Documenting Kuke: the linguistic ecology of a ‘stolen’ language in Nepal

Language	Kuke; Kutang Ghale; Kukey
Depositor	Naijing Liu, Dolma Choekyi Lama
Affiliation	The University of Sydney
Location	Nepal
Collection ID	0839
Grant ID	SG1147
Funding Body	Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP)
Collection Status	Forthcoming
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/3bd9079a-36c8-4c70-92e0-80b7efe66b55

 

Summary of the collection

This deposit contains the documentation of Kuke language in Nepal, funded by ELDP from 2025 to 2026.

 

Group represented

The group represented in this deposit are the Kutang people. Villages of Kutang are situated between Nubri Valley and Tsum Valley. Identifying strongly as lower ‘Nubri’ ethnically, the residents in Kutang area speak Kuke. The official name of this language is referred as Kutang Ghale, however, local people of Kutang referred to their language as Kuke, even though having negative connotation of ‘stolen language’.

 

Language information

Kuke (also known as Kutang Ghale, Kutang) is a highly endangered language spoken by less than 2000 speakers in Kuke speaking villages in Northern Grokha, Nepal. Kuke has a locally acknowledged history of intense contact with other languages of the Manaslu Region. This has led to Kuke being described by its own speakers as a “stolen language” or “thieves’ language” (Aris 1975; Childs 2004), as reflected in the language name, where ‘ku’ means ‘steal’ and ‘ke’ means ‘language’.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

Users of any part of this collection should acknowledge Naijing Liu as the Principal Investigator, Dolma Choekyi Lama as the local researcher, and all community members of the Kutang villages. The Endangered Language Documentation Programme should be acknowledged as the funder of this project. When using specific parts of the corpus, users should also acknowledge by name the individuals who recorded the session, as well as those who appear in the recordings, whose words and/or images are used. Any other contributors involved in data collection, transcription, translation, or any other aspect of the project should also be credited by name. Relevant information can be found in the metadata.
Liu, Naijing. 2025. Documenting Kuke: the linguistic ecology of a ‘stolen’ language in Nepal. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/539e5e86-eb44-4f42-82ab-63ac02570bc0. Accessed on [insert date here].