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Nepali (Khaskura) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma). It is the official language of Nepal and also the official language of Sikkim, a state in India. Roughly half the population of Nepal speaks Nepali as a mother tongue. Many other Nepalese speak it as a second language, however its imposition as the sole official language in the education system, courts and government has become increasingly controversial and was an important issue in the 1996-2006 civil war. Map of South Asia (see note on Kashmir). ...
This is a list of languages, ordered by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use. ...
A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ...
For other uses, see Indo-European. ...
The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ...
The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, which belong to the Indo-European family of languages. ...
The Pahari languages, also known as Northern Zone languages, are a group of related Indo-Aryan languages or dialects spoken in the lower ranges of the Himalayas from Nepal in the east to the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh in the west. ...
Writing systems of the world today. ...
च् + छ = च्छ Devanagari in Unicode The Unicode range for Devanagari is U+0900 . ...
, Sikkim (Nepali: , also Sikhim) is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayas. ...
ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ...
ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ...
ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ...
Image File history File links Example. ...
The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ...
The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, which belong to the Indo-European family of languages. ...
, Sikkim (Nepali: , also Sikhim) is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayas. ...
Combatants Government forces Communist Party Commanders Gyanendra of Nepal Prachanda Casualties 12,700+ deaths The Nepalese Civil War (labelled Peoples War by the Maoists [1]) was a conflict between monarchist government forces and Maoist rebels in Nepal which lasted from 1996 until 2006. ...
Nepali goes by various names. English speakers generally call it Nepali or Nepalese (i.e. the language of Nepal).
It is also called Gorkhali or Gurkhali, "the language of the Gurkhas, "and Parbatiya, "the language of the mountains." Khaskura is the oldest term, literally speech of the Khas who were rice-growing Indo-Aryan settlers in the Karnali-Bheri basin of far western Nepal since prehistoric or early historic times. Khaskura exists in opposition to Khamkura, a group of Tibeto-Burman dialects spoken by Kham peoples in highlands separating the Kharnali-Bheri basin from the Gandaki basin in central Nepal. Gurkha, also spelled as Gorkha, are people from Nepal and parts of North India, who take their name from the eighth century Hindu warrior-saint Guru Gorakhnath. ...
Khas was a Protoss character in the fictional StarCraft universe. ...
Kham (also Khamkura, Kamkura) is a language complex of Bodic Tibeto-Burmese lects spoken in the remoter highlands of Rapti Zone and Dhaulagiri Zone, western Nepal by the four northern clans of the Magar tribe, called collectively Kham Magars or Northern Magars. ...
History Then perhaps 500 years ago, Khas peoples migrated eastward, bypassing the inhospitable Kham highlands to settle in the lower valleys of the Gandaki basin suited to rice cultivation. One notable extended family settled in Gorkha, a petty principality about halfway between Pokhara and Kathmandu. Then in the late 1700s a scion named Prithvi Narayan raised an army of Gurungs, Magars and possibly other hill tribesmen and set out to conquer and consolidate dozens of petty principalities in the himalayan foothills. Since Gorkha had replaced the original Khas homeland as the center of political and military initiative, Khaskura was redubbed Gorkhali, i.e. language of the Gorkhas.
Prithvi Narayan's especially notable military achievement 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, then he and his heirs extended their domain east into the Kosi basin, north to the Tibetan Plateau, south into the plains of northern India, and west of the Karnali/Bheri basin.
Expansion, particularly to the north, west and south brought the growing state into conflict with British and Chinese territorial ambitions. This led to wars that trimmed it back to roughly Nepal's present borders or less, however both great powers understood the value of a buffer state and did not attempt to reduce the new country further. 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. And so Gorkhali, language of Gorkha, was again redubbed Nepali.
Nepali is the easternmost of the Pahari languages, a group of related languages spoken across the lower elevations of the Himalaya range, from eastern Nepal through the Indian states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The influence of Nepali language can also be seen in Bhutan and some parts of Myanmar. Nepali developed in proximity to a number of Tibeto-Burman languages, most notably Nepal Bhasa, and shows Tibeto-Burman influences. The Pahari languages, also known as Northern Zone languages, are a group of related Indo-Aryan languages or dialects spoken in the lower ranges of the Himalayas from Nepal in the east to the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh in the west. ...
Perspective view of the Himalaya and Mount Everest as seen from space looking south-south-east from over the Tibetan Plateau. ...
, Uttarakhand (Hindi: उतà¥à¤¤à¤°à¤¾à¤–ंड), known as Uttaranchal from 2000 to 2006, became the 27th state of the Republic of India on November 9, 2000. ...
, Himachal Pradesh (Panjabi: ਹਿਮਾਚਲ ਪਰਦੇਸ਼,(Hindi: हिमाचल पà¥à¤°à¤¦à¥‡à¤¶, IPA: ) is a state in the north-west of India. ...
The Tibeto-Burman family of languages (often considered a sub-group of the Sino-Tibetan language family) is spoken in various central and south Asian countries, including Myanmar (Burma), northern Thailand, and parts of Western China (Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai (Amdo), Gansu, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan), Nepal, Bhutan, India (Himachal...
“Newari†redirects here. ...
Nepali is closely related to Hindi but is more conservative, borrowing fewer words from Persian and English and using more Sanskritic derivations. No other modern language is closer to Sanskrit than Nepali.[citation needed] Today, Nepali is commonly written in the Devanagari script. Bhujimol is an older script native to Nepal. Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) DevanÄgarÄ« (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ...
Bhujimol script, palm_leaf MS of the Devimahatmya, Bihar or Nepal, 11th century. ...
Nepali developed a small literature during the second half of the nineteenth century, which included the Adhyatma Ramayana by Sundarananda Bara (1833), Birsikka, an anonymous collection of folk-tales, and a Ramayana by Bhanubhakta. There were also several translations of Sanskrit works, and a version of the Bible. Adhyatma Ramayana having seven parts is embedded in BrahmÄnda Purana. ...
For the television series by Ramanand Sagar, see Ramayan (TV series). ...
Bhanubhakta was a Nepali poet who translated the Ramayana from Sanskrit to Nepali. ...
Sanskrit ( , for short ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ...
This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library. ...
See also: Lhotshampa Lhotshampa, or Lhotsampa, means southerners in Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, and refers to the Nepali settlers who reside primarily in the southwest of the country. ...
Grammar Nepali is a generally head-final language, which gives, among other things, an SOV word-order, and postpositions instead of prepositions. It has limited grammatical gender, although in many cases gender agreement is confined to the written form of the language. Some adjectives are inflected according to gender in Nepali. In linguistics, branching is the general tendency towards a given order of words within sentences and smaller grammatical units within sentences (such as subordinate propositions, prepositional phrases, etc. ...
In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ...
A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ...
In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ...
Postpositions Nepali nouns do not inflect for case. However, there are a number of postpositions which have a case-like function. These postpositions are clitics. That is, they are affixes which attach to an entire phrase, rather than a single word. These include -को ko, a possessive postposition, -ले le, which performs an ergative function in the past tense, but also an instrumental postposition. A further important grammatical postposition is -लाई lāī, which marks the direct object on animate nouns, as well as the indirect object on all nouns. Additionally, there are a number of postpositions which perform similar functions to normal prepositions in languages such as English. Look up case in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ...
The term ergative is used in grammar in two different meanings: ergative case, ergative language ergative verb This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
An instrumental is, in contrast to a song, a musical composition or recording without lyrics or any other sort of vocal music; all of the music is produced by musical instruments. ...
The accusative case of a noun is, generally, the case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ...
The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
As well as simple postpositions, there are two-part postpositions. That is, a postposition, especially -को ko or -भन्दा bhandā, followed by another word, which together form a single positional meaning. Examples are -को बारेमा ko bāremā 'about', -को लागि ko lāgi 'for', and -भन्दा माथी bhandā māthī 'above.
Pronouns Nepali has an elaborate system of pronouns, depending on the gender, number, distance, and status of the referent. The latter can be understood as being normally divided into three grades: low grade, middle grade and high grade. With third-person pronouns, the low grade is used when the person is not present or of low status, the middle grade is primarily (outside of a literary context) used for women, although one of the plurals of the middle-grade pronouns is commonly used for groups. The high-grade form is used for people who are present or of high status. There is a similar, but simpler system for second-person pronouns, in which the low-grade form is used for small children, animals, and pejoratively; the middle-grade is used for people younger or of lower status than the speaker, and also as a familiar form of address; the high-grade is used for people older, or of higher status, and also as a polite form of address. Finally, there is an additional form for extremely formal situations.
