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Karma Phuntsho ΤΗΕ HISTORY OF BHUTAN Excerpts [...] Many Tongues IT IS OFTEN UNCONVINCING to monolingual people from large countries to hear that a small country like Bhutan has more than twenty different languages. Many wonder if one is taking a dialect for a language. We have seen while mapping the land and its people that Bhutan is topographically sharply divided and its people have lived in isolation for centuries. It is not difficult to imagine Bhutan’s linguistic diversity after understanding such geosocial segregation. Nevertheless, as a general guideline, let us consider two vernaculars as dialects of the same language if they are mutually intelligible to their speakers without much difficulty and their basic syntactical patterns and vocabulary are the same. Most Bhutanese vernaculars, considered as different languages here, are as different as English and French and considerably more different than Sanskrit and Pali or Hindi and Nepali are. Although they share a lot of vocabulary, especially for technical and modern terms, the languages discussed below are not considered mere dialects but different languages because of their linguistic variations, mutual intelligibility and sociohistorical associations. To underscore the diversity and precarious situation of almost all Bhutanese languages today, a rough sketch is presented here mainly by summarizing the excellent work on the languages of Bhutan by George van Driem.¹ Like the political map, the linguistic map of Bhutan is not fully established although van Driem’s work gives us a clear picture of the number of the languages, their relationships and distribution. He classifies the spoken vernaculars of Bhutan into nineteen languages belonging mostly to the Central and East Bodish genetic groups. The sixteenth edition of Ethonologue, the comprehensive catalogue of the world’s languages, even lists twentyfive languages for Bhutan. To get a detailed account of all the languages, including their dialects, will require work for many more decades; some of the minor languages are already on the brink of extinction, spoken fluently only by a handful of people. All nineteen Bhutanese languages, which van Driem lists, belong to the Tibetan−Burman /Sino-Tibetan language family, except for Nepali, which belongs to Indo-European family. Whether this main family, which is now spoken by the largest number of people in the world after Indo-European, is called Tibeto-Burman or Sino-Tibetan is still debated among linguists and determined not only by linguistic and geographic criteria but perhaps also by political considerations. The real question is about whether Chinese languages fall within the Tibetan–Burman family as a subgroup or Tibet–Burman is to be treated as a subgroup of Sino- Tibetan family. The Tibeto-Burman family, according to van Driem, can be divided into Brahmaputran, Southern Tibeto- Burman, Sino-Bodic and other isolates. Sino- Bodic is further divided into Sinitic (containing Chinese), Bodish -Himalayish, [...] The People The rough survey of the peoples of Bhutan using their geographic locations and ethnolinguistic distinctions gives one an understanding of their diversity. There is, however, also a sense of Bhutanese character and personality which is shared by the diverse groups, beside the common identity granted by citizenship. After all, the size of Bhutan’s land and population is not so large as to allow any drastic cultural divergence. These shared characteristics and features come in the form of ideas, beliefs and cultural habits, which constitute the Bhutanese personality. The first notable feature is perhaps the deep connection to nature which Bhutanese of all areas and groups share. While this can be said of any pre-modern and non- urban societies, the Bhutanese character is vividly defined by nature in interesting ways. To invoke Bordieu’s concept of habitus, there is in the Bhutanese case a true internalization of the external environment; in their thought, behaviour, belief, outlook, art and architecture. Similarly, we also see a vibrant externalization of the internal human values and beliefs in the environment. The Bhutanese have a wonderful symbiotic relationship with their environment, which is very different from the extractive and exploitative attitude induced by modern materialism today. Their worldviews, cultural habits and lifestyle are heavily influenced by their interaction with their land and nature and vice versa. The cultural habits such as that of dress and diet are the most obvious examples of the influence of their immediate environment. The Lhopas wore clothes made from nettle fibres, the people in Bumthang from wool, the people in the east and south from silk and cotton while people in the highlands used clothes made from yak hair. Similarly, from the ceremonial hontoe dumplings of Haa made from sweet buckwheat, the rice mengey of Shar, the buckwheat puta of Bumthang to the corn meals in the east, people’s eating habits were shaped by what their land could grow. In addition to the crops they cultivated in the fields and the wood products they got from the forest, nature was the source of a wide range of food, medicine and household items.

