Gurung language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Gurung | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Nepal, India | |
| Region | South Asia | |
| Total speakers | 227,918 in Nepal | |
| Language family | Sino-Tibetan
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| Writing system | Tibetan script, Devnagari script | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | – | |
| ISO 639-3 | – | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Gurung (also, Tamu Kyi, Devnagari:तमु क्यी) is a term used to collectively refer to Eastern Gurung (ISO 639-3: ggn) and Western Gurung (ISO 639-3: gvr), nevertheless, mutual intelligibility between the two languages is limited. Total number of all Gurung speakers in Nepal is 227,918 (1991 census). Perhaps, a distinction should be made between Gurung as an ethnic group and the number of people who, actually, speakers of Gurung.
It should be noted that Nepali, Nepal's official language is an Indo-European language, whereas Gurung is a Sino-Tibetan (or according to recent revisions-Tibeto-Burman) language. Gurung are recognized as an official nationality by the Government of Nepal.
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[edit] Classification
According to ethnologue, Gurung is two languages, Eastern [ggn] and Western [gvr].
[edit] 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. gurung language(Tamu kui) is just like nepali .( like cantonese and manderine ) if we write in chinese charecter then only pronuncation is different but other all are same .
[edit] Writing system
Gurung languages use Devanāgarī script.
