Monpa Community
Monkha, which in linguistic literature has become known as Olekha (ISO 639-3: ole) or Black Mountain Monkha, is spoken across several geographically isolated Monpa settlements in the Black Mountain region of Bhutan. The geographical separation of these settlements has contributed to significant linguistic differentiation as well as varying degrees of language maintenance.
The five main Monpa-speaking communities represent distinct speech communities with recognised linguistic varieties: Cungseng represents the southern variety, Riti the western variety, and Jangbi, Wangling, and Phumzur the northern variety. Historically, the wider Monpa linguistic area also included Rukha in the western Rukha–Riti cluster and Berti in the southern Cungseng–Berti cluster, although these communities have experienced significant changes in language use and transmission. The location of the Monpa speech communities is shown in the map below.
Geographically, these communities are located across Sarpang and Trongsa Dzongkhags. Cungseng and Riti are located in Jigmechholing Gewog, Sarpang Dzongkhag. Cungseng (ཅུང་སེང་), also referred to as Chungshing (ཆུང་སིང་) in administrative usage, is located approximately 41.2 km from Gelephu sub-district, while Riti (རི་ཏི or རེ་ཏི) is approximately 84 km from Gelephu, indicating lower accessibility compared to Cungseng.
Jangbi (བྱང་སྦིས), Phumzur (ཕུམ་ཟུར), and Wangling (ཝང་གླིང) are located in Langthel Gewog, Trongsa Dzongkhag. These three villages are approximately 50 km from Trongsa via Tongtongphey, with additional distances of 7–9.5 km to Jangbi, 9–12 km to Phumzur, and 9–11 km to Wangling. Together, these five geographically dispersed villages represent the main Monkha-speaking communities of Bhutan.
Map citation
Bodt, T. A., & Sotrug, Y. T. (2026). Map of Monpa speech communities in Bhutan [Figure]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21259567