| Chepang | |
| Nativename: | च्योःबाङ् |
| Region: | Nepal |
| Ethnicity: | Chepang |
| Date: | 2021 census |
| Ref: | e27 |
| Familycolor: | Sino-Tibetan |
| Fam2: | Chepangic |
| Iso3: | cdm |
| Glotto: | chep1245 |
| Glottorefname: | Chepang |
| Script: | Devanagari |
| Map2: | Lang Status 80-VU.svg |
Chepang is a language spoken by approximately 59,000 people in South-Central Nepal. The people are known as Chepang. Randy LaPolla (2003) proposes that Chepang may be part of a larger "Rung" group. Another group who speaks Chepang, living across the Narayani river, call themselves Bujheli.
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | Voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
The glottal stop is realized in some contexts, though usually not as a full closure and is instead presented as falling pitch, laryngealization, re-articulation, or by lengthening of the segment before.[1] Some example of possible occurrences are listed below:
The glottal fricative /h/ is realized in many ways and it is much more predictable in the environments that realizations occur. For example:
The voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ is also realized as /ʃ/ before front vowels.
/w/ when directly next to front vowels is realized as the labio-dental approximant [ʋ]
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
Research suggests that Chepang may have had a three vowel system at one point in time. Those vowels being /i/ /u/ and /ə/, this is uncommon for a three vowel system as commonly they consist of /a/ /i/ and /u/ as seen in Classical Arabic, Greenlandic and Quechua.
Chepang can be described as having a basic word order of Subject Object Verb (SOV) with some alterations due to context. The text below provides an example:
But it is difficult to define a subject and object for the language in Chepang and may be more accurately described as a verb-final language. The verb does, for the most part, follow its related noun phrases and other constituents. Though it is not uncommon to see the NP follow the verb used as an afterthought.
Chepang is spoken in the following districts of Nepal (Ethnologue).
Dialects are Western Chepang and Eastern Chepang.