Himalayan Languages Project

The Himalayan Languages Project, launched in 1993, is a research collective based at Leiden University and comprising much of the world's authoritative research on the lesser-known and endangered languages of the Himalayas, in Nepal, China, Bhutan, and India. Its members regularly spend months or years at a time doing field research with native speakers. The Director of the Himalayan Languages Project is George van Driem. Project members include Mark Turin and Jeroen Wiedenhof. The project recruits graduate students to collect field data on little-known languages for their Ph.D. dissertations.

The Himalayan Languages Project was officially commissioned by the government of Bhutan to devise a standard romanization of Dzongkha.

Since George van Driem's move to the University of Bern, many members of the Himalayan Languages Project are now based out of Switzerland.

Languages studied
The project has completed comprehensive grammars of the following languages:
 * Limbu
 * Dumi
 * Dzongkha
 * Wambule
 * Kulung
 * Jero

The project is currently working on comprehensive grammars of the following languages:
 * Manchad
 * Lohorung
 * Thangmi
 * Sunwar
 * Lhokpu
 * Sampang
 * Gongduk
 * Olekha
 * Gyalrong
 * Lepcha
 * Chulung
 * Dhimal

The project has completed grammatical sketches of the following languages:
 * Bumthang
 * Byangsi
 * Puma
 * Rabha
 * Rongpo

Members of the project are currently working on grammatical sketches of the following languages:
 * Baram
 * Dura
 * Toto

The project has also studied Kusunda, a language isolate of Nepal.

Himalayan Languages Symposium
Members of the Himalayan Languages Project also regularly organise the Himalayan Languages Symposium, an annual conference on Trans-Himalayan languages. Conferences have been held annually since 1995.

Below is a list of past conferences.