The West Himalayish languages, also known as Almora and Kanauric, are a family of Sino-Tibetan languages centered in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and across the border into Nepal. LaPolla (2003) proposes that the West Himalayish languages may be part of a larger " Rung" group.

Languages

The languages include:^{[ citation needed]}

Zhangzhung, the sacred language of the Bon religion, was spoken north of the Himalayas across western Tibet before being replaced by Tibetan. James Matisoff (2001) ^[1] provides lexical and phonological evidence for the classification of Zhangzhung within West Himalayish.

Classification

Widmer (2014:47) ^[2] classifies the West Himalayish languages as follows. The recently discovered Dhuleli language has been added from Regmi & Prasain (2017). ^[3]

Widmer (2014:53–56) ^[2] classifies Zhangzhung within the Eastern branch of West Himalayish, and notes that it appears particularly close to languages of the Central subgroup ( Bunan, Sunnami, and Rongpo).

Widmer (2017) ^[4] notes that many Tibetan varieties in the western Tibetan Plateau have been influenced by West Himalayish languages.

Vocabulary

Widmer (2017) ^[4] lists the following lexical items that differ in the Eastern and Western branches of West Himalayish.

Widmer (2014:53-56) ^[2] classifies Zhangzhung within the eastern branch of West Himalayish, and lists the following cognates between Zhangzhung and Proto-West Himalayish.

Footnotes

References

• George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.
• LaPolla, Randy. 2001. The Tibeto-Burman Languages of Uttar Pradesh.
• Widmer, Manuel. 2017. The linguistic prehistory of the western Himalayas: endangered minority languages as a window to the past. Presented at Panel on Endangered Languages and Historical Linguistics, 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL 23), San Antonio, Texas.
• Widmer, Manuel. 2018. The linguistic prehistory of the western Himalayas. Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University.