The Dhimalish languages,

Dhimal The Dhimal or Dhemal () are ethnic group residing in the eastern Terai of Nepal and West Bengal of India. They are a Sino-Tibetan-speaking ethnic group of the eastern Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal and Darjee ...

and Toto, are a small group of

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

spoken in

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

Bhutan Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in South Asia, in the Eastern Himalayas between China to the north and northwest and India to the south and southeast. With a population of over 727,145 and a territory of , ...

, and the

Jalpaiguri division Jalpaiguri Division is one of the 5 divisions in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the northernmost division of West Bengal. It is surrounded by Nepal to the west, Bihar on the south-western side, Bhutan to the north and Bangladesh to the ...

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

Classification

Hammarström, et al. note in

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

that Dhimalish is best considered to be a separate Sino-Tibetan branch rather than as a subgroup of Brahmaputran (Sal), and consider Dhimalish as failing to show sufficient Brahmaputran diagnostic vocabulary. Sotrug (2015) considers Dhimalish to be particularly 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 Bhutan) by the Kirati people. External relationships George van Driem had formerly proposed that the K ...

rather than to the

Sal languages The Sal languages, also known as the Brahmaputran languages, are a branch of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in northeast India, as well as parts of Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), and China. Alternative names ''Ethnologue'' calls the group "Jingpho ...

. Grollmann & Gerber (2017) consider Lhokpu to have a particularly close relationship with Dhimal and Toto. Gerber & Grollmann (2018) group Dhimal, Toto, and Lhokpu within Central-Eastern Kiranti.

Comparative vocabulary

Sanyal (1973:77–81) provides a comparative word list of Toto from Sunder (1895) and

George Abraham Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languag ...

's ''

Linguistic Survey of India The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a lingu ...

'', and

from

Brian Houghton Hodgson Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1801 – 23 May 1894) was a pioneer natural history, naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident (title), Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals fr ...

.Hodgson, Brian Houghton. 1880. ''Miscellaneous Essays relating to Indian Subjects'' (2 vols.). London: Trübner & Co.

References

* George van Driem (2001
''Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.''
Brill: Boston * Sanyal, Charu Chandra. 1973. "The Totos: A sub-Himalayan tribe." In ''The Meches and the Totos'', 1–81. Darjeeling: University of North Bengal. {{Kiranti languages Kiranti languages Languages of India Languages of Nepal

Classification

Comparative vocabulary

See also

References