Gyalsumdo ( deva, ग्याल्सुस्दो) is a mostly undocumented
Tibetic language spoken by an estimated 200 individuals of the
Manang District
Manang District ( ne, मनाङ जिल्ला , a part of Gandaki Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Chame as its district headquarters, covers an area of and had a population (2011) of 6,538. ...
in the
Gandaki Zone
Gandaki zone ( ne, गण्डकी अञ्चल was one of the fourteen zones of Nepal, located in the Western Development Region. It was named as Sapta Gandaki after the seven tributaries (Kali Gandaki, Trishuli, Budhi Gandaki, Marsyang ...
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 ...
.
In January 2018 the language was added to
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for ...
under the code "gyo."
Gyalsumdo is a
tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
; however in Gyalsumdo, unlike most other
Central Tibetan languages, the word, rather than the syllable acts as the
tone bearing unit. The language is reportedly closely related to the nearby
Nubri and
Tsum languages which share a large proportion of vocabulary.
Gyalsumdo is also described as being somewhat
intelligible by speakers of
Nar-Phu.
References
Manang District, Nepal
Languages of Nepal
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