Thangmi language

Thangmi
Thāmī, Thangmi Khan,Thani
Thangmi Kham and Thangmi Wakhe
Pronunciation	thang-mi
Region	Nepal and India
Ethnicity	Thami
Native speakers	23,200 (2011 census)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Mahakiranti Baram–Thangmi Thangmi
Dialects	Dolakha Sindhupalcok
Language codes
ISO 639-3	thf
Glottolog	than1259

Thangmi, also called Thāmī, Thangmi Kham, Thangmi Wakhe, and Thani, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in central-eastern Nepal and northeastern India by the Thami people. The Thami refer to their language as Thangmi Kham or Thangmi Wakhe while the rest of Nepal refers to it as Thāmī. The majority of these speakers, however, live in Nepal in their traditional homeland of Dolakhā District. In India, the Thami population is concentrated mostly in Darjeeling. The Thangmi language is written using the Devanagari script.

Distribution

Thangmi is spoken in:

• Janakpur Zone: northern and western Dolakha District; Ramechhap District (villages on Sailung Khola)
• Bagmati Zone: eastern Sindhupalchok District
• Kathmandu

Ethnic Thami outside Dolakha and Sindhupalcok districts no longer speak Thangmi.

Classification

File:Devanagari-con1.gif

Devanagari is the script that the Thangmi language uses.

The Thangmi language seems to have many similarities with other languages in Nepal. For example, Barām, Kiranti and Newar. Studies from Konow (1909), Shafer (1966), Stein (1970), Toba (1990), van Driem (1992) and Turin demonstrate that Thangmi is closely related to the Rai and Newar languages.

Grammar

Thangmi	English	Pronoun
gai	I	first person singular
ni	we	first person plural
naɳ	you	second person singular
niɳ	you	second person plural
to	he, she, it	third person singular
tobaɳ	they	third person plural

Dialects

Dolakhā vs. Sindhupālcok

File:Dolakha, Nepal, 2005.jpg

Dolakha, Nepal

Thangmi consists of two dialects, Dolakhā (East)and Sindhupālcok (West). They differ in terms of phonology, nominal, and verbal morphology and in lexicon. The majority of the Thangmi speaking population use the Dolakhā dialect while only a handful speak in Sindhupālcok. The Dolakhā dialect offers a more complete verbal agreement system while the Sindhupālcok dialect has a more complex nominal morphology.

Kinship
English	Dolakhā	Sindhupālcok
younger brother	hu	calaca hu
younger sister	hu	camaica hu
father's eldest brother	jekhapa	jhya?apa
father's younger brother	ucyapa	pacyu
father's eldest sister	nini	jhya?ama
father's younger sister	nini	nini
mother's eldest brother	palam	palam
mother's younger brother	malam	mou
mother's eldest sister	jekhama	jhya?ama
mother's younger sister	macyu	phus?ama

Thangmi Songs

The Thami population are people who are rich in cultural and traditions. Their language is a large part of who they are and they portray this in their cultural, mostly in music. The Nepal Tham Society (NTS) produced a handful of Thangmi songs that were recorded in 2007. The lyrics were written by Singh Bahadur Thami, Devendra Thami and Lok Bahadur Thami. Here are some examples:

[1]

[2]

[3]

Further reading

• . 2012.

• Saxena, A. (Ed.). (2004). Himalayan languages: past and present (Vol. 149). Walter de Gruyter.
• Mark Turin. (1998). The Thangmi Verbal Agreement System and the Kiranti Connection. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 61(3), 476–491.
• TURIN, M.. (2012). Voices of vanishing worlds: Endangered languages, orality, and cognition. Análise Social, 47(205), 846–869.
• Bradley, D.. (2012). [Review of A Grammar of the Thangmi Language: With an Ethnographic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture. Brill's Tibetan Studies Library 5/6]. Anthropological Linguistics, 54(3), 302–305.
• Shneiderman, S. B.. (2009). The formation of political consciousness in rural Nepal. Dialectical Anthropology, 33(3/4), 287–308.
• Shneiderman, S., & Turin, M. (2000). Thangmi, Thami, Thani? Remembering a Forgotten People. Himalayan Culture, 5(1), 4-20.
• Turin, M. (1999). By way of incest and the golden deer: how the Thangmi came to be and the pitfalls of oral history. Journal of Nepalese Studies, 3(1), 13-19.
• Shneiderman, S. B. (2009). Rituals of ethnicity: Migration, mixture, and the making of Thangmi identity across Himalayan borders (Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University).
• Sara, S. (2015). Epilogue: Thami ke ho?What Is Thami?. In , Rituals of Ethnicity : Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (p. 252). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Sara, S. (2015). 3. Origin Myths and Myths of Originality. In , Rituals of Ethnicity : Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (p. 61). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Grierson, G. A. (1909). Tibeto-Burman Family: General Introduction, Specimens of the Tibetan Dialects, the Himalayan Dialects, and the North Assam group. (Linguistic Survey of India, III(I).) Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing. 669pp.
• Shneiderman, S. (2010). ‘Producing’ Thangmi Ritual Texts: Practice, performance and collaboration. In Imogen Gunn and Mark Turin (eds.) Language Documentation and Description, Vol 8, 159-174 London: SOAS.
• Turin, M. (2011). Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region, Volume 6: A Grammar of the Thangmi Language (2 vols): With an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture. Brill.

External links

• OLAC resources in and about the Thangmi language
• http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/music/rengpatangko/
• http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/4838