ΤΗΕ HISTORY OF BHUTAN

Excerpts

[...] Many Tongues IT IS OFTEN UNCONVINCING to monolingual people from large countries to hear that a small country like Bhutan has more than twenty different languages. Many wonder if one is taking a dialect for a language. We have seen while mapping the land and its people that Bhutan is topographically sharply divided and its people have lived in isolation for centuries. It is not difficult to imagine Bhutan’s linguistic diversity after understanding such geosocial segregation.

Nevertheless, as a general guideline, let us consider two vernaculars as dialects of the same language if they are mutually intelligible to their speakers without much difficulty and their basic syntactical patterns and vocabulary are the same. Most Bhutanese vernaculars, considered as different languages here, are as different as English and French and considerably more different than Sanskrit and Pali or Hindi and Nepali are.

Although they share a lot of vocabulary, especially for technical and modern terms, the languages discussed below are not considered mere dialects but different languages because of their linguistic variations, mutual intelligibility and sociohistorical associations. To underscore the diversity and precarious situation of almost all Bhutanese languages today, a rough sketch is presented here mainly by summarizing the excellent work on the languages of Bhutan by George van Driem.¹ Like the political map, the linguistic map of Bhutan is not fully established although van Driem’s work gives us a clear picture of the number of the languages, their relationships and distribution. He classifies the spoken vernaculars of Bhutan into nineteen languages belonging mostly to the Central and East Bodish genetic groups. The sixteenth edition of Ethonologue, the comprehensive catalogue of the world’s languages, even lists twentyfive languages for Bhutan. To get a detailed account of all the languages, including their dialects, will require work for many more decades; some of the minor languages are already on the brink of extinction, spoken fluently only by a handful of people.

All nineteen Bhutanese languages, which van Driem lists, belong to the Tibetan−Burman /Sino-Tibetan language family, except for Nepali, which belongs to Indo-European family. Whether this main family, which is now spoken by the largest number of people in the world after Indo-European, is called Tibeto-Burman or Sino-Tibetan is still debated among linguists and determined not only by linguistic and geographic criteria but perhaps also by political considerations. The real question is about whether Chinese languages fall within the Tibetan–Burman family as a subgroup or Tibet–Burman is to be treated as a subgroup of Sino- Tibetan family. The Tibeto-Burman family, according to van Driem, can be divided into Brahmaputran, Southern Tibeto- Burman, Sino-Bodic and other isolates. Sino- Bodic is further divided into Sinitic (containing Chinese), Bodish -Himalayish,
[...]

The People

The rough survey of the peoples of Bhutan using their geographic locations and ethnolinguistic distinctions gives one an understanding of their diversity. There is, however, also a sense of Bhutanese character and personality which is shared by the diverse groups, beside the common identity granted by citizenship. After all, the size of Bhutan’s land and population is not so large as to allow any drastic cultural divergence. These shared characteristics and features come in the form of ideas, beliefs and cultural habits, which constitute the Bhutanese personality. The first notable feature is perhaps the deep connection to nature which Bhutanese of all areas and groups share.

While this can be said of any pre-modern and non- urban societies, the Bhutanese character is vividly defined by nature in interesting ways. To invoke Bordieu’s concept of habitus, there is in the Bhutanese case a true internalization of the external environment; in their thought, behaviour, belief, outlook, art and architecture. Similarly, we also see a vibrant externalization of the internal human values and beliefs in the environment. The Bhutanese have a wonderful symbiotic relationship with their environment, which is very different from the extractive and exploitative attitude induced by modern materialism today. Their worldviews, cultural habits and lifestyle are heavily influenced by their interaction with their land and nature and vice versa.

The cultural habits such as that of dress and diet are the most obvious examples of the influence of their immediate environment. The Lhopas wore clothes made from nettle fibres, the people in Bumthang from wool, the people in the east and south from silk and cotton while people in the highlands used clothes made from yak hair. Similarly, from the ceremonial hontoe dumplings of Haa made from sweet buckwheat, the rice mengey of Shar, the buckwheat puta of Bumthang to the corn meals in the east, people’s eating habits were shaped by what their land could grow. In addition to the crops they cultivated in the fields and the wood products they got from the forest, nature was the source of a wide range of food, medicine and household items.