Sherdukpen language

Language spoken in Northeast India

Sherdukpen
Mey
Ngnok
Region	Assam, Arunachal Pradesh
Ethnicity	Sherdukpen people
Native speakers	5,000 (2019)^[1]
Language family	Possibly Sino-Tibetan Kho-Bwa Mey–Sartang Sherdukpen
Dialects	Shergaon Tukpen (Rupa)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	`sdp`
Glottolog	`sher1257`
ELP	Sherdukpen

Sherdukpen (autonym: Mey) is a small language of India. It is one of the Kho-Bwa languages.^[2] There are two distinct varieties, Mey of Shergaon and Mey of Rupa. The name Sherdukpen comes from the words Shergaon and Tukpen (the Monpa name for Rupa) (Blench & Post 2011:3). The language is known to speakers as Mey nyuk.

Dialects

Lieberherr & Bodt (2017)^[3] list the following dialects of Sherdukpen.

Rupa: spoken in Rupa village and two other main villages, as well as nearby hamlets. Likely around 3,000 speakers.
Shergaon: spoken in Shergaon village. Likely around 1,500 speakers.

Locations

Sherdukpen is spoken in Shergaon, southern West Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh (Dondrup 1988), located in the Tengapani river valley south of Bomdila.

Ethnologue lists Rupa (Kupa), Sheinthuk (Shergaon), Jigang (Jigaon), and Thungree villages, located south of Bomdi La Range and Tengapani river valleys in West Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh.

References

^ Sherdukpen at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
^ Post, Mark W. and Roger Blench (2011). "Siangic: A new language phylum in North East India", 6th International Conference of the North East India Linguistics Society, Tezpur University, Assam, India, Jan 31 – Feb 2
^ Lieberherr, Ismael; Bodt, Timotheus Adrianus. 2017. Sub-grouping Kho-Bwa based on shared core vocabulary. In Himalayan Linguistics, 16(2).