Gurung language

Gurung or Gurnung (तमु क्यी, ཏམུ་ཀི, Tamu Kyi) is spoken by the Gurung people. The total number of all Gurung speakers in Nepal was 227,918 (1991 census). There is no distinction between Gurung as an ethnic group and the number of people who speak the language.

Gurung
Tamu Kyi
Native to	Nepal
Ethnicity	Gurung people
Native speakers	360,000 (2001)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tamangic Gurung
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gvr
Glottolog	guru1261[2]

Selected ethnic groups of Nepal:

  Bhotia, Sherpa, Thakali

  Gurung/Tamu

  Kiranti, Rai, Limbu

  Nepal Bhasa

  Pahari

  Tamang

Note that on the east of this map,

  Kulu Rodu (Kulung) territories (to the north of Kiranti and Rai territories) are

  mistakenly marked as Gurung territories.

Nepali, Nepal's official language, is an Indo-European language, whereas Gurung is a Sino-Tibetan language.

Geographical distribution

Gurung is spoken in the following districts of Nepal (Ethnologue):

• Gandaki Zone: Kaski District, Syangja District, Lamjung District, Tanahu District, Gorkha District, Manang District and Mustang
• Dhawalagiri Zone: Parbat district

Grammar

Some miscellaneous grammatical features of the Gurung languages are:

• SOV
• Postpositions
• Genitives
• Adjectives relatives before noun heads
• numerals after noun heads
• Rising intonation in bipolar questions
• 1 prefix on negative verbs
• Maximum number of suffixes 3
• case of noun phrase shown by preposition
• No subject or object referencing in verbs
• split ergative system according to tense
• Causatives
• Benefactives
• CV, CCV, CCCV

Phonetically, Gurung languages are tonal.

See also

• Languages of Nepal
• Languages of Bhutan
• Manang Language Project of Kristine A. Hildebrandt
• Manang Language Archive at the University of Virginia Tibetan and Himalayan Library

References

1. Gurung at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Gurung". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Bibliography

• J. Burton-Page. (1955). Two studies in Gurungkura: I. tone; II. Rhotacization and retroflexion. Bulletin of the Society of Oriental and African Studies 111-19.
• Viktor S.Doherty. (1974). "The Organizing Principles of Gurung Kinship." Kailash. 2.4: 273-301.
• Warren W. Glover. (1970). Gurung tone and higher levels. Occasional Papers of the Wolfenden society on Tibeto-Burman Linguistics III, Tone systems of Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, Pt. I, ed. by Austin Hale and Kenneth L. Pike, 52-73. Studies in tone and phonological segments. Urbana: University of Illinois.
• Warren W. Glover. (1974). Sememic and Grammatical Structures in Gurung (Nepal). Publication No. 49. Norman, OK: SIL Publications.
• Warren W. Glover and Jessie Glover. (1972). A Guide to Gurung Tone. Kathmandu: Tribhuvan University and Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Warren W. Glover and John K. Landon. (1980). "Gurung Dialects." In Papers in Southeast Asian Languages No. 7, edited by R.L. Trail et al., 9-77. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Kristine A. Hildebrandt, D.N. Dhakal, Oliver Bond, Matt Vallejo and Andrea Fyffe. (2015). “A sociolinguistic survey of the languages of Manang, Nepal: Co-existence and endangerment.” NFDIN Journal, 14.6: 104-122.
• Pettigrew, Judith. (1999). "Parallel Landscapes: Ritual and Political Values of a Shamanic Soul Journey" in Himalayan Space: Cultural Horizons and Practices, edited by Balthasar Bickel and Martin Gaenszle, 247-271. Zürich: Völkerkundsmuseum
• Nishi 西, Yoshio 義郎 (1993c). "グルン語" [Gurung (=LSI), Gūrung; Gurungkura]. In 亀井 Kamei, 孝 Takashi; 河野 Kōno, 六郎 Rokurō; 千野 Chino, 栄一 Eichi (eds.). 三省堂言語学大辞典 The Sanseido Encyclopaedia of Linguistics (in Japanese). 5. Tokyo: 三省堂 Sanseido Press. pp. 135b–143b.