The third person singular pronouns can be summarised as follows:
3rd person singular pronouns in Nepali | Proximal | Distal | | Low-grade | यो yo | त्यो tyo | ऊ ū | | Middle-grade | यिनी yinī | तिनी tinī | उनी unī | | High-grade | यहाँ yahā̃ | वहाँ vahā̃ | The remaining personal pronouns are relatively simple: The second person pronouns are तँ tã, तिमी timī, तपाईं tapāī̃ and हजुर hajur. The first person singular pronoun is म ma, and the first person plural is हामी hāmī. Most of the pronouns pluralise (even हामी hāmī, for emphasis) with the suffix -हरू harū. However, म ma, तँ tã and ऊ ū do not pluralise, and यो yo and त्यो tyo have यी yī and ती tī as plurals.
Generally the pronouns यो yo, त्यो tyo, and तँ tã should be avoided in polite conversation where referring to humans, with the exception of infants.
Verbs Verbs in Nepali are quite highly inflected, agreeing with the subject in number, gender, status and person. They also inflect for tense, mood, and aspect. As well as these inflected finite forms, there are also a large number of participial forms.
Possibly the most important verb in Nepali, as well as the most irregular, is the verb हुनु hunu 'to be, to become'. In the simple present tense, there are at least three conjugations of हुनु hunu, only one of which is regular. The first, the ho-conjugation is, broadly speaking, used to define things, and as such its complement is usually a noun. The second, the cha-conjugation is used to describe things, and the complement is usually an adjectival or prepositional phrase. The third, the huncha-conjugation, is used to express regular occurrences or future events, and also expresses 'to become' or 'to happen'.
They are conjugated as follows:
Simple Present conjugation of the verb हुनु hunu | हो ho | छ cha | हुन्छ huncha | | First person singular | हुँ hũ | छु chu | हुन्छु hunchu | | First person plural | हौँ haũ | छौँ chaũ | हुन्छौँ hunchaũ | | Second person singular low-grade | होस् hos | छस् chas | हुन्छस् hunchas | | Second person middle-grade/plural | हौ hau | छौ chau | हुन्छौ hunchau | | High grade | हुनुहन्छ hunuhuncha | हुनुहन्छ hunuhuncha | हुनुहन्छ hunuhuncha | | Third person singular low-grade | हो ho | छ cha | हुन्छ huncha | | Third person middle-grade/plural masculine | हुन् hun | छन् chan | हुन्छन् hunchan | | Third person middle-grade/plural feminine | हुन् hun | छिन् chin | हुन्छिन् hunchin | हुनु hunu also has two suppletive stems in the simple past, namely भ- bha- (the use of which corresponds to the huncha-conjugation) and थि- thi- (which corresponds to both the cha and ho-conjugations) which are otherwise regularly conjugated. भ- bha- is also the stem used in the formation of the various participles. In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is the use as an inflected form of a word of an entirely different word that is not cognate to the uninflected form. ...
In linguistics, a participle is a non-finite verb form that can be used in compound tenses or voices, or it can be used as a modifier. ...
The finite forms of regular verbs are conjugated as follows (using गर्नु garnu 'to do' as an example):
Finite forms of गर्नु garnu 'to do' | Simple Present/Future | Probable Future | Simple Past | Past Habitual | Injunctive | Imperative | | First person singular | गर्छु garchu 'I (will) do' | गरुँला garũlā 'I will (probably) do' | गरेँ garẽ 'I did' | गर्थेँ garthẽ 'I used to do' | गरुँ garũ 'may I do' | - | | First person plural | गर्छौँ garchaũ 'We (will) do' | गरौँला garaũlā 'We will (probably) do' | गर्यौ garyaũ 'We did' | गर्थ्यौँ garthyaũ 'We used to do' | गरौँ garaũ 'may we do, let's do' | - | | Second person singular low-grade | गर्छस् garchas 'you (will) do' | गर्लास् garlās 'you will (probably) do' | गरिस् garis 'you did' | गर्थिस् garthis 'you used to do' | गरेस् gares 'may you do' | गर् gar 'do!' | | Second person middle-grade/plural | गर्छौ garchau 'you (will) do' | गरौला garaulā 'you will (probably) do' | गर्यौ garyau 'you did' | गर्थ्यौ garthyau 'you used to do' | गरौ garau 'may you do' | गर