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

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The project has completed comprehensive grammars of the following languages:

The project is currently working on comprehensive grammars of the following languages:

The project has completed grammatical sketches of the following languages:

Members of the project are currently working on grammatical sketches of the following languages:

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

Himalayan Languages Symposium

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Members of the Himalayan Languages Project also regularly organise the Himalayan Languages Symposium, an annual conference on Trans-Himalayan languages.[1][2] Conferences have been held annually since 1995.

Below is a list of past conferences.[3]

Event Location Country Date Year
HLS 1 Leiden Netherlands June 16–17 1995
HLS 2 Noordwijkerhout Netherlands October 11–12 1996
HLS 3 Santa Barbara, California United States July 17–20 1997
HLS 4 Pune India December 7–9 1998
HLS 5 Kathmandu   Nepal September 13–15 1999
HLS 6 Milwaukee, Wisconsin United States June 15–17 2000
HLS 7 Uppsala Sweden September 7–9 2001
HLS 8 Bern  Switzerland September 19–22 2002
HLS 9 Mysore India December 9–12 2003
HLS 10 Thimphu Bhutan December 1–3 2004
HLS 11 Bangkok Thailand December 6–9 2005
HLS 12 Kathmandu   Nepal November 26–29 2006
HLS 13 Shimla India October 22–24 2007
HLS 14 Gothenburg Sweden August 21–23 2008
HLS 15 Eugene, Oregon United States July 30–August 1 2009
HLS 16 London United Kingdom September 2–5 2010
HLS 17 Kobe Japan September 6–9 2011
HLS 18 Varanasi India September 10–12 2012
HLS 19 Canberra Australia September 6–8 2013
HLS 20 Singapore Singapore July 16–18 2014
HLS 21 Kirtipur   Nepal November 26–28 2015
HLS 22 Guwahati India June 8–10 2016
HLS 23 Tezpur India July 5–7 2017
HLS 24 Lucknow India June 8–10 2018
HLS 25 Sydney Australia June 28–29 2019
HLS 26 Paris France September 4–6 2023
HLS 27 Guwahati India June 12–14 2024
HLS 28 Eugene, Oregon United States August 2–3 2025[4]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Himalayan Languages Symposium.
  2. ^ Conferences[usurped]. Himalayan Languages Project.
  3. ^ "Conference schedule". Himalayan Languages Symposium. 2021-04-14. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
  4. ^ "Co-located Conferences". Linguistics Society of America Summer Institute: July 7-August 8, 2025 at the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR. Retrieved 2024-12-18.
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