This final chapter was initially drafted in Berlin, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. International borders were suddenly sealed shut out of the fear that COVID-infected passengers could bring the novel coronavirus into countries where the disease had not yet reached. When this book was finalised, Australia's borders were still closed, keeping families ripped apart indefinitely. While one can understand some of the drivers behind the compulsion to create and maintain borders, we can also learn from the history of the Berlin Wall about what effect borders have on those whose lives are shaped by them. The borders discussed in this book, though not always as prominent as the Berlin Wall, or as cruel as the Australian travel ban, are nonetheless influential in shaping the lives of the people whose linguistic ecologies are described in this book.

Historical linguistics has tended to focus on the change and development of linguistic structures over time, either via the ‘tree’ model (e.g. Schleicher, 1853) or the ‘wave’ model (e.g. Schmidt, 1872). The focus has largely been on the linguistic structures themselves, and not the sociocultural context in which the languages change and develop. This book has examined several languages in their social, cultural, and political contexts. The chapters comprising this volume have outlined case studies, showing how language is used and has developed in complex multilingual environments in the Greater Tibetan region. We find four themes, in particular, that resonate throughout the stories told in these chapters. These themes are religion, education, names, and literacy. I conclude that we may want to incorporate these themes back into our historical linguistic model, that these themes can stand in as bordering forces shaping the sociohistorical context that is so relevant to language and language change.

Introduction

The languages of Bhutan are often assumed to be Tibetan dialects, perhaps due to some of the apparent cultural similarities with Tibet and the fact that a version of the Tibetan writing system is employed to represent Bhutan's national language, Dzongkha. Buddhism still operates as a National Religion, with a majority of the country's inhabitants self-identifying as practitioners of various streams of the religion. This religion is also directly linked to Tibetan through the writing system. Classical Tibetan, called Chöke in Bhutan, is the liturgical language of the various forms of Bhutanese Buddhism and still enjoys a very high level of prestige in the country. As such, Chöke extends pressure on the modern languages, and has likely been doing so for over one millennium, since the introduction of Buddhism into Bhutan. In this way, one can see Chöke is a language of influence, crossing borders of language, time, and geopolitical space, to change and shape other modern languages.

Despite a modern perception that Bhutanese ‘language’ might be synonymous with ‘Tibetan,’ Bhutan is actually home to 19 distinct Tibeto-Burman languages (van Driem 1998). Many of these languages are identified as occupying an unknown position within Tibeto-Burman; these include Tshangla, Black Mountain Mönpa, Lhokpu and Gongduk.

Introduction

The term ‘East Bodish’ was first used in Shafer (1954) to identify a proposed family of languages to which Dakpa, a language spoken Southeast of Lhasa, belonged. Shafer (1954) noted that Dakpa, and therefore ‘East Bodish’ languages were closely related to, but not directly descended from Classical Tibetan. Since then, several other languages have been identified as East Bodish. A majority of these languages are found in Bhutan, but some spill over into Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh as well.

The East Bodish languages, in general, are amongst the most poorly described in all of Tibeto-Burman, in particular in comparison to their other Bodic cousins (e.g. Newar, Kiranti languages, Tamang). The studies I am familiar with are presented in §2. Other than van Driem (2007), showing the close relationship between Dakpa and Dzala, there has been no attempt to sort out the relationship amongst the East Bodish languages.

The aim of this chapter is to make new data available while also proposing the first tentative internal phylogeny amongst the languages within East Bodish. In §2 I provide the relevant background on East Bodish languages, including approximate location and number of speakers. §3 presents the data and arguments that confirm van Driem (2007)'s analysis that Dakpa and Dzala form a subgroup within East Bodish. §4 discusses the placement of the dialect of Hengke spoken in Phobikha, called Phobjip, in East Bodish and §5 discusses Chali.