Lhokpu, also ''Lhobikha'' or ''Taba-Damey-Bikha'', is one of the autochthonous languages of
Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...
spoken by the
Lhop people
The Lhop or Doya people are a little-known tribe of southwest Bhutan. The Bhutanese believe them to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. The Lhop are found in the low valleys of Dorokha Gewog and near Phuntsholing in the Duars.
The dress ...
. It is spoken in southwestern Bhutan along the border of
Samtse
Samtse is a town and the headquarers of the Samtse District in Bhutan. The population of the town was 5,396 as of 2017. The population of the Samtse district was 60,100 at the 2005 census.
Samtse is close to the Bhutan–India border. Across the ...
and
Chukha District
Chukha District (Dzongkha: ཆུ་ཁ་རྫོང་ཁག་; Wylie: ''Chu-kha rdzong-khag''; also spelled "Chhukha") is one of the 20 dzongkhag (districts) comprising Bhutan. The major town is Phuentsholing which is the gateway city ...
s. Van Driem (2003) leaves it unclassified as a separate branch within the
Sino-Tibetan language family
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. ...
.
Classification
George van Driem (2001:804) notes that Lhokpu, although unclassified, may be more closely related to the
Kiranti languages
The Kiranti languages are a major family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Nepal and India (notably Sikkim, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Kumai) by the Kirati people.
External relationships
George van Driem had formerly proposed that the Kir ...
than to
Lepcha. Gerber, et al. (2016) also notes a particularly close relationship between Lhokpu and Kiranti. Furthermore, van Driem (2001:804-805) notes that
Dzongkha
Dzongkha (; ) is a Sino-Tibetan language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script.
The word means "the language of the fortress", from ' "fortress" and ' "language". , Dzongkha had 171,080 ...
, the national language of
Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...
, may in fact have a Lhokpu
substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
.
Grollmann & Gerber (2017) consider Lhokpu to have a particularly close relationship with
Dhimal and
Toto.
Name
Lhokpu is spoken by the
Lhop—a
Dzongkha
Dzongkha (; ) is a Sino-Tibetan language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script.
The word means "the language of the fortress", from ' "fortress" and ' "language". , Dzongkha had 171,080 ...
term meaning "Southerners"—, who "represent the aboriginal
dungDung population of western Bhutan.
Locations
According to the ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...
'', Lhokpu is spoken in Damtey, Loto Kuchu, Lotu, Sanglong, Sataka, and Taba villages, located between Samtsi and Phuntsoling, in
Samtse District
Samtse District ( Dzongkha: བསམ་རྩེ་རྫོང་ཁག་; Wylie: ''Bsam-rtse rdzong-khag''; older spelling "Samchi") is one of the 20 dzongkhags (districts) comprising Bhutan. It comprises two subdistricts (''dungkhags''): T ...
,
Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...
.
Culture
The
Lhop people
The Lhop or Doya people are a little-known tribe of southwest Bhutan. The Bhutanese believe them to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. The Lhop are found in the low valleys of Dorokha Gewog and near Phuntsholing in the Duars.
The dress ...
are animists rather than Buddhists, burying their dead rather than cremating them as Buddhists do. Their society is
matrilineal
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance ...
and
matrilocal.
[Gwendolyn Hyslop. 2016. Worlds of knowledge in Central Bhutan: Documentation of 'Olekha. Language Documentation & Conservation 10. 77-106.]
See also
*
Languages of Bhutan
There are two dozen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family except for Nepali, which is an Indo-Aryan language, and Bhutanese Sign Language. Dzongkha, the national language, is the only native language of Bhutan with ...
*
Dhimalish comparative vocabulary list (Wiktionary)
References
Definitely endangered languages
Languages of Bhutan
Unclassified Sino-Tibetan languages
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