The East Bodish languages are a small group of non-Tibetic Bodish languages spoken in eastern Bhutan and adjacent areas of Tibet and India. They include:
The term "East Bodish" first appeared in Shafer (1955).[1] He classified "Dwags" (Takpa) into the "East Bodish Unit" within the Bodish Branch of Sino-Tibetan.[2]
Michael Aris mentioned the "Bum-thang" language spoken in areas such as "Tongsa", "Mangdelung", Kheng, and "Kurtö", which retains "the most archaic features of all the Bhutanese languages"[3]George van Driem states that Bumthang, Kheng and Kurtöp could be considered dialects of a single language.[4]
Bhutanese anthropologist Kelzang Tashi treats Bumthang, Kheng, and Kurtöp as dialects of the language spoken by Üchogpa, which translates to the people of Central Bhutan[5]
The East Bodish languages do not share certain lexical innovations with Old Tibetan (e.g. Tibetan bdun; Takpa nis for 'seven').[6] The branch is not a subgroup of Tibetic as defined by Nicolas Tournadre.[7]
George van Driem initially proposed that 'Ole belonged to the group, but later decided that it belonged to a group of its own.[8]
Although the East Bodish languages are closely related, Tshangla and related languages of eastern Bhutan, also called "Monpa" and predating Dzongkha, form a sister branch not to the East Bodish group, but to its parent Bodish branch.[9][10] Thus the ambiguous term "Monpa" risks separating languages that should be grouped together, whereas grouping languages together that are quite distinct.[11]Zakhring is apparently also related, though strongly influenced by Miju or a similar language.[12]
^van Driem, George (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill. p. 915. ISBN978-90-04-12062-4.
^Andvik, Eric E. (2009). A Grammar of Tshangla. Tibetan Studies Library. Vol. 10. Brill. pp. 4–7. ISBN978-90-04-17827-4.
^Lu, Shaozun 陆绍尊 (2002). 门巴语方言研究 [A study of Menba (Monpa) dialects] (in Chinese). Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House 民族出版社.
^Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2014). "A preliminary reconstruction of East Bodish". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.). Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 155–179. ISBN978-3-11-031074-0.
Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2014). "A preliminary reconstruction of East Bodish". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.). Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 155–179. ISBN978-3-11-031074-0.