Languagle #84: Dzongkha
ནང་ན་སྟག། ཕྱི་བྱི་ལི།།
nâna tâ, pchî bj'ili
"Indoors a tiger, outdoors a pussy cat."
What it means
Said of someone who is fierce at home but meek in public: a bully to the family, timid in front of everyone else. All bark and no bite. In Dzongkha it takes only four words: indoors a tiger, outdoors a cat.
How to say it
naa-na taa, chhee bjee-lee
Dzongkha is tonal and, like Tibetan, many letters in its spelling aren't said. Chh is ch with a breath of air.
Word by word
- ནང་ན naa-na: inside, indoors
- སྟག taa: tiger
- ཕྱི chhee: outside
- བྱི་ལི bjee-lee: cat
Where it was found
A traditional Dzongkha proverb. The text, romanisation and English come from Karma Tshering and George van Driem's The Grammar of Dzongkha (2019).
How to recognise Dzongkha
Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, is written in the same script as Tibetan: letters hang from a line along the top, with a small dot ་ between every syllable and ། to end a phrase. In print the two are very hard to tell apart, so the map clue is your best friend.
About the Dzongkha language
Dzongkha is the national language of Bhutan, a Tibetic language closely related to Tibetan. Its name means 'the language of the dzongs', the fortress-monasteries that have long been the centres of religious and government life in Bhutan. It is the first language of around 170,000 people in western Bhutan and is learned at school by Bhutanese who speak one of the country's many other languages at home. It is written in the Tibetan script.