Systems of Himalayan Language across the plateau

This excerpt is taken from a separate project conducted during my Master's at Columbia regarding Tibetan Language. Access to the project can be found at the bottom of this excerpt. Written in 2022.

My parents used to tell me when they left Khumbu valley in the late eighties and moved to the United States without their family, they used to dream of the day they could hear their mother's tongue echo in the hallways of their new rooms. Though it's been over thirty years since they formally left Nepal, our language remains only in the hallways of our home in Colorado. The importance of language in the 21st century remains the stronghold of societal communication, the expression of desires, needs, and the production of work. At the same time, the importance of heritage languages in the 21st century remains a powerful tool for parents and grandparents to teach their children about cultural standards, social expressions, and cultural preservations. Through research conducted by myself and my partner, William Gore, the focus of this final module was to observe the perceptions of Tibetic and Himalayan language varieties across multiple intergenerational interactions to understand how contemporary, self-existing communities maintain their language. We obtained various written and oral responses through survey-based inquiry via Google Forms and consent from all participants.

In addition to this section of the module, a deep dive into the various Tibetic and Himalayan branch languages provides background information for the importance of this study, highlighting the shift that migrational patterns have on various generations' perceptions of their language.

In undertaking this topic of language research, it's important to note the historical background of Tibetic-languages. Starting from Tibetan, research conducted by various scholars has debated the origins of the Tibetan language at its roots, otherwise known as the Sino-Tibetan branch. This branch includes old literary languages, Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese. While these are not necessarily representative of the wider diasporic range of Sino-Tibetan languages, these are the most commonly noted root languages. Based on data obtained from fifty Sino-Tibetan languages, researchers date the phylogeny of Sino-Tibetan as far back as 7200B.P, linking its origins with the late Cishan and Yangshao culture.Fast forward to the Tibetan empire in the seventh century, the establishment of the Tibetan language began to rise. The history of the Tibetan language and its formal creation of classical and written languages are explored by Stephen Hodge, a textual and translational researcher of classical Tibetan texts. In his book titled, An Introduction to Classical Tibetan, Stephen Hodge refers to five phases in which the evolution of the Tibetan language took place. He states that, "We can perhaps distinguish five phases…Tibetan-archaic, old, classical, medieval, and modern Tibetan.". Hodge references the rise of the writing system and the first translation of Buddhist Texts as a form of Old Tibetan use from the Seventh century to the beginning of the Ninth. Trisong Detsen (Khri-srong Lde-bstan) was a powerful figure in reforming the Tibetan language as Indian texts were actively being translated into Classical Tibetan. The Indic branch producing Sanskrit texts from the Mahayana Buddhist Canon was continuously used by Tibetans and spread throughout the region and beyond. For Classical Tibetan, the residing impact it had on the spread of dialects across the Himalayan region maintained itself as a standard form of language for various dialects in the modern world today, such as the Ladhaki dialect. The medieval period of Tibet utilized colloquialisms in its written language, and Stephen Hodge noted the complexities that medieval Tibetan has when engaging in modern translation. Similar to this process of colloquial convergence, modern literary Tibetan reflects the behaviors and patterns of its spoken practice today. In Berthold Laufer's work titled the Origin of Tibetan Writing, Berthold's anthropological and linguistic approach to the Tibetan language relied heavily on the importance of written language. References to the first notes of Tibetan writing emerge under Songsten Gampo (Srong-btsan sgam-po) in AD 632. The formation of the Tibetan alphabet was split into two forms, introduced by T'on-mi, the bdu-can, 'with heads' from the Lanca script, and the dbu-me, 'headless' from Wartula characters. The unity of Tibetan script maintains a difficult field to navigate since the production of its written, classical literature varies so widely from colloquial uses. However, it's worth noting that this complexity translates over into spoken dialects hundreds of years later, and our research shows this expression.

