Dzongkha

Dzongkha
Dzongkha
Bhutanese
རྫོང་ཁ་
Native to	Bhutan
Ethnicity	Ngalop people
Native speakers	171,080 (2013); Total speakers: 640,000
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish Tibetic Dzongkha–Lhokä Dzongkha; ; ; ; ; ;
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Tibetan Classical Tibetan ; ;
Dialects	Laya; Lunana; Adap;
Writing system	Tibetan script; Dzongkha Braille
Official status
Official language in	Bhutan
Regulated by	Dzongkha Development Commission
Language codes
ISO 639-1	dz
ISO 639-2	dzo
ISO 639-3	dzo – inclusive code; Individual codes:; lya – Laya; luk – Lunana
Glottolog	nucl1307
Linguasphere	70-AAA-bf
	Districts of Bhutan in which the Dzongkha language is spoken natively are highlighted in yellow.

Dzongkha (རྫོང་ཁ་; [dzòŋkʰɑ́]) is a Sino-Tibetan language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script.

The word dzongkha means "the language of the fortress", from dzong "fortress" and kha "language". As of 2013, Dzongkha had 171,080 native speakers and about 640,000 total speakers.

Dzongkha is a South Tibetic language. It is closely related to and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocha Ngacha, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha. It has a more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50 to 80 percent mutually intelligible.

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