Talk:Ladakhi language

Balti and Purik are not dialects of Ladakhi
This article is the only place I have ever seen Balti and Purik treated as dialects of Ladakhi. These three languages are closely related, but it would be jsut as fair to say that Ladakhi is a dialect of Balti. The article must be ammended. Tibetologist (talk) 16:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, the problem is, what exactly do we understand by the term "Ladakhi". If it refers to the language spoken in the political entity Ladakh with its various dialects, then it comprises the dialects spoken in the Purik area. If we want to define the language name according to the actual usage of the people, then Ladakh, more precisely Ladaks, refers only to Leh and its surroundings, and similarly the notion of Ladakse skat, refers only to the standard variety of Leh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruguma~enwiki (talk • contribs) 19:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Sir, you are wrong ,the shamskat dilect of Ladakhi langauge is same as purgi langauge , i am a native of ladakhi speaker Minaro123 (talk) 20:28, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Bhoti is not the name of the language of Ladakh, in the sense most linguists understand the term "language" and as Tibetologists would understand "Ladakhi".
As it is stated in the article, the Hill Council passed a resolution concerning the so-called "Bhoti-language", which refers to an application "for inclusion in the 8th schedule of the constitution", which would give it a somewhat more official character. However, Bhoti is just the Indian form of "Tibetan", and the Bhoti in question is nothing else than a written language, Classical Tibetan (or rather a hybrid version thereof). It would relate to the Ladakhi language in the same manner as Latin relates to Portuguese or French. The Ladakhi language is hardly ever written, and particularly not in the Tibetan script, because a majority of scholars holds that the Tibetan script was designed and introduced together with the orthography for religious purposes by the national hero Thonmi Sambhota, once and forever, and one should not use any deviant spellings (not to speak of grammar) in order not to destroy the classical language. (I am not responsible for the lack of linguistic logic behind this argument).

The self-designation for the spoken language is "ladakse skat" (in the standard variety of Leh), not 'ladaks skat'. The version in Tibetan script should have the genitive marker ("si" in simplified Ladakhi, "kyi" in standard orthography). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruguma~enwiki (talk • contribs) 20:03, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

More generally: this article badly needs some references to the available literature, which can be found by a search on the web. The statements about the dialects, e.g., should be referd to Sanyukta Koshal 1990. The Ladakhi language and its regional perspectives. AOH 44: 13–22. The people who contribute to this article should make themselves more acquainted with this literature and ideally should have some deeper knowledge of the language and its dialects.

Here some things that should be adjusted:

1. Ladakhi is NOT usually written with the Tibetan script. As stated further below, and in contradiction to the initial statement, there is a controversy on whether Ladakhi should be written at all, and, if yes how. The scholars are strictly against any kind of adaptation in the orthography necessary to represent the Ladakhi language. The category 'languages written in Tibetan script' does not really apply.

2. "the Ladakhi people share cultural similarities with Tibetans, including Tibetan Buddhism." Can one share cultural similarities? The authors seem to ignore, that apropriately half of the population is Muslim and, for this and other reasons, they also share many cultural traits of their Muslim neighbours in Kashmir and Central Asia.

3. "Ladakhis say [dras]" for rice. Quite obviously not all do so, but particularly the people using the Leh dialect. The Tibetan rendering does not seem to be fully correct either. Lhasa is not known for prenasalisation.