The term "Tibetic." is often used in place of the term "Tibetic Dialects'' because the term implies the existence of a single Tibetan language. However, within the Tibetan diaspora, the range of spoken Tibetan language can produce muted coherence between those who are speakers of the Kham dialect as opposed to Central (U-Tsang) speakers. Furthermore, the reach of the Tibetan language is often extended to speakers who do not identify as Tibetan. For example, Ladhaki, Sherpa, and Sikkimese speakers do not necessarily go by the pretense of "Tibetan" nor recognize their language as "Tibetan." For this reason, our research focused heavily on identifying the language as both Tibetic and Himalayan inclusive because languages that extend into other families, such as Hindi and Nepalese, are included in our participants' cultural and linguistic identities. The remarkable diversity within the Tibetic language family can often be credited to the geography of the surrounding region. Through the rough terrain of the borderlands bordering Tibet, whatever contact was made with other neighboring languages maintained a strong relationship.An example of this can be seen with the Sherpa language and its creation once Tibetans interacted with the Indo-Aryan language. The exact date is unknown; however, the language adopted Nepalese terms while maintaining some patterns of Amdo-spoken dialects through language standardization.

This theory of language standardization makes it clear that the nature of language creation, acquisition, and expression are all influenced by the surrounding environment. Therefore, for our research, we asked: 1)What language do you use with your elders at home? (Grandparents, Great Grandparents, Uncles, Aunts, Parents) (Include dialect if applicable)? and 2)What language do you use when speaking to your siblings, friends, and people younger than you? (Include dialect if applicable).These questions were meant to assess two large components of intergenerational language use. The first was understanding how language standardization could be autonomous within the home. The key was to discern when a dialect switch would occur within the home and to deconstruct how this impacted the family's social structure. In one of our samples, we received feedback from a second-generation Tibetan American who spoke U-Skad at home. They shared that depending on who they were speaking to, the family used the Lhasa dialect when speaking to their local gurus, elders, scholars, and outsiders. However, within the home with family members of the same age or younger, they switched to U-Skad.Furthermore, the subject emphasized their desire to teach their child both dialects but in a pattern that would indicate the same level of discernibility between people younger and within the home as opposed to the dialect used with elders and respected individuals. An interesting study by Sara Ciesielski explained how Sherpa children growing up in the village obtained cultural and social education about familial structure through the framework of the Sherpa language used by elders. Her research relayed that Sherpa children were spoken to on average at 200 commands per hour. These commands were given when a child was already engaging in the action, for example, eating and being told to "ཟོའ་" eat, cleaning while being told, "དི་ཀྲུད་ས་," clean that. Ciesielski explored that these patterns were not aimed at changing the child's behavior but at establishing a social hierarchy by age and relation. She observed that children would also use this same pattern towards younger siblings, creating commands to establish a hierarchy of age. Language and culture thus work together to produce and reiterate cultural patterns and expectations within the home. In other words, creating behavioral standardization within the home.

The second key component of this assessment was to observe how language and dialects monitor and regulate social perceptions of oneself and the larger community. In other words, how does language standardization impact attitudes toward other Tibetic-and Himalayan dialectic speakers and their communities? Furthermore, how are these standardization rules enforced? In a guiding project conducted through the Endangered Language Alliance, researchers Nawang Gurung, Ross Perlin, Daniel Kaufman, Mark Turin, and Sienna Craig partnered together to produce the "Voices of the Himalayas'' a digital language project where they observed and recorded the vast array of linguistic families across New York City, specifically in Queens. In one instance, researchers found that dialect choice impacted social attitudes on social structure and origin. Some participants chose to opt for a more "standardized" language or dialect that did not reflect ideas such as "low status." Page. 70 of the Interface in their research states,

"a chef from the Tsum region of northern Gorkha District, Nepal, chose to speak Standard Tibetan because of what he perceived to be the low status of his local dialect; a project manager at Google chose to do the same because he is professionally invested in Standard Tibetan rather than the eastern Tibetan (Kham) variety of his birthplace."

Similar patterns are expressed in the details of our research findings, with various Sherpa respondents expressing a change in dialect when speaking certain dialects (Northern, Southern, and mixed Nepalese) because of self-perceived notions of social status. From a socio-linguistic perspective, our research hones in on the behavioral patterns expressed by the participants.

