Sherpa language
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Sherpa (also Sharpa, Xiaerba, Sherwa) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim, mainly by the Sherpa. About 200,000 speakers live in Nepal (2001 census), some 20,000 in Sikkim (1997), and some 800 in China (1994).
| Sherpa | |
|---|---|
| ཤར་པའི་སྐད་ཡིག shar pa'i skad yig | |
| Native to | Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet |
| Ethnicity | Sherpa |
Native speakers | 170,000 (2001 & 2011 census)[1] |
| Tibetan, Devanagari | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Nepal India (Sikkim) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xsr |
| Glottolog | sher1255[2] |
| English | Sherpa |
|---|---|
| Sunday | ŋi`ma ( / ŋ / is the sound Ng') |
| Monday | Dawa |
| Tuesday | Miŋma |
| Wednesday | Lakpa |
| Thursday | Phurba |
| Friday | Pasaŋ |
| Saturday | Pemba |
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.
PhonologyEdit
Sherpa has the following consonants:[1][dead link]
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | aspirated | 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
ReferencesEdit
- ^ Sherpa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Solu-Khumbu Sherpa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ https://www.ethnologue.com/language/xsr
External linksEdit
- Himali Sherpa:sherpa Culture dictionary
- Sherpa-English and English-Sherpa Dictionary available online
- Sherpa dictionary Print edition
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