The term "East Bodish" first appeared in Shafer (1955).[1] He classified "Dwags" (Takpa) into the "East Bodish Unit" within theBodish Branch ofSino-Tibetan.[2]
Michael Aris mentioned the "Bum-thang" language spoken in areas such as "Tongsa", "Mangdelung", Kheng, and "Kurtö", which retains "the most archaic features of all the Bhutanese languages"[3]George van Driem states thatBumthang,Kheng andKurtöp could be considered dialects of a single language.[4]Bhutanese anthropologist Kelzang Tashi treatsBumthang,Kheng, andKurtöp as dialects of the language spoken byÜchogpa, which translates to the people of Central Bhutan[5]
The East Bodish languages do not share certain lexical innovations withOld Tibetan (e.g. Tibetanbdun; Takpanis for 'seven').[6] The branch is not a subgroup ofTibetic as defined byNicolas Tournadre.[7]
George van Driem initially proposed that'Ole belonged to the group, but later decided that it belonged to a group of its own.[8]
Although the East Bodish languages are closely related,Tshangla and related languages of eastern Bhutan, also called "Monpa" and predatingDzongkha, form a sister branch not to the East Bodish group, but to its parentBodish branch.[9][10] Thus the ambiguous term "Monpa" risks separating languages that should be grouped together, whereas grouping languages together that are quite distinct.[11]Zakhring is apparently also related, though strongly influenced byMiju or a similar language.[12]
Timotheus Bodt excludes Dakpa and Dzala, which he considers to be a single language, from the East Bodish languages. He finds Dakpa–Dzala to be closer to Tibetan than to other East Bodish languages. His resulting taxonomy is as follows:
Bodt lists the following phonetic innovations undergone in Bumthang, Kheng, and Kurtöp in contrast to Dakpa–Dzala and Tibetan. Exceptions to these sound laws may be attributed to Tibetic contact.
^van Driem, George (2001).Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill. p. 915.ISBN978-90-04-12062-4.
^Andvik, Eric E. (2009).A Grammar of Tshangla. Tibetan Studies Library. Vol. 10.Brill. pp. 4–7.ISBN978-90-04-17827-4.
^Lu, Shaozun 陆绍尊 (2002).门巴语方言研究 [A study of Menba (Monpa) dialects] (in Chinese). Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House 民族出版社.
^Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2014). "A preliminary reconstruction of East Bodish". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.).Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 155–179.ISBN978-3-11-031074-0.
Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2014). "A preliminary reconstruction of East Bodish". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.).Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 155–179.ISBN978-3-11-031074-0.