4. "and the Kargilpa (Burig)" - This should perhaps be clarified. Kargilpa are the people living in Kargil. Kargil is 1. a town in the region Burig aka Purik, 2. the headquater of 3. the Kargil district of which Purik is only a part. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruguma~enwiki (talk • contribs) 20:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The ladakhi langauge is indeed writen using tibetan script  using the old tibetan speeling of that word if that ladakhi word is also common is clasical Tibetan langauge, otherwise the word should be write according to its sound , The more than 80% vacoubulary of Ladakhi is also common to classical Tibetan langauge  Minaro123 (talk) 20:32, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Western Tibet: a practical dictionary of the language and customs of the districts included in the Ladák Wazarat By H. Ramsay
http://books.google.com/books?id=EsO5AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Ladakhi English English Ladakhi: dictionary
http://books.google.com/books?id=Rj0aAQAAIAAJ

Rajmaan (talk) 13:59, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Ladakhi Songs (1899)
Ladakhi Songs (1899)

https://archive.org/details/LadakhiSongs

Ladakhi Grammar
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_detail-1

https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_phon-1

https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_vertxt-1

Rajmaan (talk) 19:41, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Content I removed
Apart from the phonological level and a small percentage of lexical items, Balti and Ladakhi have been highly innovative, particularly on the syntactical level and with respect to the complex verb constructions.


 * I removed this, since the reference is worthless. Someone with Rutgers access should put it back in with a real description of what it is.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:32, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

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Ladakhi and the census
It is true that the number of Ladakhi speakers according to in the Census of India has dropped from 104,618 in 2001 to 14,952 in 2011. However, at the same time the number of Bhotia speakers in Jammu and Kashmir has gone up from 12,930 to 107,451. Now, the term "Bhotia" can be used to refer to a number of non-closely related Tibetic languages (according to the Census, there are also significant numbers of Bhotia speakers in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim), but at least in Ladakh it seems reasonable to assume that a person who identifies as Bhotia speaker actually speaks Ladakhi. The Census unfortunately complicates things a) by listing Bhotia of Ladakh and Ladakhi (which are actually two different names for the same language) as two separate languages, and b) by lumping together several non-closely related languages under the term "Bhotia". The Census figures thus cannot be used uncritically.

In any case, it seems that the drop in numbers of Ladakhi speakers is simply due to the fact that most Ladakhis (for whatever reasons) have chosen to identify their mother tongue as "Bhotia", rather than as "Ladakhi". The total number of Ladakhi/Bhotia speakers in Jammu and Kashmir has remained stable (117,548 in 2001 vs. 122,403 in 2011). The article's claim that the number of Ladakhi speakers is decreasing due to the increasing importance of Hindi is not only original research, but actually wrong. --Jbuchholz (talk) 13:05, 13 March 2019 (UTC)


 * I totally agree with you. Census data always has to be cross-checked, espeically in case of seemingly absurd drops and rises of figures as with the number of Ladakhi speakers here. Since your interpretation of the census data is fully plausible, and since the explanation by the editor who added the paragraph a while ago is obvious OR (it starts with a "could be"-sentence!), I will simply delete the complete paragraph. --Austronesier (talk) 09:15, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 July 2020
Source (in French) : Bruno Poizat, Parlons Ladakhi, l'Harmattan, Paris, 2018 Khamzan (talk) 12:35, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. TheImaCow (talk) 15:51, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Bhotia and Bauti languages
The 2011 Indian census includes two languages that are classified as Bhotia-related (mother tongue code 031000). There is a Bhotia language redirect, which leads to Sherpa language.
 * 031001, Bhotia
 * 031011, Bauti

I have created a Bauti language redirect, which I have set to Ladakhi language, on the basis that the Wikipedia article Ladakhi language says: "In the Indian census, most Ladakhi speakers registered their mother tongue under 'Bhoti'."

The reason this might matter is that according to the 2011 Indian census, Bauti is the most common language in Leh district - I have put a put tables of census results for languages into the articles on districts and divisions of Jammu and Kashmir/Ladakh and thus encountered the problem of what is the Bauti language. -- Toddy1 (talk) 10:24, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Name section
I have placed a POV tag on the Name section, which currently reads as follows (with added quotations in citations):

The only source that clearly says that Ladakhi is called "Bhoti" is the first one. But it doesn't say anything about Classical Tibetan. So I regard it as a biased source. The other two sources contradict what is claimed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:53, 6 December 2021 (UTC)