Gurung language

Gurung
Tamu Kyi
Native to	Nepal, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bhutan
Ethnicity	Gurung people
Native speakers	350,000  (2007)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) Tamangic Gurung
Writing system	Tibetan script, Devanagari script
Official status
Official language in	Tamuban, Nepal Sikkim
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: ggn – Eastern Gurung gvr – Western Gurung

Selected ethnic groups of Nepal; Bhotia, Sherpa, Thakali, Gurung, Kiranti, Rai, Limbu, Nepal Bhasa, Pahari, Tamang

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). Perhaps, a distinction should be made between Gurung as an ethnic group and the number of people who actually speak the language.

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

Classification

According to ethnologue, Gurung is two languages, Eastern [ggn] and Western [gvr].

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 and are therefore written in the Tibetan script which was adopted when the Gurung peoples embraced Vajrayana Buddhism, particularly of the Nyingma school. Supposedly, Devanāgarī script had also been used but only to a limited effect in approximating their phonetics.

See also

• Languages of Nepal
• Languages of Bhutan

References

Gurung language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator