The Tamangic languages, TGTM languages, or West Bodish languages, are a family of
Sino-Tibetan languages
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 the Himalayas 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 ...
. They are called "West Bodish" by Bradley (1997), from ''Bod'', the native term for
Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...
. TGTM stands for
Tamang-
Gurung-
Thakali-
Manang.
Proto-TGTM has been
reconstructed in Mazaudon (1994). Tamangic is united with the
Bodish and
West Himalayish languages in Bradley's (1997) "Bodish" and Van Driem's (2001)
Tibeto-Kanauri.
Languages
The Tamangic languages are:
*
Tamang (several divergent varieties, with a million speakers)
*
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 ...
(two varieties with low mutual intelligibility)
*
Thakali (including the Seke dialect; ethnically Tamang)
*
Manang language cluster: the closely related
Manang,
Gyasumdo,
Nar Phu, and
Nyeshangte languages.
*
Chantyal
*
Ghale languages
Ghale is a Sino-Tibetan dialect cluster of Nepal that may be part of the Tamangic family. The people who speak them are ethnically Tamang, but their languages are too poorly known to be sure. The two languages, Kutang (Bihi, Chak, Rana) and Ghal ...
(
Ghale and
Kutang): spoken by ethnic Tamang, perhaps related to Tamangic.
*
Kaike (moribund): may be the most divergent.
Footnotes
References
* Bradley, David (1997).
Tibeto-Burman languages and classification. In ''Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas, Papers in South East Asian linguistics''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
* George van Driem (2001) ''Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.'' Brill.
*
* Mazaudon, Martine. 1994. Problèmes de comparatisme et de reconstruction dans quelques langues de la famille tibéto-birmane. Thèse d'Etat, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle.
*
{{st-lang-stub