Wangdi, Pema (2021) On Bodish languages in Bhutan: Language contact, genetic inheritance and parallelism in drift. Italian Journal of Linguistics/Rivista di Linguistica, 33 (1). pp. 181-215.

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Abstract

Bhutan is located in the Eastern Himalayas, known as a hotspot of linguistic diversity. Bhutan shares a long border with India touching four states - Arunachal Pradesh to its east, Sikkim to its west, and Assam and West Bengal to its south. Bhutan also has a common border with Tibet to its north. It is estimated that more than 250 languages are spoken in the Himalayan region spanning several countries. Nineteen different languages are spoken in Bhutan with a population of less than a million. Eighteen of these are Tibeto-Burman (Trans-Himalayan). No focused studies have been conducted on the language contact situation in Bhutan. This paper deals with a comparison of a select set of phonological and grammatical features of four Bodish languages - Brokpa, Classical Tibetan, Dzongkha, and Tshangla - with a view to laying the groundwork for future work on language contact in Bhutan and beyond.

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