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Stod Bhoti
Stod Bhoti
སྟོད་པ་sTodpa
Native to	India
Region	Himachal Pradesh
Native speakers	(2,500 cited 1996)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish Tibetic Lahuli–Spiti Stod Bhoti; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sbu
Glottolog	stod1241

Stod Bhoti (sTodpa), occasionally known as Lahul Bhoti or Lahuli, is a Tibetic language spoken in the Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh, India. It forms a closely knit group with other Lahuli–Spiti languages, and is fairly close to Standard Tibetan.^[2]

According to Ethnologue, dialects are Stod proper (Kolong), Khoksar (i.e. Khoksar Bhoti) and Mayar (Mayar Bhoti, or Mayari). They report 85% intelligibility of the Stod dialect by Khoksar, 75% by Mayar, 62% of Khoksar by Mayar, and 95% of Khoksar by Stod Bhoti. There is a 74% lexical similarity with the related language Spiti Bhoti.^[1]

History

The area of Lahaul where the language is spoken was named "Kothi Kolong" after Kolong, the chief village of the Kothi.^{[clarification needed]} Grierson termed the language the "Lahaul dialect".

The language was first studied after the foundation of a Moravian Church mission office in 1854. In 1881, H.A. Jaeschke published a Tibetan–English dictionary that included a comparative table of words from different languages spoken in the region, including Stod Bhoti, but without explicitly mentioning the name of the language.

In 1934, Roerich studied this language extensively, naming it 'Kolong' after its chief village.

The People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) identified two prominent features of the language: a distinct tone and simplification of compound consonants.^[3] A grammar book has also been published.^[4]

References

^ ^a ^b Stod Bhoti at Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021)
^ Nicolas Tournadre. 2014. The Tibetic languages and their classification. In Nathan W. Hill and Thomas Owen-Smith (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area, 105–129. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
^ PLSI Languages of Himachal Pradesh Part 2. Orient Blackswan.
^ Tobdan (2015). A Grammar of sTodpa (A Language of Lahul in the Western Himalaya). Kaithal: Amrit Books. ISBN 9788192444659.