Magar Kham language
Himalayish language
Magar Kham (मगर खाम), also known as Kham, Kham Magar, and Khamkura, is the Sino-Tibetan language variety of the Northern Magar people of Nepal. The language is situated in the upper elevations of Baglung, East Rukum, and Rolpa districts. Based on census data taken in 2021, the total population of Magar Kham is estimated to be about 91,753 speakers.
Language classification
Magar Kham is a Sino-Tibetan language, and it is classified by David Bradley as “Central Himalayan,” and as being related to Magar and Chepang and more distantly related to the Kiranti languages. George van Driem also classifies Magar Kham as “Para-Kiranti,” emphasizing that Magar Kham, Magar, and Chepang are united more by their differences from the Kiranti cluster than by their similarity to one another. Within this cluster, Magar Kham possesses a number of unique grammatical features, and shares only 44% lexical similarity with Magar and 38% with Chepang.
Dialects
Magar Kham speakers generally refer to their dialect using the name of an important village or river in conjunction with the Nepali instrumental suffix [-le] or the genitive suffix [-i]. Thus, it can be said that Magar Kham has as many dialects as there are villages and rivers in their native territory. The table below presents the major dialects of the Magar Kham language as they have been classified by David E. Watters. The ISO 639-3 codes associated with each major dialect are presented in brackets.
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This entry incorporates text from “Magar Kham language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.