Mugom language, also known as Mugom-ket, is the Sino-Tibetan language of the
Mugali people of
Mugu district
Mugu District ( ne, मुगु जिल्ला ), a part of Karnali Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Gamgadhi as its district headquarters, covers an area of and had a population (2011) of 55,286. ...
in
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 mai ...
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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 i ...
:
mukGlottoCode: mugo1238.
Language name
Mugom speakers self-identify as ''“Moa,”'' and are referred to as ''“Mugali”'' by non-Tibetan peoples of the area. Mugom speakers simply refer to their language as ''“mugu jillako bhote bhasa,”'' lit. ‘the Tibetan language of Mugu district.’
Speakers
Mugom is spoken by roughly 500 people originating from the village of Mugugau along the
Mugu Karnali River in
Mugum Karmarong Rural Municipality.
[Japola, Mari-Sisco. (2002). Mugom Survey. United Mission to Nepal, Mugu Education Project internal report: unpublished.] The language is specifically associated with
Mugali people. A small diaspora community of Mugali exists in
Bouddha, in the northeast part of
Kathmandu
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Language vitality
In 2002, a sociolinguistic study found that Mugom speakers in diaspora consistently used their own language with each other, and that the language was being transmitted to children.
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. I