Of the ten participants, we conducted data with, the three participants we chose to use on our module were subjects who spoke in various dialects. One participant and their family spoke a standard Lhasa dialect, one used their native Amdo dialect, and the other used Sherpa. In the review of the data, we were able to make the following observations. The first was a condensing or dropping certain consonants, leading to a weakened sound of terms such as “བ”(ba). Sonam Tsering, senior lecturer in Tibetan at Columbia University shared that the observation of sentence formulation and contractions within dialect is a noticeable pattern among generational speakers. For example, the terms “ང་ཕྱིན་པ་ཡིན”(Chinpa-yin) tend to become “ང་ཕྱིན་ཡིན”(Nga Chi-yin) as a means to reduce the sounds. For the Sherpa participants, the ending word to the question “What is your name” indicated similar patterns of weakening consonants. The phonetic translation shifts from the eldest female and her daughter to using the response, “Nye Ming Lhakpa Diki Siwi” and “Nye Ming la Ang Thuli Sherpa Siwi,” while the youngest (me) female states, “Nye Ming Tenzing Dolma Siei.” Siwi also uses བ but pronounces it with a W in the word “Siwi,” meaning “to be said/called.” From personal experience, most Sherpa speakers born in the United States drop the consonant because it seems more natural to remain in the parent intonation. These are recurring patterns between both Tibetan and Sherpa heritage speakers. In addition to this observation, vocal disfluencies appear in recordings where sentence fillers such as “uh” and “ani” are used interchangeably by younger-generation speakers. The function of vocal disfluency allows the speaker to indicate a variety of ideas. The interesting point in this research is observing the difference in speakers of different dialects and varying generations. The switch between the uses of “uh,” “ah,” and “ani” appear in the recordings; the data is not extensive enough to create an observable claim, however; this raises the question of how the international syllable of “uh” reaches into the Tibetic and Himalayan language families. Observing the role of these non-lexical interruptions and their meaning could also provide insight into how various dialects express the same idea through their uses. In Chinese, the terms 那个; nà gè and 这个; zhè ge are used interchangeably to indicate “this'' or “that” as fully functioning words, while the term “uh” could be used to suggest a speaker’s awareness or state without being expressed as a full term. The word “ani” could be used to connote “but/and''; however, it is used in our data as a simple filler for functions such as “uh.” In the earlier mentioned work conducted by Nawang Gurung, Ross Perlin, Daniel Kaufman, Mark Turin, and Sienna R. Craig, a comparative digital source titled “Young and Tibetan in Queens'' posted on the Endangered Languages Alliance page displayed a young Tibetan-American expressing her ideas on community life. The responses received from viewers shared a mixed view on her use of these vocal disfluencies, naming her use of “um” as a direct indication of code-switching. Many praised her ability to do so, while others criticized her. Coming back to our earlier point on the cultural opinions that are formed around the use of linguistic patterns and the expression of culture through language, this is an interesting point of contention that leads to language behaviors such as “code-switching” that informs us on how the Tibetan language, in this case, transforms over time. Whether these same rules of code-switching apply to native speakers in different countries with varying and inter-dialect languages is an interesting point to consider.

Though our work was brief and captured only a snippet of the considerable depth that Tibetic and Himalayan languages cover, this introduces a series of interesting questions about language migration. With a larger pool of data, our research could extend into the sub-specific effects migration into New York has on these various Tibetic and Himalayan languages. The population within Queens is densely packed, highlighting a diverse and constantly changing community of languages. For future reference, it may be interesting to engage the field of linguistic and cultural studies in the psychological aspect of the neural framework. In a recent study published in 2009, the ConDiallnt Model was introduced to understand how the brain’s neural framework used its predictive control method (prediction planning) to modulate speech condensation and dialogue. This research is particularly special to neuroscience and psychology and especially useful for linguists because the data refers to the neural changes that can occur over time in the brain as speech changes. The research provides a new lens on how language over multiple generations, especially for heritage speakers, can change verbally and anatomically over time. Perhaps the most promising part of this project is moving beyond its limitations simply because this is an ongoing change happening at the current time. As students and observers in life, we have the opportunity to watch change happen in real time. Therefore, I am confident that these questions of generational change will continue as generations of heritage speakers, including myself, continue to hold on to their mother-tongue.

https://tds2140.wixsite.com/himlanguage

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