| Sikkimese | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dranjongke | ||||
| Spoken in | Sikkim, Bhutan | |||
| Ethnicity | Bhutia | |||
| Native speakers | 70,300 (2001) | |||
| Language family |
Sino-Tibetan
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| Writing system | Tibetan script | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | sip | |||
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The Sikkimese language, also called Sikkimese Tibetan, Bhutia, Dranjongke (Tibetan: འབྲས་ལྗོངས་སྐད་, Wylie: 'bras-ljongs-skad), Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke, and Denzongke, belongs to the Southern Tibetan language family. It is spoken by the Bhutia (Denzongpa) nationality in Sikkim. Sikkimese people refer to their own language as Dranjongke and their homeland as Denzong (Tibetan: འབྲས་ལྗོངས་, Wylie: 'bras-ljongs; "Valley of Rice").[1]
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Sikkimese is written using Tibetan script, which it inherited from Classical Tibetan. Sikkimese phonology and lexicon differ markedly from Classical Tibetan, however. SIL thus describes the Sikkimese writing system as "Bodhi style." According to SIL, 68% of Sikkimese Bhutia were literate in the Tibetan script in 2001.[1][2][3]
Speakers of Sikkimese can understand some Dzongkha, with a lexical similarity of 65% between the two languages. By comparison, Standard Tibetan, however, is only 42% lexically similar. Sikkimese has also been influenced to some degree by the neighboring Yolmowa and Tamang languages.[1][2]
Due to more than a century of close contact with speakers of Nepali and Tibetan proper, many Sikkimese speakers also use these languages in daily life.[1]
Below is a chart of Sikkimese consonants, largely following Yliniemi (2005) and van Driem (1992).[3]
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Retroflex | Alveolo-palatal/ Palatal |
Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | voiceless | n̥ ན /n/ | ŋ̥ ང /ng/ | ||||
| voiced | m མ /m/ | n ན /n/ | n~ŋ ཉ /ny/ | ŋ ང /ng/ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless unaspirated |
p པ /p/ | t ཏ /t/ | ʈ ཏྲ /tr/ | k ཀ /k/ | ʔ འ /ʔ/ | |
| voiceless aspirated |
pʰ ཕ /ph/ | tʰ ཐ /th/ | ʈʰ ཐྲ /thr/ | kʰ ཁ /kh/ | |||
| voiced | b བ /b/ | d ད /d/ | ɖ དྲ /dr/ | ɡ ག /g/ | |||
| devoiced | p̀ʱ བ /p'/ | t̀ʱ ད /t'/ | ʈ̀ʱ དྲ /tr'/ | k̀ʱ ག /k'/ | |||
| Affricate | voiceless unaspirated |
ts ཙ /ts/ | tɕ ཅ /c/ | ||||
| voiceless aspirated |
tsʰ ཚ /tsh/ | tɕʰ ཆ /ch/ | |||||
| voiced | dz ཛ /dz/ | dʑ ཇ /j/ | |||||
| devoiced | tɕ' ཇ /c'/ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s ས /s/ | ɕ ཤ /sh/ | h ཧ /h/ | |||
| voiced | z ཟ /z/ | ʑ ཞ /zh/ | |||||
| Liquid | voiceless | l̥ ལ /l/ | r̥ ར /r/ | ||||
| voiced | l ལ /l/ | r~ɹ~ɾ ར /r/ | |||||
| Approximant | w ཝ /w/ | j ཡ /y/ | w ཝ /w/ | ||||
Devoiced consonants are pronounced with a slight breathy voice, aspiration (phonetics), and low pitch. They are remnants of voiced consonants in Classical Tibetan that became devoiced. Likewise, the historical Tibetan phoneme /ny/ is realized as an allophone of /n/ and /ng/, which themselves have mostly lost contrast among speakers.[3]
Below is a chart of Sikkimese vowels, also largely following Yliniemi (2005).[3]
| Front | Middle | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | i ི /i/ | y ུ /u/ | u ུ /u/ | |
| Mid | e ེ /e/ | ø ོ /o/ | o ོ /o/ | |
| Open | ɛ ེ /e/ | ɐ /a/ | ||
In the Tibetan script, an abugida, the inherent vowel /a/ is unmarked. In the above table, italicized [ɛ] /e/ is an allophone of [e] /e/, confined to appearing after [dʑ] /j/ in closed syllables.[3]
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