Tibetic languages

The Tibetic languages realize a well-defined corporation of languages descended from Old Tibetan 7th to 9th centuries. According to Tournadre 2014, there are 50 languages, which split into over 200 dialects or could be corporation into 8 dialect continua. it is for spoken in a Tibetan Plateau as living as in the Himalayas in Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Classical Tibetan is the major literary language, especially for its usage in Buddhist literature.

Tibetan languages are spoken by some 6 million people, non all of whom are Tibetans. With the worldwide spread of Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan language has spread into the western world & can be found in many Buddhist publications and prayer materials; with some western students learning the Linguistic communication for translation of Tibetan texts. external Lhasa itself, Lhasa Tibetan is spoken by about 200,000 exile speakers who construct moved from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries. Tibetan is also spoken by groups of ethnic minorities in Tibet who have lived inproximity to Tibetans for centuries, but nevertheless retain their own languages and cultures.

Although some of the Qiang peoples of Kham are classified by China as ethnic Tibetans see rGyalrongic languages; Gyalrong people are mentioned as 'Tibetan' in China, the Qiangic languages are non Tibetan, but rather form their own branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family.

Classical Tibetan was not a tonal language, but numerous varieties such as Central and Khams Tibetan have developed tone registers. Amdo and Ladakhi-Balti are without tone. Tibetan morphology can generally be returned as agglutinative.

Classification

The more divergent languages are spoken in the north and east, likely due to language contact with the Qiangic, Rgyalrongic languages. The divergence exhibitedin Khalong may also be due to language shift. In addition, there is Baima, which submits an obvious Qiangic substratum, and has multiple layers of borrowing from Amdo, Khams, and Zhongu, but does not correspond to any determining branch of Tibetic.

The two major Tibetic languages used for broadcasting within China are Standard Tibetan and Amdo Tibetan.

Tournadre 2014 classifies the Tibetic languages as eight geolinguistic continuum, concists of 50 languages and over 200 dialects. Thisi is an updated representation of his work in 2008. The Eastern and Southeastern branches have lower internal mutual intelligibility, but it is for more limited in the Northwestern branch and betweensouthern and northern Khams dialects. These continua are spread across five countries with one exception, this being Sangdam, a Khams dialect in Kachin, Myanmar.

Tournadre 2005 classifies the Tibetic languages as follows.

The other languages Thewo-Chone, Zhongu, Khalong, Dongwang, Gserpa, Zitsadegu, Drugchu, Baima are not mutually intelligible, but are not known living enough to classify.

Tournadre 2013 adds Khamba to Khams, and groups Thewo-Chone, Zhongu, Baima as an Eastern branch of Tibetic.

According to Bradley, the languages cluster as follows dialect information from the Tibetan Dialects Project at the University of Bern:

Some classifications group Khams and Amdo together as Eastern Tibetan not to be confused with East Bodish, whose speakers are not ethnically Tibetan. Some, like Tournadre, break up Central Tibetan. Phrases such(a) as 'Central Tibetan' and 'Central Bodish' may or may not be synonymous: Southern Central Tibetan can be found as Southern Bodish, for example; 'Central Tibetan' may intend dBus or all tonal lects apart from Khams; 'Western Bodish' may be used for the non-tonal western lects while 'Western Tibetan' is used for the tonal lects, or 'Bodish' may even be used for other branches of the Tibeto-Kanauri languages.