^ Dzongkha at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required).

'Traditional orthography and modern phonology are two distinct systems operating by a distinct set of rules.' Īlthough descended from Classical Tibetan, Dzongkha shows a great many irregularities in sound changes that make the official spelling and standard pronunciation more distant from each other than is the case with Standard Tibetan. Chöke was used as the language of education in Bhutan until the early 1960s when it was replaced by Dzongkha in public schools. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50% to 80% mutually intelligible, with the literary forms of both highly influenced by the liturgical (clerical) Classical Tibetan language, known in Bhutan as Chöke, which has been used for centuries by Buddhist monks. It has a much more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. It is closely related to and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocangaca, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha.ĭzongkha bears a close linguistic relationship to J'umowa, which is spoken in the Chumbi Valley of Southern Tibet. Ĭlassification and related languages Editĭzongkha is considered a South Tibetic language. The bilabial stops in complex onsets are often omitted in colloquial speech.

Syllables with complex onsets are also found, but such an onset must be a combination of an unaspirated bilabial stop and a palatal affricate. Syllables usually take the form of CVC, CV, or VC. When nasalized or followed by, vowels are always long./ɑ/ may approach, especially in closed syllables./ɛː/ is slightly lower than open-mid, i.e./o/ is close-mid, but may approach open-mid especially in closed syllables.

Descriptions of /øː/ vary between close-mid and open-mid.eː/ may not be longer than /e/ at all, and differs from /e/ more often in quality than in length. /e/ varies between close-mid and open-mid, the latter being common in closed syllables.

In closed syllables, /i/ varies between and, the latter being more common.

When in low tone, vowels are produced with breathy voice.

No other consonants are found in syllable-final positions. Though rare, /ɕ/ is also found in syllable-final positions. In literary pronunciation, liquids /r/ and /l/ may also end a syllable. Syllable-final /k/ is most often omitted when word-final as well, unless in formal speech. Syllable-final /ŋ/ is often elided and results in the preceding vowel nasalized and prolonged, especially word-finally. Only a few consonants are found in syllable-final positions. Descriptions of the palatal affricates and fricatives vary from alveolo-palatal to plain palatal. The rhotic /r/ is usually a trill or a fricative trill, and is voiceless in the onsets of high-tone syllables. Aspirated consonants (indicated by the superscript h), /ɬ/, and /h/ are not found in low-tone syllables. In the onsets of low-tone syllables, consonants are voiced. Consonants Edit Consonant phonemesĪll consonants may begin a syllable. The tone of a syllable determines the allophone of the onset and the phonation type of the nuclear vowel. Dzongkha is a tonal language and has two level tones (high and low ), and two contour tone distinctions, totaling four tones.

Dzongkha english dictionary pdf