Plaisier Heleen. A grammar of Lepcha

Brill, 2007. — 273 p. — (Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library / Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region 5/5).Lepcha is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Sikkim, Darjeeling district in West Bengal in India, in Nepal, and in a few villages of Samtsi district in south-western Bhutan. The tribal homeland of the Lepcha people is referred to as ne máyel lyáng ‘hidden paradise’ or ne máyel málúk lyáng ‘land of eternal purity’. Most of the areas in which Lepcha is spoken today were once Sikkimese territory.The kingdom of Sikkim used to comprise all of present-day Sikkim and most of Darjeeling district. Kalimpong, now in Darjeeling district, used to be part of Bhutan, but was lost to the British and became ‘British Bhutan’ before being incorporated into Darjeeling district. The Lepcha are believed to be the aboriginal inhabitants of Sikkim.Today the Lepcha people constitute a minority of the population of modern Sikkim, which has been flooded by immigrants from Nepal. Although the Lepcha themselves estimate their number of speakers to be over 50,000, the total number is likely to be much smaller. According to the 1991 Census of India, the most recent statistical profile for which the data have been disaggregated, the total number of mother tongue Lepcha speakers across the nation is 29,
854. While their distribution is largely in Sikkim and the northern districts of West Bengal, there are no reliable speaker numbers for these areas. In the Darjeeling district there are many Lepcha villages particularly in the area surrounding the small town of Kalimpong.