There are over nineteen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family, except for Nepali which is Indo-European.Dzongkha, the national language, is the only language with a native literary tradition in Bhutan, though Lepcha and Nepali are literary languages in other countries. Other non-Bhutanese minority languages are also spoken along Bhutan's borders and among the Lhotshampa community in South and East Bhutan.

The Central Bodish languages are a group of related Tibetan languages descended from Old Tibetan, or Chöke. Most Bhutanese varieties of Central Bodish languages are of the Southern subgroup. At least six of the nineteen languages and dialects of Bhutan are Central Bodish languages.

Dzongkha is a Central Bodish language with approximately 160,000 speakers as of 2006. It is the dominant language in Western Bhutan, and has been the language of government and education in Bhutan since the 1971. The Chocangacakha, a "sister language" to Dzongkha, is spoken in the Kurichu Valley of Eastern Bhutan by about 20,000 people.

Coordinates: 27°25′01″N 90°26′06″E / 27.417°N 90.435°E / 27.417; 90.435

Bhutan (Dzongkha: འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, tr ʼbrug-yul, "Druk Yul"; Devanagari भूटान, Bhūṭān), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China. Bhutan is separated from the nearby country of Nepal to the west by the Indian state of Sikkim, and from Bangladesh to the south by the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal.

Bhutan existed as a patchwork of minor warring fiefdoms until the early 17th century, when the area was unified by Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, who fled religious persecution in Tibet and cultivated a separate Bhutanese identity. In the early 20th century, Bhutan came into contact with the British Empire, after which Bhutan continued strong bilateral relations with India upon its independence. In 2006, Business Week rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth-happiest in the world, based on a global survey.

The Bhutanese refugees are people claiming to be Lhotshampas ("southerners"), a group of people of Nepalese origin, including some Kirat, Tamang, and Gurung peoples. These refugees registered in refugee camps in eastern Nepal during the 1990s affirming to be Bhutanese citizens deported from Bhutan. As Nepal and Bhutan have yet to implement any agreement on repatriation, many Bhutanese refugees have since resettled to North America and Europe under the auspices of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The earliest surviving records of Bhutan's history show that Tibetan influence already existed from the 6th century. King Songtsen Gampo, who ruled Tibet from the years 627 to 649, was responsible for the construction of Bhutan's oldest surviving Buddhist temples, the Kyichu Lhakhang in Paro and the Jambay Lhakhang in Bumthang. Settlement in Bhutan by people of Tibetan origin happened by this time.

The first reports of people of Nepalese origin in Bhutan was around 1620, when Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal commissioned a few Newar craftsmen from the Kathmandu valley in Nepal to make a silver stupa to contain the ashes of his father Tempa Nima.