Sherpa language

Sherpa
ཤར་པའི་སྐད་ཡིག shar pa'i skad yig
Native to Nepal, China, Sikkim, Tibet
Ethnicity Sherpa
Native speakers
 170,000 (2001 & 2011 census)[1]
Sino-Tibetan
Tibetan, Devanagari
Official status
Official language in
    Nepal
 India (Sikkim)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 xsr
Glottolog sher1255[2]

Sherpa (also Sharpa, Xiaerba, Sherwa) is a language spoken in Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim, mainly by the Sherpa community. About 200,000 speakers live in Nepal (2001 census), some 20,000 in Sikkim (1997), and some 800 in China (1994).

Days of the week in Sherpa
English Sherpa
Sundayŋi`ma ( / ŋ / is the sound Ng')
MondayDawa
TuesdayMiŋma
WednesdayLakpa
ThursdayPhurba
FridayPasaŋ
SaturdayPemba

The above days of the week are derived from the Tibetan language ("Pur-gae").

Sherpa is a SOV language, written using either the Devanagari or Sambotas script.

Phonology

Sherpa has the following consonants:

Consonants
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
plain aspirated plain aspirated plain aspirated plain aspirated plain aspirated
Stop voiceless p pʰ t̪ t̪ʰ ʈ ʈʰ k kʰ
voiced b d̪ ɖ g
Fricative s ʃ h
Affricate voiceless t͡s t͡sʰ t͡ʃ t͡ʃʰ
voiced d͡z d͡ʒ
Nasal m n ŋ
Approximant w l lʰ j
Trill r rʰ

Some grammatical aspects of Sherpa are as follows:

  • Nouns are defined by morphology when a bare noun occurs in the genitive and this extends to the noun phrase. Defined by syntactic co-occurrence with the locative clitic, comes first in the noun phrase after demonstratives.
  • Demonstratives are defined syntactically by first position in the NP directly before the noun.
  • Quantifiers: Number words occur last in the noun phrase with the exception of the definite article.
  • Adjectives occur after the noun in the NP and morphologically only take genitive marking when in construct with a noun.
  • Verbs may morphologically be distinguished by differing or suppletive roots for the perfective, imperfective, and imperative. They occur last in a clause before the verbal auxiliaries.
  • Verbal Auxiliaries occur last in a clause.
  • Postpositions occur last in a postpositional NP.
  • Sherpa is a tone language [3]

Other typological features: 1. Split Ergativity based on Aspect 2. SO & OV (SOV) 3. N-A 4. N-Num 5. V-Aux 6. N-Pos

References

  1. ↑ Sherpa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Sherpa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ https://www.ethnologue.com/language/xsr


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.