Dzongkha
Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Bhutan / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about ISO 639:dzo?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Dzongkha (རྫོང་ཁ་; [d͡zòŋkʰɑ́]) is a Sino-Tibetan language that is the official and national language of Bhutan.[3] It is written using the Tibetan script.
Dzongkha | |
---|---|
Bhutanese | |
རྫོང་ཁ་ | |
Native to | Bhutan |
Ethnicity | Ngalop people |
Native speakers | 171,080 (2013)[1] Total speakers: 640,000[2] |
Early forms | |
Dialects | |
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 codeIndividual codes: lya – Layaluk – Lunana |
Glottolog | nucl1307 |
Linguasphere | 70-AAA-bf |
Districts of Bhutan in which the Dzongkha language is spoken natively are highlighted in yellow. | |
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. |
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.[2]
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.