Vayu language

This article is about the language spoken in Nepal. For the language of South America, see Wayuu language.

Vayu (वायु), Wayu or Hayu (हायु) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal by about 1,520 people in Bagmati Province. Dialects include Pali gau (पालि गाउ) Mudajor Sukajor Ramechhap Sindhuli and Marin Khola.

Vayu
Hayu
वायु, हायु
Native to	Nepal
Region	Janakpur Zone
Native speakers	1,500 (2011 census)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Mahakiranti (?) Kiranti Western Northwestern Vayu
Writing system	Devanagari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	vay
Glottolog	wayu1241
ELP	Wayu

The Vayu language features SOV ordering. There are strong Nepali influences in its phonology, lexicon, and grammar. Its writing system uses the Devanagari script. There are no known monolingual speakers of the language, as its speaking population also uses Nepali.^[1] Despite a lack of monolingual children, use of Vayu has survived into the 21st century ^[2]

Phonology

Vowels^[3]

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Near-close	ɪ	ʊ
Open-mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a

Consonants^[3]

		bilabial	dental	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
nasal		m	n			ŋ
plosive	plain	p	t	ts	c [tɕ]	k
	voiced	b	d	dz	ɟ [dʑ]	g
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	tsʰ		kʰ
fricative				s	x		h
tap				ɾ
lateral	voiceless		ɬ
	voiced		l
semivowel		w			j

Grammar

a-mʊ

3S-GEN

kɔ

TOP

lɔm-nɔŋ

road-on

kɔ

TOP

nakpu

two:HUM

xʷaptsɔ

spouse

dum –

become:23S

kɛm-hɛ

house-in

kɔlu

one

xʷaptsɔ

spouse

nɔ […]

be:23S

dzəmmə

all

kɔ

TOP

tsʰukpu

three:HUM

dŭmɛ

become:3P

^[3]

 

a-mʊ kɔ lɔm-nɔŋ kɔ nakpu xʷaptsɔ {dum –} kɛm-hɛ kɔlu xʷaptsɔ {nɔ […]} dzəmmə kɔ tsʰukpu dŭmɛ

3S-GEN TOP road-on TOP two:HUM spouse become:23S house-in one spouse be:23S all TOP three:HUM become:3P

‘Now he had two wives on the road – he had one at home – altogether they were three.’

Geographical distribution

Hayu is spoken in the following locations of Nepal.^[1]

• Ramechhap District, Bagmati Province: Mudajor and Sukajor villages
• Sindhuli District: Manedihi village

Hayu is spoken in the Sunkoshi valley, southwards across the Mahabharat range. Ethnic Hayu live on the hills on both sides of the Sun Kosi River but the language is only spoken in the villages listed.

References

1. Vayu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Frawley, W. (2003). Wayu. The International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. (Vol. 4, pp. 536) New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.
3. Michailovsky, Boyd. "Hayu".

Bibliography

• Boyd Michailovsky (1988) La langue hayu. Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
• Boyd Michailovsky (2003) "Hayu". In Graham Thurgood & Randy LaPolla (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 518–532. London & New York: Routledge.
• George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.

Further reading

• Hodgson, B. (1857). Váyu Vocabulary. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 26. 372–485.
• Hodgson, B. (1858). On the Vayu tribe of the Central Himalaya. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 27. 443–6.
• Michailovsky, B. (1973). Notes on the Hayu language. Kailash : A Journal of Himalayan Studies, 1(2), 135–152.
• Michailovsky, B. (1974). Hayu Typology and Verbal Morphology. Linguistics Of The Tibeto-Burman Area, 11–26.
• Michailovsky, B. (1976). A Case of Rhinoglottophilia in Hayu. Linguistics Of The Tibeto-Burman Area, 2293.
• Park, I. (1995). Grammaticalization of Verbs in Three Tibeto-Burman Languages. Dissertation Abstracts International, 55(8), 2369A.
• Sherard, M. (1986). Morphological Structure of the Pronominal and Verb Systems in Two Pronominalized Himalayan Languages. In J. McCoy, T. Light (Eds.), Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies (pp. 172–199). Leiden: Brill.
• Yadava, Y. P., Glover, W. W. (1999). Topics in Nepalese Linguistics. In Yadava, Yogendra P. and Warren W. Glover (eds.) Kamaladi, Kathmandu: Royal Nepal Academy. p. 603.

External links

• Hayu recordings from COCOON, COllections de COrpus Oraux Numériques
• Endangered Languages Profile for Hayu