Sherpa (also Sharpa, Sherwa, or Xiaerba) is a Tibetic language spoken in Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim, mainly by the Sherpa. The majority speakers of the Sherpa language live in the Khumbu region of Nepal, spanning from the Chinese (Tibetan) border in the east to the Bhotekosi River in the west. About 127,000 speakers live in Nepal (2021 census), some 16,000 in Sikkim, India (2011), and some 800 in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (1994). Sherpa is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language. Sherpa is predominantly a spoken language, although it is occasionally written using either the Devanagari or Tibetan script.

Classification

Sherpa belongs to the Tibetic branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. It is closely related to Central Tibetan, Jirel, Humla, Mugom, Dolpo, Lo-ke, Nubri, Tsum, Langtang, Kyirong, Yolmo, Gyalsumdo, Kagate, Lhomi, Walung, and Tokpe Gola. Literary Tibetan LT- becomes /lh/ and SR- becomes /ʈ/. There are five closely related dialects, these being Solu, Khumbu, Pharak, Dram, and Sikkimese Sherpa.

Phonology

Sherpa is a tonal language. Sherpa has the following consonants:

Consonants

Vowels

Tones

There are four distinct tones; high, high falling , low , and low rising. Regardless of the regular tone of the word, the last syllable of a question is to be pronounced with a rising tone.

Grammar

Verbs

Verb stems are modified for aspect and mood. The imperfective and perfective aspects and the volitional (whether an action was intentional), infinitive, disjunct, and imperative (commands) moods are differentiated. In verb suffixes, the infinitive, disjunct (action not intended or not known to be intended), past observational, mirative (speaker's surprise), volitional, augmentative (greater intensity), participle, durative (action lasts through an extended time), hortative (plural imperative), dictative (narrating a story), descentive, ablative, and locative are distinguished. A verb stem may take on up to three suffixes. The perfective and imperfective aspects are often treated as past and non-past tenses, respectively. The labels "locative" and "ablative" do not refer to the function of the aspect but rather the homomorphous case-like clitic of the same name. Sherpa is strictly verb-final. The infinitive also marks the verb of a relative clause and a general action with no specific subject. ɲɛ pèt̪-u čʰū t̪í t̪èŋa nɔ́k 1SG.GEN spill.PRF-INF water DEF cold MIR The water that I spilled is cold The ablative marking denotes successive actions with some causal relationship. t̪í-ci dzím-ne gal 3SG-GEN catch.PRF-ABL go.PRF.DSJT He caught (it) and went The locative marking denotes when the action in the main clause is done for the purpose of achieving the action in the locative clause. d̪am-i sa-p-la sʌma tsò-suŋ PROPER.FEM-GEN eat.IMPF-INF-LOC food cook.PRF.DSJT-POBS Damu cooked food in order to eat The copula(Imperfective hín, perfective hot̪u)is used for existence, location, identity, and adjectival predicates. The evidential particle wɛ́ occurs at the end of phrases to denote an action which the speaker witnessed. The negative particle má is used with perfective verbs.

Nouns

There are four case-like clitics in Sherpa: nominative, genitive, locative, and ablative. These can also be used to mark arguments of a verb. There is a split-ergative system based on aspect; nominative-accusitive in the imperfective and ergative-absolutive in the perfective.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Sherpa inflect for number and case. Third-person pronouns may be used as demonstratives, and the third person singular nominative also serves as the postnominal definite marker. There are two articles, which occur phrase-finally. The indefinite form is signaled with the enclitic -i at the end of a noun phrase.

Adjectives

The general word order within noun-phrases is Noun-Adjective. Quantifiers and numerals also follow the noun they modify. Numerals may take on the suffix -pa to denote ordinality or -kʌr to denote collectivity.

Vocabulary

The following table lists the days of the week, which are derived from the Tibetan language ("Pur-gae").

Sample Text

The following is a sample text in Sherpa of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Sherpa in Devanagari script Sherpa in Tibetan script Sherpa in IAST transliteration Sherpa in the Wylie transliteration Translation