Dzongkha

It is written using the Tibetan script.

Dzongkha
Bhutanese
རྫོང་ཁ་
Native to	Bhutan
Ethnicity	Ngalop people
Native speakers	171,080 (2013) Total speakers: 640,000
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish Tibetic Dzongkha–Lhokä Dzongkha
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Tibetan Classical Tibetan
Dialects	Laya Lunana Adap
Writing system	Tibetan script Dzongkha Braille
Official status
Official language in	Bhutan
Regulated by	Dzongkha Development Commission
Language codes
ISO 639-1	dz
ISO 639-2	dzo
ISO 639-3	dzo – inclusive code Individual codes: lya – Laya luk – Lunana
Glottolog	nucl1307
Linguasphere	70-AAA-bf
Districts of Bhutan in which the Dzongkha language is spoken natively are highlighted in yellow.
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The word dzongkha means "the language of the fortress", from dzong "fortress" and kha "language". As of 2013^[update], Dzongkha had 171,080 native speakers and about 640,000 total speakers.

Dzongkha is a South Tibetic language. It is closely related to and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocha Ngacha, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha. It has a more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50 to 80 percent mutually intelligible.

Dzongkha and its dialects are the native tongue of eight western districts of Bhutan (viz. Wangdue Phodrang, Punakha, Thimphu, Gasa, Paro, Ha, Dagana and Chukha). There are also some native speakers near the Indian town of Kalimpong, once part of Bhutan but now in North Bengal, and in Sikkim.

Dzongkha was declared the national language of Bhutan in 1971. Dzongkha study is mandatory in all schools, and the language is the lingua franca in the districts to the south and east where it is not the mother tongue. The Bhutanese films Travellers and Magicians (2003) and Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) are in Dzongkha.

 

The Tibetan script used to write Dzongkha has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. Dzongkha is usually written in Bhutanese forms of the Uchen script, forms of the Tibetan script known as Jôyi "cursive longhand" and Jôtshum "formal longhand". The print form is known simply as Tshûm.

Romanization

There are various systems of romanization and transliteration for Dzongkha, but none accurately represents its phonetic sound. The Bhutanese government adopted a transcription system known as Roman Dzongkha, devised by the linguist George van Driem, as its standard in 1991.

Tones

Dzongkha is a tonal language and has two register tones: high and low. The tone of a syllable determines the allophone of the onset and the phonation type of the nuclear vowel.

Consonants

All consonants may begin a syllable. In the onsets of low-tone syllables, consonants are voiced. Aspirated consonants (indicated by the superscript h), /ɬ/, and /h/ are not found in low-tone syllables. The rhotic /r/ is usually a trill [r] or a fricative trill [r̝], and is voiceless in the onsets of high-tone syllables.

/t, tʰ, ts, tsʰ, s/ are dental. Descriptions of the palatal affricates and fricatives vary from alveolo-palatal to plain palatal.

Only a few consonants are found in syllable-final positions. Most common among them are /m, n, p/. Syllable-final /ŋ/ is often elided and results in the preceding vowel nasalized and prolonged, especially word-finally. Syllable-final /k/ is most often omitted when word-final as well, unless in formal speech. In literary pronunciation, liquids /r/ and /l/ may also end a syllable. Though rare, /ɕ/ is also found in syllable-final positions. No other consonants are found in syllable-final positions.

Vowels

• When in low tone, vowels are produced with breathy voice.
• In closed syllables, /i/ varies between [i] and [ɪ], the latter being more common.
• /yː/ varies between [yː] and [ʏː].
• /e/ varies between close-mid [e] and open-mid [ɛ], the latter being common in closed syllables. /eː/ is close-mid [eː]. /eː/ may not be longer than /e/ at all, and differs from /e/ more often in quality than in length.
• Descriptions of /øː/ vary between close-mid [øː] and open-mid [œː].
• /o/ is close-mid [o], but may approach open-mid [ɔ] especially in closed syllables. /oː/ is close-mid [oː].
• /ɛː/ is slightly lower than open-mid, i.e. [ɛ̞ː].
• /ɑ/ may approach [ɐ], especially in closed syllables.
• When nasalized or followed by [ŋ], vowels are always long.

Phonotactics

Many words in Dzongkha are monosyllabic. Syllables usually take the form of CVC, CV, or VC. Syllables with complex onsets are also found, but such an onset must be a combination of an unaspirated bilabial stop and a palatal affricate. The bilabial stops in complex onsets are often omitted in colloquial speech.

Dzongkha is considered a South Tibetic language. It is closely related to and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocha Ngacha, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha.

Dzongkha bears a close linguistic relationship to J'umowa, which is spoken in the Chumbi Valley of Southern Tibet. It has a much more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50% to 80% mutually intelligible, with the literary forms of both highly influenced by the liturgical (clerical) Classical Tibetan language, known in Bhutan as Chöke, which has been used for centuries by Buddhist monks. Chöke was used as the language of education in Bhutan until the early 1960s when it was replaced by Dzongkha in public schools.

Although descended from Classical Tibetan, Dzongkha shows a great many irregularities in sound changes that make the official spelling and standard pronunciation more distant from each other than is the case with Standard Tibetan. "Traditional orthography and modern phonology are two distinct systems operating by a distinct set of rules."

The following is a sample text in Dzongkha of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Dzongkha Braille
• Dzongkha numerals
• Languages of Bhutan
• Dzongkha keyboard layout