋa *1. nām, kyau, di- *2. jʰim *3. sām *4. pim *5. kum *6. cyām ( Indo-Aryan

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...

) *7. syām ( Indo-Aryan

) *8. him *9. tum *10. tʰim *20. jʰim-tʰī *30. sām-tʰī *100. tʰiŋganā, kātʰerāgo *1,000. jena

References

External links

The last of Nepal's Dura speakers
BBC news story {{Sino-Tibetan branches Languages of Nepal Magaric languages Extinct languages of Asia Languages extinct in the 2010s 2010s disestablishments in Nepal