Jirel language

Jirel
जिरीबे केचा, Iriwe Kecha, སྤྱི་རི་བེ ཀེ་ཅ་, ziribe Ketsha
'Jirel' in Devanagari and Tibetan scripts
Native to	Nepal, India
Region	Nepal, Sikkim
Ethnicity	Jirel
Native speakers	140,000 (2011 & 2021 census)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish Tibetic Southern Tibetic Jirel
Writing system	Tibetan, Devanagari
Official status
Official language in	Nepal India Sikkim
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jul
Glottolog	jire1238
ELP	Jirel
Linguasphere	70-AAA-ba

Jirel is a Southern Tibetic language of Nepal. It is spoken in Jiri, in Tshetrapa village, Jungu village, and Cheppu village of Dolakha District and Sindhupalchok and different parts of Nepal.

Phonology

Consonants

			Bilabial	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Glottal
				plain	sibilant
Nasal			m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	plain	p	t	t͡s	t͡ʃ	k
		prenasalized	ᵐp	ⁿt	ⁿt͡s	ⁿt͡ʃ	ᵑk
	voiced	plain	b	d	d͡z	d͡ʒ	ɡ
		prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd	ⁿd͡z	ⁿd͡ʒ	ᵑɡ
Fricative	voiceless				s	ʃ		h
	voiced				z	ʒ
Tap				ɾ
Lateral				l
Approximant			w			j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		ä

Writing system

Jirel Uchen, which is also called Sambhota Script, is their script or calligraphy. This can be found at religious monuments like Ngasas (Chautara), chortens, and monasteries. Jirel Lamas use this script. The script is shown below:

ཀ ka [ká]	ཁ kha [kʰá]	ག ga [ɡà/kʰːà]	ང nga [ŋà]
ཅ ca [tɕá]	ཆ cha [tɕʰá]	ཇ ja [dʑà/tɕʰːà]	ཉ nya [ɲà]
ཏ ta [tá]	ཐ tha [tʰá]	ད da [dà/tʰːà]	ན na [nà]
པ pa [pá]	ཕ pha [pʰá]	བ ba [bà/pʰːà]	མ ma [mà]
ཙ tsa [tsá]	ཚ tsha [tsʰá]	ཛ dza [dzà/tsʰːà]	ཝ wa [wà]
ཞ zha [ʑà]	ཟ za [zà]	འ 'a [ʔà]	ཡ ya [jà]
ར ra [rà]	ལ la [là]	ཤ sha [ɕá]	ས sa [sá]
ཧ ha [há]	ཨ a [ʔá]

Jiriba Uchen

The similarity of Jirel language that with the language used in Buddhist holy books is another powerful evidence to claim and believe that they are of Tibetan origin. It is believed that more than 80 percent of Jirel diction goes with Tibetan language where only 35–40 percent of diction is found to be close to other Tibetan origin tribes.Their language is similar to Dolpos, people in Mugu, Hyalmus, Sherpas, Syubas, Lhomis.

Further reading

• Strahm, Esther; Maibaum, Anita (1999). "Verb Pairs in Jirel". Notes on Tibeto-Burman. 4: 1–24. Archived from the original on 26 January 2024.