File:Sherpa_language.png · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Native to
- Nepal , India , China , Bhutan
- Region
- Nepal , Sikkim
- Ethnicity
- Sherpa
- Native speakers
- 140,000 (2011 & 2021 census)
- Language family
- Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish Tibetic Southern Tibetic Sherpa
- Writing system
- Tibetan , Devanagari
- Official language in
- Nepal India Sikkim
- Iso 639 3
- xsr
- Glottolog
- sher1255
- Elp
- Sherpa
via Wikipedia infobox
~8 min read
Encyclopedic overview
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 of 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.
Geographical distribution
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Sherpa” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.