Bumthang language

The Bumthang language (Dzongkha: བུམ་ཐང་ཁ་, Wylie: bum thang kha; also called Bhumtam, Bumtang(kha), Bumtanp, Bumthapkha, and Kebumtamp) is an East Bodish language spoken by about 20,000 people in Bumthang and surrounding districts of Bhutan.^[2][3] Van Driem (1993) describes Bumthang as the dominant language of central Bhutan.^[3]

Bumthang
Native to	Bhutan
Native speakers	20,000 (2011)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish East Bodish Bumthang
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kjz
Glottolog	bumt1240
Linguistic map of Bhutan, showing the location where Bumthang is spoken

Related languages

Historically, Bumthang and its speakers have had close contact with speakers of the Kurtöp, Nupbi and Kheng languages, nearby East Bodish languages of central and eastern Bhutan, to the extent that they may be considered part of a wider collection of "Bumthang languages."^[4][5][6]

Bumthang language is largely lexically similar with Kheng (98%), Nyen (75%–77%), and Kurtöp (70%–73%); but less so with Dzongkha (47%–52%) and Tshangla (40%–50%, also called "Sharchop").^[2] It is either closely related to or identical with the Tawang language of the Monpa people of Tawang in India and China.^[2]

Orthography

Bumthang is either written with the Tibetan or Romanized Dzongkha scripts.

Tibetan script	Romanization	Phonetic value
ཀ་	k	[k]
ཁ་	kh	[kʰ]
ག་	g	[g]
ང་	ng	[ŋ]
ཅ་	c	[c]
ཆ་	ch	[cʰ]
ཇ་	j	[ɟ]
ཉ་	ny	[ɲ]
པ་	p	[p]
ཕ་	ph	[pʰ]
བ་	b	[b]
མ་	m	[m]
ཏ་	t	[t̪]
ཐ་	th	[t̪ʰ]
ད་	d	[d̪]
ན་	n	[n̪]
ཏྲ་	tr	[ʈ]
ཐྲ་	thr	[ʈʰ]
དྲ་	dr	[ɖ]
ཙ་	ts	[t͡s]
ཚ་	tsh	[t͡sʰ]
ཛ་	dz	[d͡z]
ས་	s	[s]
ཟ་	z	[z]
ཤ་	sh	[ʃ]
ཞ་	zh	[ʒ]
ཤྲ་	shr	[r̥]
ཧྲ་	hr	[rʰ]
ཞྲ་	zhr	[ɼ]
ཝ་	w	[w]
ཡ་	y	[j]
ལ་	l	[l]
ལྷ་	lh	[l̥]
ར་	r	[r]
ཧ་	h	[h]
ཧྱ་	hy	[hʲ]
འ་	a	à
ཨ་	'a	á
འ་ེ	e	è
ཨ་ེ	'e	é

Phonology

Bumthang consonants^{[7][page needed]}

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t̪ ⟨t⟩		ʈ ⟨tr⟩	c	k
	voiced	b	d̪ ⟨d⟩		ɖ ⟨dr⟩	ɟ ⟨j⟩	g
	aspirated				ʈʰ ⟨thr⟩	cʰ ⟨ch⟩	kʰ ⟨kh⟩
Affricate				t͡s t͡sʰ ⟨tsh⟩ d͡z
Fricative	voiceless			s		ʃ ⟨sh⟩		h hʲ ⟨hy⟩
	voiced			z		ʒ ⟨zh⟩
Approximant		w				j ⟨y⟩
Nasal		m	n̪ ⟨n⟩			ɲ ⟨ny⟩	ŋ ⟨ng⟩
Lateral				l l̥ ⟨lh⟩
Trill				r̥ ⟨shr⟩ r rʰ ⟨hr⟩	ɽ ⟨zhr⟩

There are also thirteen vowels:

Bumthang vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i iː ⟨î⟩ yː ⟨ü⟩	u uː ⟨û⟩
Mid	e eː ⟨ê⟩ œː ⟨ö⟩	o oː ⟨ô⟩
Open	æ ⟨ä⟩	ɑ ⟨a⟩ ɑː ⟨â⟩

There is a high register tone and a low register tone. Syllables with a high register tone are preceded by a ' mark.

Grammar

Bumthang is an ergative–absolutive language. The ergative case is not used on every transitive subject, but, like in many other languages of the region shows some optionality, discussed in detail by Donohue & Donohue (2016).^[8] Using the ergative denotes a high degree of agentivity of the subject.

Personal pronouns in Bumthang^[9]

	Absolutive		Ergative		Genitive		Dative
	singular	plural	singular	plural	singular	plural	singular	plural
1st	ngat	nget	ngai (ngaile)	ngei (ngeile)	ngae (ngale)	nge (ngele, ngegi)	ngado	ngedo
2st	wet	yin	wi (wile)	yinle	we (wele)	yinde	wedo	yindu
3rd	khit	bot	khi (khile)	boi (boile)	khi (khile)	böegi (boeli)	khidu	bodo

The plural suffix in nouns is -tshai. Adjectives follow nouns. The ergative suffix in nouns is -le, while in personal pronouns it is -i. The ergative suffix may follow the collective suffix gampo. The genitive may take on the suffix -rae (e.g. we-rae 'your own'). The telic suffix -QO, where both Q (realized as [k], [g], [ng], [t], or [d]) and O take on a different value based on the final consonant and vowel of a word, denotes the goal of a situation which the word is directed to (e.g. Thimphuk-gu 'to Thimphu', yam-do 'on the way'). Distinct from the telic, the locative suffix -na (e.g. yak-na 'in the hand').

Numeral system

The numeral system of Bumthang is largely base-20. The numeral thek 'one' is also used to denote 'a/an, a certain one'.

Bumthang numerals

Numeral	Bumthang	Numeral	Bumthang	Numeral	Bumthang
1	thek	11	chwaret	21	khaethek neng thek
2	zon	12	chwa'nyit	22	khaethek neng zon
3	sum	13	chusum	40	khaezon
4	ble	14	cheble	60	khaesum
5	yanga	15	chänga	400	nyishuthek
6	grok	16	chöegrok	420	nyishuthek neng tsathek
7	'nyit	17	cher'nyit	440	nyishuthek neng tsazon
8	jat	18	charjat	481	nyishuthek neng tsable doma thek
9	dogo	19	chöedogo	800	nyishuzon
10	che	20	khaethek	8000	khaechenthek

Verbs

The finite verb is inflected for tense, aspect, and evidentiality. Mood is usually marked by an auxiliary. TAM categories include the present, the experienced past, the inferred past, the experienced imperfective, the periphrastic perfect, the infinitival future, the volitional future, the supine, the gerund, the adhortative, and the optative.

Present forms

Present-tense (incompletive in Donohue's system) forms are formed with a suffix containing a coronal consonant followed by a. Each dialect has wildly differing, but generally phonologically conditioned systems governing exactly which consonant does the present suffix begin with.

Van Driem also notes a "hard" vs. "soft" stem among open syllables, with "hard" open syllables taking different ending allomorphs than "soft" ones.

Bumthang present-tense formations by dialect

Dialect	Condition	Suffix
Chogor	After closed syllables and hard open syllables	-da
	After soft open syllables	-tda
Tang	After -p, -k, -m, or -ng	-sa
	After soft open syllables or -t	-ta
	After hard open syllables	-za
	After -n	-da
'Ura	After a voiceless final consonant	-sa
	Elsewhere	-za
Chunmat	After -p, -t, -k, -m, or -ng	-sa
	After soft open syllables	-ta
	After hard open syllables or -n	-za

The present form is negated by preceding the verb root with me (mi in Chunmat).

See also

• Languages of Bhutan
• Bumthang District
• Bumthang Province
• Kingdom of Bumthang