Dzongkha
| Dzongkha | |
|---|---|
| རྫོང་ཁ་ | |
The word "Dzongkha" in Tibetan alphabet
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| Native to | Bhutan |
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Native speakers
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171,080 (2013) Total speakers: 640,000 |
| Dialects | |
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Tibetan alphabet Dzongkha Braille |
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| Official status | |
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Official language in
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 Bhutan
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| Regulated by | Dzongkha Development Commission |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | dz |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 |
Individual codes: lya – Laya luk – Lunana |
| Glottolog | nucl1307 |
| Linguasphere | 70-AAA-bf |
Districts of Bhutan in which the Dzongkha language is spoken natively are highlighted in light beige.
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Dzongkha, or Bhutanese (རྫོང་ཁ་ [dzoŋ'kʰa]), is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by over half a million people in Bhutan, it is the sole official and national language of the Kingdom of Bhutan. The Tibetan alphabet is used to write Dzongkha.
The word dzongkha means "the language of the district"; kha is language, and dzong is "district". District-like dzong architecture characterises monasteries, established throughout Bhutan by its unifier, Ngawang Namgyal, 1st Zhabdrung Rinpoche, in the 17th century. As of 2013, Dzongkha had 171,080 native speakers and about 640,000 total speakers.
Dzongkha and its dialects are the native tongue of eight western districts of Bhutan (viz. Wangdue Phodrang, Punakha, Thimphu, Gasa, Paro, Ha, Dagana and Chukha). There are also some speakers found near the Indian town of Kalimpong, once part of Bhutan but now in West Bengal.
Dzongkha was declared as the national language of Bhutan in 1971. Dzongkha study is mandatory in all schools in Bhutan, and the language is the lingua franca in the districts to the south and east where it is not the mother tongue. The 2003 Bhutanese film Travellers and Magicians is entirely in Dzongkha.
The Tibetan alphabet used to write Dzongkha has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. Dzongkha is usually written in Bhutanese forms of the Uchen script, forms of the Tibetan alphabet known as Jôyi "cursive longhand" and Jôtshum "formal longhand". The print form is known simply as Tshûm.
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Wikipedia