Dzongkha, or Ngalopkha as it is occasionally known, is the official language of Bhutan.
Bhutan is a small landlocked country on the continent of Asia. A mountainous country due to its proximity to the Himalayas, it is located between India and China. Given this geographical location, Dzongkha is also spoken in Nepal and India.
Dzongkha belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (Sino due to China and Tibetan for Tibet), though Dzongkha is closer to Tibetan than Sino… The roots of all these languages are found in Tibet, Nepal, Burma, China and India.
The local name for Bhutan, Druk Yul, means “land of the thunder dragon”, because the Bhutanese claim the sound of thunder to the roar of dragons. The term “Dzongkha” makes the tongue (kha) spoken in the dzong: fortified monasteries in Bhutan, built in the seventeenth century.
This language is not spoken by many people, a little over 130,000 Bhutanese. In addition, Bhutan is fairly tight in terms of cultural fusion, and there are even many areas where tourism is forbidden. This aspect means that translation into this language is completely handmade and there are only few language professionals who work with it.
- The Dzongkha is written in the Tibetan scripts of Joyi and Joshum.
- There is also another way to write this language, referred to as the romanization of Dzongkha, which is written using the Latin alphabet.
- In 1973 the country welcomed its first radio and television arrived in 1999.
This is a very delicate language when it comes to performing a translation. When you need professional services in this language, please contact us for a free quote.
(Versión en español: https://www.trustedtranslations.com/que-lengua-es-el-dzongkha-2012-03-14.html)
