A geolinguistic analysis of historical writings on the
Thangmi people and language of Nepal by Mark Turin, University of Cambridge
& Cornell University
Thangmi is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the middle
hills of central-eastern Nepal. The majority of Thangmi speakers still inhabit
the districts of Dolakha and Sindhupalck, which they see as their traditional
homeland. Both the Dolakha Thangmi speakers as well as their Sindhupalcok
neighbours claim to be autochthonous to the areas in which they live. There is
also a Thangmi community in north-eastern India, largely concentrated in Darjeeling,
which is the product of an emigration earlier this century from high-altitude
villages in Dolakha. According to the Ethnologue of the Summer Institute
of Linguistics (Grimes 1978), there is also a Thangmi-speaking population in
Tibet, although I was unable to verify this interesting proposition on a recent
trip to Tibet.
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