Tamangic languages

The Tamangic languages, TGTM languages, or West Bodish languages or Kaike-Ghale-Tamangic languages (Glottolog), are a family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in India and Nepal. They are called "West Bodish" by Bradley (1997), from Bod, the native term for Tibet. TGTM stands for Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manang.

In India, it is spoken in the northeastern part of the country, in the states of Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and the Darjeeling district of northern West Bengal. In Nepal, the language is spoken mostly in the Bagmati Province, with some speakers also residing in the Madhesh Province of the Terai plains.

Proto-TGTM has been reconstructed in Mazaudon (1994). Tamangic is united with the Bodish and West Himalayish languages in Bradley's (1997) "Bodish" and Van Driem's (2001) Tibeto-Kanauri.

Languages

The Tamangic languages are:

• Tamang (several divergent varieties, with a million speakers)
• Gurung (two varieties with low mutual intelligibility)
• Thakali (including the Seke dialect; ethnically Tamang)
• Manang language cluster: the closely related Manang, Gyasumdo, Nar Phu, and Nyeshangte languages.
• Chantyal
• Ghale languages (Ghale and Kutang): spoken by ethnic Tamang, perhaps related to Tamangic.
• Kaike (moribund): may be the most divergent.

Footnotes

References

• Bradley, David (1997). "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". In Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas, Papers in South East Asian linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.
• Mazaudon, Martine. 1994. Problèmes de comparatisme et de reconstruction dans quelques langues de la famille tibéto-birmane. Thèse d'Etat, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle.