Byangsi language

Byangsi (also called Byansi, Byãsi, Byangkho Lwo, Byanshi, Bhotia, and Byangkhopa[2]) is a West Himalayish language of India and Nepal.

[4] It is the most dominant language in this region,[5] although it is not widely known outside of its small hill district and those who speak it have difficulty classifying themselves for central government dealings.

The area is located in Dharchula and Munsiyari tehsils of the Pithoragarh district, and the majority of it is in the Kuthi valley near the Tibet and Nepal borders.

Later, two new villages called Rapla and Sitola were founded by Byangsi speakers to the south of the original area.

[6] Until recently, the hill region where the people live was closed to foreign researchers, so very little information has been gathered on the languages of the area.

[6] In Nepal's national caste system, which the Nepalese government used to replace the three previous regionally-distinct hierarchies, the mountain peoples to which the Bura belong are placed near the middle.

The Bura reside midway along the mountains and make their living by farming the hillsides and recently cleared forest land.

[7] There are 12 distinct vowel sounds in Byangsii, which are represented: i, i:, ł, ɯ, u, u:, e, o, ε, ɔ, a (ə), and a:.

A prefix or suffix may be added to a word to denote gender of the person or animal in question.

[7] Demonstrative pronouns in Byangsi will differentiate based on number, distance, elevation relative to speaker, and whether an object is visible.

[7] Byangsi, like many Tibeto-Burman languages, amply uses aspectivizers, which are auxiliaries added to a verb directly to its stem to slightly change its meaning to something closely related.

[11] A verb will change form based on tense, aspect, mood, person, and number.

[10] Relationships of words in Tibeto-Burman languages are determined both by positioning in a sentence and morphemes, which may be either prefixes or suffixes.

[10] Byangsi's kinship terminology is a symmetrical prescriptive type, meaning that the same terms may be used for relatives on both sides of the family tree.

[12] The family tree is not exactly symmetrical in terminology, but some terms mean types of relatives that are thought of as similar in the culture.

[7] Fractions are expressed by local measurements except for one word, "phyε," which means "half" and is never modified.