Excerpt from change request document:

Ethnologue data on Takpa_tkk is slim - it is spoken in Tibet on the India border and is classified as Tibetan, Western, Ladakhi. Researching the bibliographical references given for the [tkk] entry (Shafer, Hale, Benedict, Voegelin), leads to the conclusion that this is an alternate name for [twm], for which there is already an entry in China.

Shafer's study was on "Dwags", which according to Michailovsky, is spoken in the areas of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh,Tshona in Southern Tibet, and in neighboring parts of Bhutan. He classified it as East Bodish. The other three sources have no information other than a language called Takpa that has been classified as Bodish (Benedict) or a central dialect of Tibetan (Voegelin). Hale gives a comparison of the above classifications along with those of Roerich, who called it an eastern or southeastern dialect of Tibetan and Nishida, who called it a southeastern dialect of Tibetan.

It appears that the original data and language name of Dakpa, or Dwags, came from Hodgon (1853) which was then published and used in analysis by Shafer (1954). (See Michael Aris (1980) as quoted in Bielmeier (2004)): "The term Dag-pa .. is applied by the Bhutanese to a small group of pastoralists on the eastern border who are related to the Mon-pa people of the rTawang region ... Hodgson's informant in the mid-19th century was undoubtedly a native of the area."

Takpa and Dwags are listed in Ethnologue as alternate names for Tawang Monpa [twm] in India.

Burling (2003) says that Takpa (Dwags) is spoken in the very western tip of Arunachal, where it is referred to as 'Northern Monpa'... also spoken in Tibet where it is known as 'cuona monpa'.

Michailovsky and Mazaudon (1994) states that: "The closest relative of the Bumthang group on which studies have been published is probably the Dakpa language spoken in the areas of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and Tshona (Cuona) in southern Tibet, and in neighboring parts of Bhutan.

I can find no data in the Takpa [tkk] references in the Ethnologue to support its classification as Tibetan, Western, Ladakhi. On the contrary, Dakpa has been grouped with East Bodish by Shafer, Burling, van Driem and Michailovsky & Mazaudon. Cuona Monpa (which is the name in China for [twm]) is classified as East Bodish by Bradley. The [twm] entry in the Ethnologue is currently listed as Tibetan, Unclassified. I propose to assign to it the classification of Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Himalayish, Tibeto-Kanauri, Tibetic, Tibetan, Eastern.