Eastern Tamang is a

Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak ...

language of the

Sino-Tibetan 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 ...

language family. It is spoken in mainly in Bagmati and Koshi provinces of

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 ...

as well as the states of

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India. It was formed from the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and India declared it as a state on 20 February 1987. Itanagar is its capital and la ...

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 ...

(

Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a city in the northernmost region of the States and union territories of India, Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the Koshi Pr ...

), and

Sikkim Sikkim ( ; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Koshi Province of Nepal in the west, and West Bengal in the ...

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 ...

by the

Tamang people The Tamang people (; Devanagari: तामाङ; ''tāmāṅ'') are an ethnic group living in Nepal, Northeast India and southern Bhutan. In Nepal, they are concentrated in the central hilly and Himalayan regions and constituted over 1.6 mill ...

. The Eastern Tamang language is a SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) structured language with postpositions, genitives following nouns, and noun heads appearing at the end of phrases. It lacks noun classes or genders, features content question words in situ, and employs a system of one prefix and up to three suffixes. Clause constituents are marked by case, and it follows an ergative alignment. It includes aspects of tense with no passives or voice, has 34 consonant and 16 vowel phonemes, and exhibits CV, CVC, CCV, V, and CCVC syllable structures. The language is tonal, with 5 basic vowels, 5 long vowels, 6 diphthongs, and phonemic distinctions in aspiration and length.Poudel, Kedar Prasad. 2006. Dhankute Tamang grammar. (Languages of the World/Materials, 454.) München: Lincom. 181pp. In addition to Eastern Tamang, speakers also speak

Bhojpuri Bhojpuri may refer to: * Bhojpuri language, an Indo-Aryan language of India and Nepal * Bhojpuri grammar, grammatical rules of the language * Bhojpuri nouns, nouns of the language * Bhojpuri people, people who speak the language * Bhojpuri region ...

, Central Tibetan (in religious contexts) mainly by Vajrayana Buddhists, and the Maithili language. Speakers of Eastern Tamang also speak Nepali, especially among those who have received education or attended schools where Nepali is the medium of instruction or traveled to other parts of Nepal. Eastern Tamang is also spoken by Tamang Hindus, Christians, as well as followers of traditional beliefs.

References

{{reflist Tamangic languages