- Official language in
- Bhutan
- Script
- Tibetan
Where it's spoken
Dzongkha is the national language of the Kingdom of Bhutan under the country's constitution. It is the native language of the western districts of Bhutan, but it is spoken as a lingua franca throughout the country. In Bhutanese schools, Dzongkha itself, together with modules of some other subjects such as history and geography, is taught in Dzongkha, while most other subjects are taught in English.
Sources
- The Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan (2008), as published by WIPO Lex — Article 1, Section 8
- Tshering of Gaselô, Karma; van Driem, George (2019). "The Grammar of Dzongkha: Revised and Expanded, with a Guide to Roman Dzongkha and to Phonological Dzongkha" (4th ed.). Himalayan Linguistics Archive 7 — pp.1–2, 6 (national language; lingua franca; medium of instruction)
Script & pronunciation
Dzongkha is written in the Tibetan script, which Dzongkha speakers call 'Ucen; the same script is also the official script of Bhutan. As in the 'Ucen script generally, a syllable's vowel is a by default when no vowel sign is written, and separate signs mark the vowels i, u, e and o. A small triangular dot called tshâ separates syllables, and a mark called shê, similar to a comma, semicolon or full stop, closes a phrase or sentence; it is not part of any word. This app's cards give the pronunciation of a word in Roman letters rather than a letter-by-letter transliteration of its Dzongkha spelling, as in གཅིག (Chig, "one").
Sources
- Tshering of Gaselô, Karma; van Driem, George (2019). "The Grammar of Dzongkha: Revised and Expanded, with a Guide to Roman Dzongkha and to Phonological Dzongkha" (4th ed.). Himalayan Linguistics Archive 7 — pp.9, 11, 15, 18 (Roman Dzongkha; 'Ucen script; vowel signs; punctuation)
- The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0.0 — Core Specification, Chapter 13: South and Central Asia-II (Tibetan) — §13.4.1 (Tibetan script also used to write Dzongkha)
Grammar essentials
The Dzongkha verb does not conjugate to show agreement for the person or number of its subject; tense and other shades of meaning are instead expressed with endings and auxiliary verbs. Basic word order places the verb at the end of the sentence, as in khô-gi mô-lu ga, literally "he she love," meaning "He loves her"; this app's cards likewise describe Dzongkha as having "SOV word order." Negation of an ordinary verb is formed by adding the prefix mi- to the verb, as in this app's card ཁྱོད་འདྲ་བའི་མི་ཞིག་དང་མི་ཕྲད། (Khyoe dra-bai mi zhig dang mi-thre, "I've never met anyone like you"), while the negative imperative instead adds the prefix ma-, as in this app's card ཧེ་མ་ཤར་མ་བཅད (he-ma shar ma-ce, part of a card meaning "don't cut too much"). Dzongkha also has a specific set of interrogative words for manner, quantity, reason, time and place that are used to build content questions, such as this app's card's ག་ཏེ (ga-te, "where").
Sources
- Tshering of Gaselô, Karma; van Driem, George (2019). "The Grammar of Dzongkha: Revised and Expanded, with a Guide to Roman Dzongkha and to Phonological Dzongkha" (4th ed.). Himalayan Linguistics Archive 7 — pp.169, 172, 176, 342, 392 (verb morphology; word order; negation; interrogatives)
Politeness & etiquette
Dzongkha, like Tibetan, has a special honorific lexicon, and the speech habits of Dzongkha speakers in formal situations are highly cultivated and polite; the respectful register is likewise quite developed in Dzongkha, alongside a handful of other Tibetic varieties. The verbs bj'in and cap, meaning "to give" and "to do, perform," have the honorific counterpart nang, which is used in polite requests and can be added to almost any verb as an auxiliary to make a request more polite. This app's cards use nang in exactly this way, as in གན་རྒྱ་འདི་གློག་འཕྲིན་ཐོག་ལས་གཏང་གནང་། (Gen-gya di log-thrin thog le tang nang, "Please send me the contract by email") and ཧ་ལས་བཅད་ཙམ་གནང་། (Ha-le ce tsam nang, part of a card meaning "Just a trim, please"). This app's cards also mark politeness with a sentence-final particle, as in ཀུཟུ་ཟང་པོ་ལགས། (Ku-zu-zang-po-la, "Hello / How do you do"), whose final ལགས the card's own note calls a sentence-final honorific particle.
Sources
- Tshering of Gaselô, Karma; van Driem, George (2019). "The Grammar of Dzongkha: Revised and Expanded, with a Guide to Roman Dzongkha and to Phonological Dzongkha" (4th ed.). Himalayan Linguistics Archive 7 — pp.399–400 (honorific lexicon; nang)
- Tournadre, Nicolas; Suzuki, Hiroyuki (2023). "The Tibetic Languages: An introduction to the family of languages derived from Old Tibetan." LACITO-Publications — p.109 (respectful register developed in Dzongkha)