The Sikkimese Bhutia language (, THL: , ; 'rice valley language'), or Denjongke, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the Bhutia people of the Indian state of Sikkim and parts of Koshi province in eastern Nepal, and Bhutan. It is one of the official languages of Sikkim.

The Bhutia refer to their own language as Drendzongké (also spelled Drenjongké, Denjongke, Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke or Denzongke) and their homeland as Drendzong (, 'Rice Valley'). Up until 1975, Sikkimese was not a written language. After gaining Indian statehood, the language was introduced as a school subject in Sikkim and the written language was developed.

Script

Sikkimese is written using Tibetan script and Zhang Yeshe De Script, which it inherited from Classical Tibetan. Sikkimese phonology and lexicon differ markedly from Classical Tibetan, however. SIL International thus describes the Sikkimese writing system as "Bodhi style". According to SIL, 68% of Bhutia were literate in the Tibetan script in 2001.

History of written form Sikkimese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, and more specifically, is classified as a Tibetic language, descending from Old Tibetan. For most of the language's existence Sikkimese was an oral language, and it was not until 1975 when Sikkim became a part of India that a written language was developed. Until this point, Classical Tibetan was the primary mode for writing. After Indian statehood, Sikkimese was one of the many minority languages in the region to be taught in schools over the next few years. As a result of this, a written language was developed, adopting a modified version of the Tibetan script. The first literary materials were school books translated from Tibetan, and in the following years original works would be authored, including novels, poetry, and plays. While the total number of bhutia authors number approximately 30, the language continues to be used in different media. As of 2021, currently one active newspaper exists, with another paper that has plans to begin printing again. Moreover, in the last 2 decades multiple dictionaries have been published. Finally, the "Bhutia Language Website Development Committee" plans to launch an informational website about the language and peoples in the future.

Sikkim and its neighbours Speakers of Sikkimese can understand some Dzongkha, with a lexical similarity of 65% between the two languages. By comparison, Standard Tibetan, however, is only 42% lexically similar. Sikkimese has also been influenced to some degree by the neighbouring Yolmowa and Tamang languages.

Due to more than a century of close contact with speakers of Nepali and Tibetan proper, many Sikkimese speakers also use these languages in daily life.

Dialects Dialects are for the most part quite mutually intelligible in Sikkimese as most differences that exist are minor. One big difference, however, is the lack of honorifics in some Northern villages, discussed in more detail in a separate section below. Also occurring in these villages are the largest dialectal differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. In the area of Bhutan closest to Sikkim, Sikkimese speakers can understand Northern varieties of Sikkimese much more easily than they can varieties from West Sikkim. It is a local belief that the people in these Northern villages originated from this same area in Bhutan.

Phonology

Phonology introduction Sikkimese a total of eight vowels and 43 consonants in its inventory. Words in Sikkimese can be split into high or low register based on voice quality and pitch. The register of Sikkimese words can often be predicted based on their starting phoneme, but not always, such as if a word begins with a vowel or voiced nasal. Due to the unpredictability of some of the registers and the fact that phonetic differentiation of registers is achieved largely through pitch, Sikkimese can be considered a tone language. However, tone does not play as large a functional role in the language as in other well-known tone languages.

Consonants All consonants happen word-initially with the exception of the glottal /ʔ/. Voiceless nasals and liquids actually don't occur at all. Aspiration is reduced when it comes to the word-medial position and the breathy series of consonants.

Below is a chart of Sikkimese consonants, largely following Yliniemi (2005) and van Driem (1992).

Labial Dental/Alveolar Retroflex (Alveolo-)Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal voiceless voiced ~ Plosive voicelessunaspirated voicelessaspirated voiced devoiced Affricate voicelessunaspirated voicelessaspirated voiced devoiced Fricative voiceless voiced Liquid voiceless voiced ~~ Approximant

Devoiced consonants are pronounced with a slight breathy voice, aspiration, and low pitch. They are remnants of voiced consonants in Classical Tibetan that became devoiced. Likewise, the historical Tibetan phoneme /ny/ is realised as an allophone of /n/ and /ng/, which themselves have mostly lost contrast among speakers.

Plosives and affricates Plosives and affricates contrast in four distinct ways and it only occurs in the word-initial position. The four contrast ways are voiceless unaspirated, voiced, voiceless heavily aspirated, and voiceless lightly with a breathy voice and aspirated inconsistently. Anything that falls in the word-medial position has a three-way contrast, which are voiced, voiceless aspirated, and voiceless unaspirated. However, aspiration when it comes to the word-medial position is dwindled down as well as dialectal variation. Just the voiceless unaspirated contrast of /p/, /k/ and /ʔ/ can happen in the word-final position and these are mostly produced as an unreleased [p̚] and velar alternating with the glottal stop [k]~[ʔ]. The glottal stop, also being an allophone of word-final /k/, contrasts with non-glottal endings. One interesting phonetic feature is that voiced stops fricatives word-medially. Something else that is interesting is that when these are pronounced in isolation, voiced stops are either prevoiced or pre-nasalized. Some prenasalized onsets are voiced pretty much throughout but there are some that have a brief moment of weak voicing followed by a voiceless release.

