Bantawa language

Bantawa
Region Nepal
Native speakers
 170,000 (2001 & 2011 censuses)[1]
Sino-Tibetan
Language codes
ISO 639-3 bap
Glottolog bant1281[2]

The Bantawa language is an endangered Kiranti language spoken in the eastern Himalayan hills of eastern Nepal by Rai ethnic groups. According to the 2001 National Census, at least 1.63% of the Nepal's total population speaks Bantawa. About 370,000 speak Bantawa Language mostly in eastern hilly regions of Nepal (2001). It is experiencing language shift to Nepali.

Dialects

Most of the Bantawa clan are now settled in Bhojpur, Dharan, Illam, and Dhankuta. Recent figures show most of them are settled in Dharan. Bantawa is spoken in the following districts of Nepal.

Dialects are as follows.

Northern subdialects: Mangpahang, Rungchenbung and Yangma
Southern and Northern Bantawa, similar, could be united as 'Intermediate Bantawa'.
Eastern dialect is the most divergent. It is most closely related to Dungmali language, though also related to Puma language, Sampang language, and Chhintange language.
Amchaucke dialects: Sorung, Saharaja, Lulam, and Sukita

Bantawa is also considered as a superior clan in Kirantian family. Bantawa is also reportedly in use as a lingua franca among Rai minorities in Himalayan India and Bhutan. Meanwhile the language is just being introduced in a few schools at the primary level (Year 1- Year 5) [3] using Devanagari script.[4] [5]

References

  1. ↑ Bantawa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Bantawa". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Jadranka Gvozdanovic. "Morphosyntactic transparency in Bantawa" (.pdf). Himalyan Languages: Past and Present, by Anju Saxena. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
  4. ↑ "The Bantawa Rai of Nepal". Archived from the original on 2008-03-05. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
  5. ↑ "Bantawa, A language of Nepal". Archived from the original on December 1, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-12.

Further reading

External links

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