Himalayan Linguistics

The Nachiring language belongs to the Kiranti branch of the Trans-Himalayan language family (a.k.a Tibeto-Burman or Sino-Tibetan) and is spoken in the Himalayan foothills of eastern Nepal. Within the Kiranti branch, Nachiring has been classified as belonging to the Khambu unit of the Central Kiranti subgroup, but no linguistic fieldwork has been undertaken so far and the language remains undocumented and undescribed. The present paper constitutes a first sociolingusitic survey of the Nachiring language, based on an initial field trip, and presents updates on the number of speakers, location, language usage and attitude, as well as a first linguistic inspection of the relationship between Nachiring and the closely related Kulung language. Nachiring is a highly endangered language and thus in severe need of linguistic documentation.