Dzongkha
| Dzongkha | |
|---|---|
| Bhutanese Bhutanese Tibetan | |
| རྫོང་ཁ་ | |
| Pronunciation | [d͡zòŋkʰɑ́] |
| Native to | Bhutan |
| Ethnicity | Ngalop people |
Native speakers | 171,080 (2013) Total speakers: 640,000 |
Early forms | |
| Dialects | |
| Tibetan script Dzongkha Braille | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Bhutan |
| Regulated by | Dzongkha Development Commission |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | dz |
| ISO 639-2 | dzo |
| ISO 639-3 | dzo |
| Glottolog | nucl1307 |
| Linguasphere | 70-AAA-bf |
Map of where the Dzongkha language is spoken natively | |
Dzongkha (རྫོང་ཁ་; [d͡zòŋkʰɑ́]) is a Tibeto-Burman language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script.
The word dzongkha means "the language of the fortress", from dzong "fortress" and kha "language". As of 2013, Dzongkha had 171,080 native speakers and about 640,000 total speakers.
Dzongkha is a South Tibetic language. It is closely related to Laya and Lunana and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocha Ngacha, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha. It has a more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50 to 80 percent mutually intelligible.