Nepali language

Not to be confused with Newar language.
Nepali
Gorkhali (Gurkhas)
नेपाली भाषा Nepālī bhāṣā
खस कुरा Khas kurā

The word "Nepali" written in Devanagari script
Native to Nepal; worldwide diaspora
Ethnicity Nepali people (Khas or Gurkhas)
Native speakers
 16 million  (2001–2011)[1]
Dialects
Devanagari script (Nepali alphabet)
Nepali Braille
Bhujimol script (historical)
Signed Nepali
Official status
Official language in
    Nepal
 India (in Sikkim and West Bengal)
Regulated by Language Academy of Nepal
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ne
ISO 639-2 nep
ISO 639-3 nep – inclusive code
Individual codes:
npi – Nepali
dty – Dotyali
Glottolog nepa1254[2]
nepa1252  (duplicate code)[3]

{{{mapalt}}}

World map with significant Nepali language speakers
Dark Blue: Main official language,
Light blue: One of the official languages,
Red: Places with significant population or greater than 20% but without official recognition.

Nepali (नेपाली) or Nepalese is an Indo-Aryan language. It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in India, Bhutan and Burma. Nepali has official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and in West Bengal's Darjeeling district.[4] Nepali developed in proximity to a number of Indo-Aryan languages, most notably the Pahari languages and Magahi, and shows Sanskrit influences. However, owing to Nepal's geographical area, it has also been influenced by Tibeto-Burman. Nepali is mainly differentiated from Central Pahari, both in grammar and vocabulary, by Tibeto-Burman idioms owing to close contact with the respective language group. Nepali language shares 40% lexical similarity with Bengali language. British Resident at Kathmandu Brian Houghton Hodgson has observed that it is, in eight-tenths of its vocables, substantially Hindi.[5]

Historically, the language was first called the Khas language (Khas kurā), then Gorkhali or Gurkhali (language of the Gorkha Kingdom) before the term Nepali was coined. Other names include Parbatiya ("mountain language", identified with the Parbatiya people of Nepal) and Dzongkha Lhotshammikha ("Southern Language", spoken by the Lhotshampa people of Bhutan).[6]

Literature

Main article: Nepali literature

Nepali developed a significant literature within a short period of a hundred years in the 19th century. This literary explosion was fueled by Adhyatma Ramayana; Sundarananda Bara (1833); Birsikka, an anonymous collection of folk tales; and a version of the South Asian epic Ramayana by Bhanubhakta Acharya (d. 1868). The contribution of trio-laureates Lekhnath Poudyal, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, and Balkrishna Sama took Nepali to the level of other world languages. The contribution of expatriate writers outside Nepal, especially in Darjeeling and Varanasi in India, is also notable.

In the past decade, there have been many contributions to Nepali literature from the Nepali diaspora in Asia, Europe, and America.

Number of speakers

According to the 2011 national census, 44.6 percent of the population of Nepal speaks Nepali as a first language.[7] The Ethnologue website counts more than 17 million (2007) and 42 million (2012) speakers worldwide, 17 million within Nepal (from the 2001 census).[8]

Nepali is traditionally spoken in the Hill Region of Nepal (Pahad, पहाड), especially in the western part of the country. Although the Newar language dominanted the Kathmandu valley, Nepali is currently the most dominant. Nepali is used in government and as the everyday language of a growing portion of the local population. Nevertheless, the exclusive use of Nepali in the courts and government of Nepal is being challenged. Recognition of other ethnic languages in Nepal was one of the objectives of the Communist Party of Nepal's long war.[9]

In Bhutan, those who speak Nepali, known as Lhotshampa, are estimated at about 35 percent [10] of the population. This number includes displaced Bhutanese refugees, with unofficial estimates of the ethnic Nepali population as high as 30 to 40 percent, constituting a majority in the south (about 242,000 people).[11]) Since the late 1980s, over 100,000 Lhotshampas have been forced out of Bhutan, accused by the government of being illegal aliens.[10] A large portion of them were expelled in an "ethnic cleansing" campaign, and presently live in refugee camps in eastern Nepal.

In India, there is a large number of Nepali-speaking people. In Northeast India there are several million Nepali speakers. A considerable number of Nepali-speaking people are also present in many Indian cities such as Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Visakhapatnam, Goa, Bihar, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Chennai, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.

Combining the Ethnologue figures [8] with strong population growth in Nepal and India, the assumption of 20 million people with Nepali as their native language is a reasonable estimate for 2006.