Bilabial plosives There is only one known geminate, which refers to consisting of similar adjacent sounds especially in consonants, and that is /bb/. This happens when the equative bɛʔ and the infinitive marker -po/bo combines to become -bbɛʔ. The rest of bilabial plosives are as follows: voiced labio-velar approximant, voiceless aspirated bilabial plosive, voiceless unaspirated bilabial plosive, voiceless unreleased bilabial plosive, voiced bilabial fricative, voiceless bilabial fricative, voiced bilabial plosive, and voiceless lightly but not consistent aspirated bilabial plosive followed by breathiness.

Dento-alveolar plosives and affricates Dento-Alveolar plosives and affricates are produced with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge and the back of the upper teeth. The following are classified as dento-alveolar: voiceless dental fricative, voiceless unaspirated dento-alveolar laminal plosive, voiced dento-alveolar laminal plosive, voiceless aspirated dento-alveolar laminal plosive, and voiceless lightly not consistent aspirated dento-alveolar plosive followed by breathiness. All can be found in the word-initial position.

Postalveolar plosives The following are also known as "retroflex" even though the tongue is not curled backwards as strongly. They are as follows: voiceless unaspirated postalveolar apical plosive, voiceless aspirated postalveolar apical plosive, voiced postalveolar apical plosive, voiced alveolar flap, and voiceless lightly but not consistent aspirated postalveolar apical plosive followed by breathiness.

Glottal stop The glottal stop differs from glottal vowel endings and the final /k/ [k̚]~[ʔ] because the glottal stop is only phonemic in the word-final position. It also differs in the high and low register because it only happens in the high register and it is considered a phonetic feature of initial vowels. Yet, although the glottal stop is considered phonemic in the word-final position, it still is not really under that status clearly. That is because the production of final glottals in continuous speech crosses over with vowel length. Vowel length happens as a separate occurrence from glottal stops. Words that end in a glottal stop vary in production length. In continuous speech however, they are mostly produced with a long vowel with no glottal stop. The glottal stop also increases vowel quality within back vowels, much like vowel length. A phonetic glottal stop can also happen when it accompanies an utterance-final nasalized vowel.

Fricatives and central approximants There are a total of five fricatives in bhutia, which are /s, z, ɕ, ʑ, h/. The /j/ is the only central approximant. This central approximant /j/ happen in the high and low registers along with the voiceless fricatives /s, ɕ/ which provide evidence that Denjongke has tonal contrasts. /h/ in the high register contrasts with initial vowels and those have intrinsic phonetic initials, otherwise known as glottal initials. However, low register initial vowels just have an intrinsic initial which do not contrast with other glottal initials.

Nasals In total, there are eight nasals in Denjongke: /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/, /m̥/, /n̥/, /ɲ̥/, and /ŋ̊/. The first four are voiced and the last four are voiceless. Quite a few Denjongke speakers produce voiceless nasals in a similar way they produce voiced nasals that fall in the high register. Voiceless nasals occur only word-initially, whereas voiced nasals occur word-initially, medially, and finally.

Liquids There are two lateral approximants in Denjongke, one is the voiceless /l̥/ and the other is the voiced /l/. In regular conversation, the final /l/ is produced as a vowel lengthening and fronting and also only happens in reading and spelling-style pronunciation. All the laterals are word-medially voiced.

Sentence structure and syllable structure Denjongke's syllable structure follow's CV(V/C) or (C) (G) V (C/V) where C stands for consonant, V stands for vowel, and G stands for glide. Denjongke is a verb-final language, and their sentence structure follows SOV or subject-verb-object order, similar to languages such as Japanese and Korean. Although the glide is /j/ most of the time, it can sometimes be an /r/ pronounced as [r], which is called a marginal glide. Not all varieties of Bhutia have this feature. Glides might follow bilabial and velar stops as well as the bilabial nasal /m/. There is also a mandatory vowel that can be preceded by plenty of consonant phonemes and any vowel can fill that position in as long or short vowels. The vowels /i/ and /u/ are the ones that typically go in the second vowel position. The last consonant position can be a plosive, a rhotic, or a nasal. +Open SyllablesV VV

CV

CVV

CGV

CGVVClosed SyllablesVC CVC

CGVC

Register, pitch, and tone High and low are the two registers in the bhutia language. Both have many features. The high register produces a creaky or stiff voice when producing vowels. The high register also produces a high pitch. Voiceless and aspirated consonants happen in the high register. In the low register, a low pitch is produced along with a modal or breathy voice when producing vowels. The low register is also used when producing voiced and breathy consonants.

Vowels