Kiranti-Kõits Grammar, Texts and Lexicon
Lal Rapacha
Research Institute for Kiratology (RIK), Kathmandu, Nepal
Kiranti-Kõits (किराँती-कोँइच also known as Sunwar in exonym) as one of the endangered languages of eastern Himalayan regions of Nepal is a linguistic member of Sino-Tibeto-Burman (now Myanmarian) mega-family. The language is spoken by about 27,000 people and most of them are adult speakers. Beyond the border, the language is also spoken by a few hundred of speakers out of 4,200 population in Sikkim, India, where it is taught in school level education.
Although the language is still alive amongst family members in their respective community of Okhaldhunga, Ramechhap and Dolakha districts of Nepal, it has been struggling for its survival due to several sociolinguistic reasons like identity crisis of the people caused by epistemic violence regarding their exonym by Hindu scholars and society, lack of resources and thinning linguistic ecology.
The language has 24 consonants and 6 basic vowels (nasality vs. orality difference in all make 12 vowel) sounds in its phonology. Length and either tone or stress seem to be prominent in suprasegmental features. Its pronominal (N-V) agreement or verb morphology is agglutinative and inflecting; whereas verb roots and stems are highly monosyllabic. Its normal word order is SOV and a head final language typologically.
ISBN 9783969390979 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 96. 468pp. 2022.
