Sunuwar
सुनुवार, कोँइच, किराँती-कोँइच, मुखिया
'Kõica' in Jenticha script; 'Sunuwar' in Tikamuli and Devanagari script
Region	Nepal; India (Sikkim and West Bengal)
Ethnicity	Sunuwar
Native speakers	37,898 (2011)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Mahakiranti (?) Kiranti Western Northwestern Sunuwar
Dialects	Surel
Writing system	Devanagari Sunuwar (Sikkim, India) Tikamuli (2005)
Official status
Official language in	India Sikkim (additional)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	suz
Glottolog	sunw1242
ELP	Sunwar

Sunuwar, Sunuwar, or Kõinch (कोँइच; kõich; other spellings are Koinch and Koincha), is a Kiranti language of the Sino-Tibetan language family spoken in Nepal and India by the Sunuwar people. It was first comprehensively attested by the Himalayan Languages Project. It is also known as Kõits Lo (कोँइच लो ; kõica lo), Kiranti-Kõits (किराँती-कोँइच ; kirā̃tī-kõich), Mukhiya (मुखिया ; mukhiyā).^[2][3]

The Sunwar language is one of the smaller members of the Tibeto-Burman language family. About 40,000 speakers are residing in eastern Nepal.

Names

The language is commonly known as Koic, for many ethnic Sunwar and Sunwar speakers also refer to the language as “Sunuwar, Kõinch^[4] , Koinch or Koincha (कोँइच); Kõits Lo (कोँइच लो), Kiranti-Kõits (किराँती-कोँइच) or Mukhiya (मुखिया).”

Moreover, most Sunwar speakers have the surname (सुनुवार), Sunuvār in Latin script.^[5]

Geographic distribution

The Sunuwar language is commonly spoken in a cluster of Sunuwar villages, located around the region of the core spoken language. These villages are scattered alongside the river banks of Likhu Khola, in two bordering central-eastern districts of Nepal, distant from the main Nepalese road system:^[5] in the Okhaldhū۠ngā District (part of Koshi Province), around the village of Vacul; and in the Rāmechāp District (part of Bagmati Province), around the villages of Pahare and of Kũbhu Kãsthālī for a smaller group of Sunwar speakers. The majority of the Sunwar speakers live on the southern border area of this region, between the villages of Pahare and Vacul.

Located 1,800 meters above sea level, their fields aren’t all fallow from year round cultivation^[5] (Borchers, 2008). Therefore, many Sunwar households are farmers, own a small lot of land and livestock. Moreover, each village often visits their neighboring village markets to purchase inaccessible goods such as spices, sugar, tea, and salt. In the winter, they experience no snow but freezing temperatures. In warmer weather, they experience a lot of rainfall, in the summer, monsoon rainfall. Especially between June and August, it is when they experience the most rain, more so monsoon rainfall.

According to Borchers, there are other villages located outside of the core region. The Surel are claimed to be Sunwar speakers however there are no certainties that it is true.

Written language

Sunuwar (or Jenticha, Koĩts, Mukhiya) native alphabet in Sikkim, India

Sunuwar speakers from Sikkim, northeastern India, use the Sunuwar alphabet (ISO 15924 script code: Sunu) for printed materials such as newspapers and literature. The alphabet, also known as Jenticha alphabet, Sunuwar Lipi, Koĩts Lipi or Mukhiya script, or जेँःतिच ब्रेःसे (jẽtica brese), was developed in 1942 by Karna Bahadur Sunuwar (1926-1991), and got official recognition in Sikkim and Eastern Nepal where it is taught in schools. The Sunuwar or Jenticha script, is unrelated to any other scripts (even if some letter shapes have some resemblance to Latin and Limbu letter forms with similar phonetic value), and behaves like an alphabet with 35 base letters, written left-to-right, with syllabic features, extended with combining diacritics. The script also features its own set of decimal digits.

Unlike other Indic scripts derived from Brahmic, the Sunuwar alphabet includes no combining vowel signs: the script was initially a pure alphabet and the base consonants initially did not have any inherent vowel. But a second version of the script modified the orthographic rules to imply its presence, where the inherent vowel would be altered when appending any independent vowel letters, or suppressed by using a virama (or halant) sign in some consonant clusters or for consonants in final position of syllables. The independent letter form for the inherent vowel is now removed in most cases from the normal orthography in the middle of words, only used in isolation (i.e. no longer written when following a leading consonant, unless it is at end of words). A number of glyphic forms (conjuncts using consonants in half forms) were added to the script after this orthographic change for more easily writing consonant clusters, instead of writing multiple consonants with virama signs.^[2][6]

Devanagari-based abugida for the Sunwar language in Nepal

Although Sunwar has no traditional written language in Nepal, most literate speakers use the Devanagari abugida,^[5][4] also used for writing Nepali.

Independent vowels and diphthongs

Consonants with inherent vowel

Combining diacritics

The sign ्, known in Sunwar as sangmilu, represents a virama or halant; it is used to silent the inherent vowel after the consonant.^[7]

The sign ँ, known in Sunwar as taslathenk, corresponds to the candrabindu in Devanagari; it is used to nasalize the vowel.^[7]

Tikamuli native abugida (since 2005)edit

In 2005, another syllabic alphabet or abugida was developed for Sunuwar; it is known as Tikamuli.^[8]

Phonologyedit

Sunwar phonology is significantly influenced by the language of Nepali.

Consonantsedit

The Sunwar language has a mid-sized arrangement of thirty-two consonantal phonemes: