Alternate Names: Murmi, Sain
Dialects: Northwestern dialect of Western Tamang (Dhading), Rasuwa, Southwestern dialect of Western Tamang, Trisuli (Nuwakot). Preliminary results showed 86% intelligibility of Rasuwa dialect, 81%–88% of Central-Eastern ,, 78%–88% of Outer-Eastern ,, 86% of Southwestern ,; 80% of Rasuwa with Trisuli, up to 70% of Outer-Eastern ,. Lexical similarity: 94% between Trisuli dialect and Northwestern Tamang ,, 82%–83% with Rasuwa, 80% with Southwestern Tamang ,, 77%–79% with Eastern Gorkha Tamang ,, 82%–83% between Rasuwa and Northwestern ,, 78% with Southwestern ,, 72% with Eastern Gorkha ,, 69%–81% between Western varieties and Eastern Tamang varieties.
Status Notes: Language of recognized indigenous nationality: Tamang.
Genealogy:
Demographics: 323,000 (2000), increasing. Population for all Tamang varieties: 1,350,000 (2011 census). Mostly monolingual below school age or over 60 years of age.
Language Use: Home, friends, religion; mixed use: Work, education. All ages. Younger population also uses Nepali [npi] due to education in the national language.
Language Development: Literacy rate in L2: 25%–75%. Taught in primary schools, primary mother-tongue multilingual education program since 2007. Poetry. Magazines. Newspapers. Radio programs. Videos. Dictionary. NT: 1990.
Typology: SOV; postpositions; noun head both initial and final; genitives after nouns, relatives before nouns; no noun classes or genders; content q-word initial; up to 2 prefixes, up to 11 suffixes; clause constituents indicated by word order; ergativity; no passives or voice; 24 consonant and 5 vowel phonemes; CV, CVC, CCV, V, CCVC, CVCCC; tonal.
Writing System: Devanagari, Tibetan
Nation of Origin: Nepal
Other Comments: Murmi is the ethnonym used by the Lepcha and Kirati communities and Sain by the Newar. Traditional religion, Buddhist, Christian.