Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Gurung language

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Native to
  
Nepal

Native speakers
  
360,000 (2007)

ISO 639-3
  
gvr

Ethnicity
  
Gurung people

Language family
  
Sino-Tibetan Gurung

Gurung language

Official language in
  
Nepal Burma India China

Gurung (also, Tamu Kyi, Devanagari:तमु क्यी) is spoken by the Gurung people in two dialects with limited mutual intelligibility. Total number of all Gurung speakers in Nepal is 227,918 (1991 census). There is no distinction between Gurung as an ethnic group and the number of people who actually speak the language.

Contents

Nepali, Nepal's official language, is an Indo-European language, whereas Gurung is a Sino-Tibetan language. Gurung are recognized as an official nationality by the Government of Nepal.

Geographical distribution

Gurung is spoken in the following districts of Nepal (Ethnologue).

  • Gandaki Zone: Kaski District, Syangja District, Lamjung District, Tanahu District, and Gorkha District, and possibly Manang District
  • Dhawalagiri Zone: Parbat district

    • Grammar

    Some miscellaneous grammatical features of the Gurung languages are;

  • SOV;
  • postpositions;
  • genitives;
  • adjectives relatives before noun heads;
  • numerals after noun heads;
  • rising intonation in bipolar questions;
  • 1 prefix on negative verbs;
  • maximum number of suffixes 3;
  • case of noun phrase shown by preposition;
  • no subject or object referencing in verbs;
  • split ergative system according to tense;
  • causatives;
  • benefactives;
  • CV, CCV, CCCV;

    • Phonetically, Gurung languages are tonal.

    Writing system

    Gurung languages did not originally have a script but they can be written using Tibetan scripts adopted by many castes belonging to Mongolian races. This language is popular not among only gurung but also other castes.

    References

    Gurung language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA