Dura is a critically endangered language of Nepal, and the ethnic group that has historically spoken it. It has been classified in the West Bodish branch of Tibetan languages, though more recent work separates it out as an independent branch of Tibeto-Burman. Many of the Dura have switched to speaking Nepali, and the Dura language has sometimes been thought to be extinct. Some of the people who have switched to Nepali for their daily speech still use Dura only for saying prayers.
The ethnic Dura people mostly live in the Lamjung District, with some in the neighboring Tanahu District, of the Gandaki Zone of central Nepal. They mostly live on farms in hilly country. Different recent census counts have reported the number of Dura people anywhere from 3,397 to 5,676.
The Himalayan Languages Project is working on recording additional knowledge of Dura. Around 1,500 words and 250 sentences in Dura have been recorded. The last known speaker of the language is the 82-year old Soma Devi Dura.
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
—J. David Bolter (b. 1951)