Sikkimese language

The Sikkimese language, also called Sikkimese Tibetan, Bhutia, or Drenjongké (Tibetan: འབྲས་ལྗོངས་སྐད་, Wylie: 'bras ljongs skad, "Rice Valley language"), Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke and Denzongke, belongs to the Southern Tibetic languages. It is spoken by the Bhutia in Sikkim, India and in parts of Mechi Zone, Nepal. The Sikkimese people refer to their own language as Drendzongké and their homeland as Drendzong (Tibetan: འབྲས་ལྗོངས་, Wylie: 'bras-ljongs, "Rice Valley").

Sikkimese
Drenjongke
འབྲས་ལྗོངས་སྐད་ 'bras ljongs skad
Region	Sikkim, Nepal (Mechi Zone), Bhutan
Ethnicity	Sikkimese
Native speakers	70,000 (2001)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Kanauri ? Bodish Tibetic Dzongkha–Lhokä Sikkimese
Writing system	Tibetan script
Official status
Official language in	India Sikkim
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sip
Glottolog	sikk1242

Script

Main article: Tibetan script

Sikkimese is written using Tibetan script, which it inherited from Classical Tibetan. Sikkimese phonology and lexicon differ markedly from Classical Tibetan, however. SIL International thus describes the Sikkimese writing system as "Bodhi style". According to SIL, 68% of Sikkimese Bhutia were literate in the Tibetan script in 2001.

Sikkim and its neighbours

Speakers of Sikkimese can understand some Dzongkha, with a lexical similarity of 65% between the two languages. By comparison, Standard Tibetan, however, is only 42% lexically similar. Sikkimese has also been influenced to some degree by the neighbouring Yolmowa and Tamang languages.

Due to more than a century of close contact with speakers of Nepali and Tibetan proper, many Sikkimese speakers also use these languages in daily life.

Phonology

Consonants

Below is a chart of Sikkimese consonants, largely following Yliniemi (2005) and van Driem (1992).

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	(Alveolo-) Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	voiceless		n̥ ⟨ན n⟩			ŋ̥ ⟨ང ng⟩
	voiced	m ⟨མ m⟩	n ⟨ན n⟩		n~ɲ ⟨ཉ ny⟩	ŋ ⟨ང ng⟩
Plosive	voiceless unaspirated	p ⟨པ p⟩	t ⟨ཏ t⟩	ʈ ⟨ཏྲ tr⟩		k ⟨ཀ k⟩	ʔ ⟨འ ʔ⟩
	voiceless aspirated	pʰ ⟨ཕ ph⟩	tʰ ⟨ཐ th⟩	ʈʰ ⟨ཐྲ thr⟩		kʰ ⟨ཁ kh⟩
	voiced	b ⟨བ b⟩	d ⟨ད d⟩	ɖ ⟨དྲ dr⟩		ɡ ⟨ག g⟩
	devoiced	p̀ʱ~b̀ɦ ⟨བ p'⟩	t̀ʱ~d̀ɦ ⟨ད t'⟩	ʈ̀ʱ~ɖ̀ɦ ⟨དྲ tr'⟩		k̀ʱ~g̀ɦ ⟨ག k'⟩
Affricate	voiceless unaspirated		ts ⟨ཙ ts⟩		tɕ ⟨ཅ c⟩
	voiceless aspirated		tsʰ ⟨ཚ tsh⟩		tɕʰ ⟨ཆ ch⟩
	voiced		dz ⟨ཛ dz⟩		dʑ ⟨ཇ j⟩
	devoiced				tɕ̀ʱ~dʑ̀ɦ ⟨ཇ c'⟩
Fricative	voiceless		s ⟨ས s⟩		ɕ ⟨ཤ sh⟩		h ⟨ཧ h⟩
	voiced		z ⟨ཟ z⟩		ʑ ⟨ཞ zh⟩
Liquid	voiceless		l̥ ⟨ལ l⟩	r̥ ⟨ར r⟩
	voiced		l ⟨ལ l⟩	r~ɹ~ɾ ⟨ར r⟩
Approximant		w ⟨ཝ w⟩			j ⟨ཡ y⟩	w ⟨ཝ w⟩

Devoiced consonants are pronounced with a slight breathy voice, aspiration, and low pitch. They are remnants of voiced consonants in Classical Tibetan that became devoiced. Likewise, the historical Tibetan phoneme /ny/ is realised as an allophone of /n/ and /ng/, which themselves have mostly lost contrast among speakers.

Vowels

Below is a chart of Sikkimese vowels, also largely following Yliniemi (2005).

	Front		Middle	Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	/i/ ⟨ི i⟩	/y/ ⟨ུ u⟩		/u/ ⟨ུ u⟩
Mid	/e/ ⟨ེ e⟩	/ø/ ⟨ོ o⟩		/o/ ⟨ོ o⟩
Open	[ɛ] ⟨ེ e⟩		/ɐ/ ⟨a⟩

• [ɛ] is an allophone of [e], confined to appearing after [dʑ] /j/ in closed syllables

In the Tibetan script, an abugida, the inherent vowel /a/ is unmarked.

See also

• Bhutia people
• Lepcha people
• Lepcha language
• Indigenous peoples of Sikkim
• History of Sikkim

Further reading

• van Driem, George (1992). The grammar of Dzongkha. Dzongkha Development Commission, Government of Bhutan. Dead link
• Yliniemi, Juha (2019). A descriptive grammar of Denjongke (Sikkimese Bhutia) (Ph.D. thesis). University of Helsinki. ISBN 978-951-51-5138-4.
• Lee, Seunghun J.; Hwang, H.K.; Monou, T.; Kawahara, S. (2018). "The phonetic realization of tonal contrast in Dränjongke". Proceedings of the International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages: 217–221. doi:10.21437/TAL.2018-44. S2CID 52209330.
• Lee, Seunghun J.; S. Kawahara; C. Guillemot; T. Monou (2019). "Acoustics of the four-way laryngeal contrast in Drenjongke (Bhutia): Observations and implications". 音声研究. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan (23(1)): 65–75. doi:10.24467/onseikenkyu.23.0_65.