Languages of Bhutan

Summary

Comprising an estimated population of approximately 750,000 people, Bhutan is a small country with surprising linguistic diversity. The nineteen indigenous languages of Bhutan all belong to the Tibeto-Burman (also called Sino-Tibetan or Trans-Himalayan) family. In addition to these, Nepali (Indo-Aryan) and several other Nepalese Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken by migrants in the country’s southern border region. More than half of Bhutan’s indigenous Tibeto-Burman languages belong to Tibetic and East Bodish sub-groupings, while the others form their own branches within the family. In terms of speaker numbers, the languages range from extremely small (a few hundred) to over a hundred thousand.