World Language Map

Where is Solu-Khumbu Sherpa spoken?

Solu-Khumbu Sherpa is a Sino-Tibetan language, spoken in Nepal, China and India. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Solu-Khumbu Sherpa is spoken

Solu-Khumbu Sherpa is spoken in 3 countries: Nepal, China and India. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Nepal0.5%161,836
ChinaNot givenNot given
IndiaNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Solu-Khumbu Sherpa is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Solu-Khumbu Sherpa.

How many people speak Solu-Khumbu Sherpa?

Wikidata gives about 150,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2001). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where Solu-Khumbu Sherpa sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Solu-Khumbu Sherpa as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Sino-Tibetan
  2. Bodic
  3. Bodish
  4. Early Old Tibetan
  5. Middle Old Tibetan
  6. Late Old Tibetan
  7. Central Tibetan
  8. South-Western Tibetic
  9. Sherpa-Jirel
  10. Sherpaic
  11. Solu-Khumbu Sherpa

Related languages

Other languages in the Sherpaic group:

More about Solu-Khumbu Sherpa

Codes: ISO 639-3 xsr, Glottolog sher1255. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Solu-Khumbu Sherpa

Where is Solu-Khumbu Sherpa spoken?

Solu-Khumbu Sherpa is spoken in Nepal, China and India. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.5% of the population of Nepal, which is about 161,836 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Solu-Khumbu Sherpa?

Wikidata gives about 150,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2001). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Solu-Khumbu Sherpa in?

Glottolog places Solu-Khumbu Sherpa in the Sino-Tibetan family, in the branch Bodic, Bodish, Early Old Tibetan, Middle Old Tibetan, Late Old Tibetan, Central Tibetan, South-Western Tibetic, Sherpa-Jirel and Sherpaic.

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