History of the language

Around 500 years ago, Khas people from the Karnali-Bheri-Seti basin migrated eastward, bypassing inhospitable Kham highlands to settle in lower valleys of the Gandaki Basin that were well-suited to rice cultivation. One notable extended family settled in the Gorkha Kingdom, a small principality about halfway between Pokhara and Kathmandu. In 1559 AD a Lamjunge prince, Dravya Shah established him in the throne of Gorkha with the help of local Khas and Magars. He raised an army of khas with the commandership of Bhagirath Panta. Later, in the late 18th century his heir Prithvi Narayan Shah raised and improvised an army of Chhetri, Thakur, Magars and Gurung people and possibly other hill tribesmen and set out to conquer and consolidate dozens of small principalities in the Himalayan foothills. Since Gorkha had replaced the original Khas homeland, Khaskura was redubbed Gorkhali "language of the Gorkhas".

The most notable military achievement of Prithvi Narayan was conquest of the urbanized Kathmandu Valley, on the eastern rim of the Gandaki basin. This region was also called Nepal at the time. Kathmandu became Prithvi Narayan's new capital, from which he and his heirs extended their domain east across the Koshi River basin, north to the Tibetan Plateau, south into the plains of North India, and west across the Karnali/Bheri basin and beyond.

Expansion – particularly to the north, west, and south – brought the growing state into conflict with the British and Chinese. This led to wars that trimmed back the territory to an area roughly corresponding to Nepal's present borders. Both China and Britain understood the value of a buffer state and did not attempt to further reduce the territory of the new country. Since the Kathmandu Valley or Nepal had become the new center of political initiative, this word gradually came to refer to the entire realm and not just the Kathmandu Valley. So Gorkhali came to be known as Nepali.

In all these years, Nepali has had influences from many languages. While Nepali is technically from the same family as languages like Hindi and Bengali, it has taken many loan words. Words like dhoka "door", jhyaal "window", pasal "shop", kukhura "rooster" and raango "water buffalo' have Tibeto-Burmese roots. Words like saheed "martyr" and kaanun "law" come from the Arabic language through Persian roots. Many English words are in use nowadays due to the rising popularity of America in the region and the previous British aid in schools and other fields.

Nepali is spoken indigenously over most of Nepal west of the Gandaki River, then progressively less further to the east.[12]

Grammar

Main article: Nepali grammar

Phonology

Main article: Nepali phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

Nepali vowel phonemes
Front Central Back
High i ĩ u ũ
Close-mid e ẽ o
Open-mid ʌ ʌ̃
Open a ã

Nepali distinguishes six oral vowels and five nasal vowels. /o/ does not have a phonemic nasal counterpart, although it is often in free variation with [õ].

Diphthongs

Nepali possesses ten diphthongs: /ui/, /iu/, /ei/, /eu/, /oi/, /ou/, /ʌi/, /ʌu/, /ai/, and /au/.

Consonants

Nepali consonant phonemes
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Stop p
pʰ		 b
bʱ		 t
tʰ		 d
dʱ		 ts
tsʰ		 dz
dzʱ		 ʈ
ʈʰ		 ɖ
ɖʱ		 k
kʰ		 ɡ
ɡʱ
Fricative s ɦ
Rhotic r
Approximant (w) l (j)

[j] and [w] are nonsyllabic allophones of [i] and [u], respectively. Every consonant except [j], [w], /l/, and /ɦ/ has a geminate counterpart between vowels. /ɳ/ and /ʃ/ also exist in some loanwords such as /baɳ/ बाण "arrow" and /nareʃ/ नरेश "king", but these sounds are sometimes replaced with native Nepali phonemes.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Nepali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Nepali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Dotyali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Nepali [1]". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Nepali [2]". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  4. ↑ http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-documents/lsi/LSI_Sikkim_Part%20-II/Chapter_II.pdf
  5. ↑ Hodgson, Brian Houghton (2013). Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepál and Tibet (Reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 9781108056083. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
  6. ↑ Clark, T. W. (1973). "Nepali and Pahari". Current Trends in Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter. p. 252.
  7. ↑ "Major highlights" (PDF). Central Bureau of Statistics. 2013. p. 4. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Ethnologue Report for Nepali (Accessed 1 February 2009).
  9. ↑ Gurung, Dr. Harka (19–20 January 2005). "Social Exclusion and Maoist Insurgency" (PDF). Retrieved 13 April 2012. Page 5.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Background Note: Bhutan". U.S. Department of State. 2010-02-02. Retrieved 2010-10-02.
  11. ↑ Worden, Robert L.; Savada, Andrea Matles (ed.) (1991). "Chapter 6: Bhutan - Ethnic Groups". Nepal and Bhutan: Country Studies (3rd ed.). Federal Research Division, United States Library of Congress. p. 424. ISBN 0-8444-0777-1. Retrieved 2010-10-02.
  12. ↑ "Nepal". Ethnologue. Retrieved 29 March 2015.

Further reading

External links

Nepali edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Nepali phrasebook.