Brokpa (Brokpake: Brokpakæ;[2] Dzongkha: དྲོག་པ་ཁ།, དྲོགཔ་ཁ།) is a Tibetic language spoken by around 5,000 people.
[6] Brokpa is generally considered to be part of the Tibetic sub-cluster of the Sino-Tibetan language family.
The internal classification within Tibetic has hitherto not been conclusively determined, which makes the exact position of Brokpa unclear.
[7] Based on the classification by Shafer (1955), Brokpa would be considered as part of the Central Bodish branch, together with, among others, Dzongkha, Chocangacakha and Classical Tibetan.
Other scholars do not consider the breathy-voiced stops to be distinctive phonemes since they correlate with low register tone.
Length does not contrast in closed syllables, as long vowels may be realised as short before a syllable-final consonant.
[14] Nasalisation occurs phonemically due to assimilation to adjacent nasal consonants but is not considered phonetically distinctive.
[15] Brokpa has eight of diphthongs in monomorphemic roots, usually in open syllables: /iu, ui, au, ai, ou, oi, eu, ea/.
[18] Phonemic tone in Brokpa seems to have emerged due to the loss of voicing contrast in syllable-initial obstruents.
[21] Brokpa marks case with clitics, which are either applied to the head of the noun phrase or its last element.
The Brokpa numbers from one to ten are:[25] Note that in the word for 10 both elements tʰam and ba are optinal.
Note that in some cases, a preradical from an earlier stage of the language has been retained, which can be seen in the Written Tibetan form.
[27][28] Higher numerals can be formed in a decimal or in a vigesimal system with the base word kʰaː ‘score, twenty’.
The morphemes pʰo and mo may occur in isolation when functioning as an adjective meaning ‘male’ and ‘female’ respectively.
[32] An augmentative of a noun can be formed by suffixing the morpheme -tɕʰen, which historically derives from tɕʰenpo ‘big’.