Kiranti Languages

The Kiranti (Kiraãti) language family comprises some 30 languages (Ebert 1994; some counts are higher: Hanßon (1991) and Grimes (2000) put the estimate closer to 40) in the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The term "Rai" (Raaii) is occasionally used interchangeably (Hanßon 1991) but this grouping is really a political administrative one – ethnically questionable as it is rejected by some groups (Bickel 2002) and linguistically inadequate as it excludes Limbu, an important Kiranti language. (See Bickel and Gaenszle 1999 for arguments that the Rai religion, which is not shared by the Limbu, informs and is informed by the language and in particular spatial terminology of its practitioners.) It is worth noting that despite the relative efficacy of “Kiranti” as a linguistic grouping, the term can also refer to certain geographic, religious, historical or political groupings.

Kiranti languages are spoken in the eastern hills of the Himalayas – mainly Nepal, although there are speakers in Northern India and reportedly in Bhutan (Grimes 2000). The Kiranti area is arguably the steepest inhabited terrain in the world, rising from the Gangetic plain, dozens of feet above sea level, to Mt. Everest, almost 30,000 feet high, in only about a hundred South-North miles (see appendix 1). This slope is folded into deep mountain valleys (usually running approximately North-South) on the walls of which the Kiranti villages are usually arrayed (see appendix 1).

With the exception of Limbu, (with about 250,000 speakers) the Kiranti languages are not widely spoken nor well documented; serious work has only begun appearing in the last two decades and there have been grammars published of fewer than a dozen languages.[1]

Because of this paucity of data, it is difficult to know how many speakers there are. A rough estimate (considering data the from Watters 2003, Hanßon 1991, and van Driem 2001) would have to be somewhere around 400,000 speakers. Of that number, about half would be Limbu speakers and another quarter would be speakers of Bantawa or Sunwar.

However, the actual number of fluent speakers is almost certainly much less than 400,000 and falling. In Nepal, there are great social pressures to learn Nepali or English, and excluding Limbu, all of the Kiranti languages are threatened with extinction (Watters 2002).

table 1. a tentative classification of some major Kiranti languages based on proposals by Hanßon 1991 and van Driem 2001. (Although van Driem makes a separate major branch for Limbu.)

The paucity of data also makes internal classification difficult. However, some general distinctions have been generally agreed upon (see table 1 and appendix 2), and some very close relatives have been established (Hanßon 1991, van Driem 2001) but the mid-level classification remains either non-existent or very fluid.

In general, Kiranti speakers are bi-lingual in Nepali (in more accessible areas often speaking Nepali preferentially). Because relatively small distances are involved, and because marriage between subcastes is practiced (in the nominally obsolete Nepali caste system, Limbu, Sunwar, and Rai are separate castes; Rai is further divided into a number of subcastes which often roughly correspond to language), speakers of one language often have considerable knowledge of other Kiranti languages, and one would expect borrowing to be the norm (Katry 2003). Kiranti languages often stay in the home or village – in the cosmopolitan environment of cities, using Nepali is more practical.

Allen, N.J. (1975). Sketch of Thulung Grammar with three texts and a glossary. Cornell University East Asia Papers no. 6. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University.

Bickel, B. (2002). Belhare. The Sino-Tibetan Languages. G. Thurgood and R. J. LaPolla. London, Curzon.

Bickel, B. and Martin Gaenszle (eds.) (1999). Himalayan Space: Cultural Horizons and Practices. Zurich: Völkerkundemuseum Zürich.

van Driem, G. (1987). A Grammar of Limbu. Berlin, Mouton.

van Driem, G. (1993). Dumi Dictionary Database. Online: From the Tower of Babel Project <http://starling.rinet.ru/babel.htm>

van Driem, G. (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Leiden, Brill.

Ebert, K. (1994). The Structure of Kiranti Languages. Zurich, Universitaet Zurich.

Hansson, G. (1991). The Rai of Eastern Neapal, Ethnic and Linguistic Grouping: Findings of the Linguistic Survey of Nepal. Kathmandu, CNAS.

Katry, P. (2003). Personal Communication. Kathmandu, Nepal.

Toba, S. (1984). Khaling. Tokyo, Tokyo University.

Watters, Stephen. (2003). Language Death: a Review and an Examination of the Global Issue in the Nepalese Context. Gipan Vol. 2 May 2002, pp. 39-66

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[1] Allen (1975), Bickel (2002), van Driem (1987 and 1993), Ebert (1994), and Toba (1984) are good examples of those who have produced much needed language-specific detail about various Kiranti languages.