ཁམས་སྐད་
Kham Tibetan
- Global speakers: 1,380,000
- Glottocode: kham1282
- ISO 639-3: khg
What is commonly called Tibetan is increasingly known to linguists as Tibetic, a substantial and diverse branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family with over 50 varieties of often limited mutual intelligibility spoken across the traditional Tibetan cultural sphere of the Himalaya in Tibetan areas occupied by China, Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bhutan — and, increasingly, around the world. For many, not only Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan alphabet, but also the Classical Tibetan of religious scripture and the modern "Diaspora Standard" Tibetan (based on the Lhasa variety), and sometimes mixed lanugage (known as Ramaluk) all serve as common lingua francas uniting people whose home languages are quite different. Among the large groups in New York for whom Tibetan is a common second or third language are speakers of Sherpa, Loke, Dzongkha, and varieties of Amdo and Kham Tibetan (themselves very internally diverse).
Sites
NYC neighborhoods or towns in the metro region where the language community has a significant site, marked by a point on the map: