Sherpa language

Classification

Sherpa belongs to the Tibetic branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. It is closely related to Central Tibetan, Jirel, Humla, Mugom, Dolpo, Lo-ke, Nubri, Tsum, Langtang, Kyirong, Yolmo, Gyalsumdo, Kagate, Lhomi, Walung, and Tokpe Gola. The Sherpa language has five closely related dialects, these being Solu, Khumbu, Pharak, Dram, and Sikkimese Sherpa.

Phonology

Sherpa is a tonal language. Sherpa has the following consonants:

Consonants

• Stop sounds can be unreleased in word-final position.
• Palatal sounds can neutralize to velar sounds when preceding .
• can become a retroflex nasal when preceding a retroflex stop.
• can have an allophone of when occurring in fast speech.
• /l/ and /r/ are devoiced at the end of a word or before a consonant.

Vowels

• Vowel sounds have the allophones when between consonants and in closed syllables.

Tones

There are four distinct tones; high , high falling , low , and low rising . Regardless of the regular tone of the word, the last syllable of a question is to be pronounced with a rising tone.

Grammar

Verbs

Verb stems are modified for aspect and mood. The imperfective and perfective aspects and the volitional (whether an action was intentional), infinitive, disjunct, and imperative (commands) moods are differentiated. In verb suffixes, the infinitive, disjunct (action not intended or not known to be intended), past observational, mirative (speaker's surprise), volitional, augmentative (greater intensity), participle, durative (action lasts through an extended time), hortative (plural imperative), dictative (narrating a story), descentive, ablative, and locative are distinguished. A verb stem may take on up to three suffixes. The perfective and imperfective aspects are often treated as past and non-past tenses, respectively. The labels "locative" and "ablative" do not refer to the function of the aspect but rather the homomorphous case-like clitic of the same name. Sherpa is strictly verb-final.

The infinitive also marks the verb of a relative clause and a general action with no specific subject.

ɲɛ

1SG.GEN

pèt̪-u

spill.PRF-INF

čʰū

water

t̪í

DEF

t̪èŋa

cold

nɔ́k

MIR

The water that I spilled is cold

The ablative marking denotes successive actions with some causal relationship.

t̪í-ci

3SG-GEN

dzím-ne

catch.PRF-ABL

gal

go.PRF.DSJT

He caught (it) and went

The locative marking denotes when the action in the main clause is done for the purpose of achieving the action in the locative clause.

d̪am-i

PROPER.FEM-GEN

sa-p-la

eat.IMPF-INF-LOC

sʌma

food

tsò-suŋ

cook.PRF.DSJT-POBS

Damu cooked food in order to eat

The copula(Imperfective hín, perfective hot̪u)is used for existence, location, identity, and adjectival predicates. The evidential particle wɛ́ occurs at the end of phrases to denote an action which the speaker witnessed. The negative particle má is used with perfective verbs.

Nouns

There are four case-like clitics in Sherpa: nominative, genitive, locative, and ablative. These can also be used to mark arguments of a verb. There is a split-ergative system based on aspect; nominative-accusative in the imperfective and ergative-absolutive in the perfective.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Sherpa inflect for number and case. Third-person pronouns may be used as demonstratives, and the third person singular nominative also serves as the postnominal definite marker.

There are two articles, which occur phrase-finally. The indefinite form is signaled with the enclitic -i at the end of a noun phrase.

Adjectives

The general word order within noun-phrases is Noun-Adjective. Quantifiers and numerals also follow the noun they modify. Numerals may take on the suffix -pa to denote ordinality or -kʌr to denote collectivity.

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Sherpa of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Sherpa in Tibetan script

མི་རིགས་ཏེ་རི་རང་དབང་དང་རྩི་མཐོང་གི་ཐོབ་ཐང་འདྲ་འདྲའི་ཐོག་སྐྱེའུ་ཡིན། གང་ག་རྣམ་དཔྱོད་དང་ཤེས་རབ་ལྷན་སྐྱེས་སུ་འོད་དུབ་ཡིན་ཙང་། ཕར་ཚུར་གཅིག་གིས་གཅིག་ལ་སྤུན་གྱི་འདུ་ཤེས་འཇོག་དགོས་ཀྱི།

Sherpa in Devanagari script

मि रिग ते रि रङ्वाङ् दङ् चिथोङ गि थोप्थङ डडइ थोग् क्येउ यिन्। गङ् ग नम्ज्योद दङ् शेस्रब् ल्हन्क्ये सु ओद्दुब् यिन् चङ् । फर्छुर च्यिग्गि-च्यिग्ल पुन्ग्यि दुशेस् ज्योग्गोग्यि।

Sherpa in IAST transliteration

Mi rig te ri raṅvāṅ daṅ cithoṅ gi thopthaṅ ḍaḍaï thog kyeu yin. Gaṅ ga namjyod daṅ śesrab lhankye su oddub yin caṅ, pharchur cyiggi-cyigla pungyi duśes jyoggogyi.

Sherpa in the Wylie transliteration

Mi rigs te ri rang dbang dang rtsi thong gi thob thang 'dra 'dra'i thog skyeu yin. Gang ga rnam dpyod dang shes rab lhan skyes su 'od dub yin tsang, phar tshur gcig gis gcig la spun gyi 'du shes 'jog dgos kyi.

Translation

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.