gara 'do' | | High grade | गर्नुहुन्छ garnuhuncha 'you (will) do' | गर्नुहोला garnuhola 'you will (probably) do' | गर्नुभयो garnubhayo 'you did' | गर्नुहुन्थ्यो garnuhunthyo 'you used to do' | गर्नुहोस् garnuhos 'may you do, please do' | - | | Third person singular low-grade | गर्छ garcha 'he does' | गर्ला garlā 'he will (probably) do' | गर्यो garyo 'he did' | गर्थ्यो garthyo 'he used to do' | गरोस् garos 'may he do' | - | | Third person middle-grade/plural masculine | गर्छन् garchan 'they (will) do' | गर्लान् garlān 'they will (probably) do' | गरे gare 'they did' | गर्थे garthe 'they used to do' | गरून् garūn 'may they do' | - | | Third person middle-grade/plural feminine | गर्छिन् garchin 'she (will) do' | गर्लिन् garlin 'she will (probably) do' | गरिन् garin 'she did' | गर्थिन् garthin 'she used to do' | गरुन् garūn 'may she do' | - | As well as these, there are two forms which are infinitival and participial in origin, but are frequently used as if they were finite verbs. Again using गर्नु garnu as an example, these are गरेको gareko 'did' and गर्ने garne 'will do'. Since they are simpler than the conjugated forms, these are often overused by non-native speakers, which can sound stilted.
The eko-participle is also the basis of perfect tenses in Nepali. This is formed by using the auxiliary verb हुनु hunu (usually the cha-form in the present tense and the thi-form in the past) with the eko-participle. So, for example, मैले काम गरेको छु maile kām gareko chu means 'I have done (the) work'. The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ...
Infinitives Nepali has two infinitives. The first is formed by adding -नु nu to the verb stem. This is the citation form of the verb, and is used in a number of constructions, the most important being the construction expressing obligation. This is formed by combining the nu-infinitive with the verb पर्नु parnu 'to fall'. This is an impersonal construction, which means that the object marker -लाई lāī is often added to the agent, unless the verb is transitive, in which case the ergative/instrumental case marker -ले le is added. So, for example, I have to do work would be translated as मैले काम गर्नुपर्छ maile kām garnuparcha. It is also used with the postposition -अघि aghi 'before'. गर्नुअघि garnuaghi, then, means 'before doing'. In linguistics, citation form is the way a word is prononunced when it is spoken carefully and in isolation, such as when reading a list of words. ...
In linguistics, a grammatical agent is an entity that carries out an action. ...
The second infinitive is formed by adding -न na to the verb stem. This is used in a wide variety of situations, and can generally be used where the infinitive is used in English. For example, म काम गर्न रामकहाँ गएको थिएँ ma kām garna rāmkahā̃ gaeko thiẽ 'I had gone to Ram's place to do work'.
Phrases Examples of phrases in Nepali include: - namaste. नमस्ते — all-purpose Hindu greeting, often translated as "I salute the god within you". Its literal Sanskrit meaning is "your homage" and in common usage simply means "hello" or "goodbye."
- tapāī̃ko/timro nām ke ho? तपाईंको/तिम्रो नाम के हो? - What is your name?
- mero nām Ālok ho. मेरो नाम आलोक हो — My name is Alok.
- tapāī̃lāī/timilāī kasto cha? तपाईंलाई/तिमीलाई कस्तो छ? — How are you?
The following are more commonly used: ke cha? के छ? (informal), sañcai hunuhuncha? सञ्चै हुनुहुन्छ? (formal) Woman performing namaste gesture. ...
This article discusses the adherents of Hinduism. ...
- khānā khāne ṭhāũ kahā̃ cha? खाना खाने ठाउँ कहाँ छ? — Where is a place to eat?
- kāṭhmāḍaũ jāne bāṭo dherai lāmo cha. काठ्माडौँ जाने बाटो धेरै लामो छ — The road to Kathmandu is very long.
- nepālmā baneko नेपालमा बनेको — Made in Nepal.
- ma nepālī hũ म नेपाली हूँ — I am Nepali.
- pugyo पुग्यो — That is enough.
Further reading
Courses and Grammars - Hutt, M. & Subedi, A. (2003) Teach Yourself Nepali.
References and dictionaries Sir Ralph Lilley Turner MC (5 October 1888–22 April 1983) was an English Indian languages philologist and university administrator. ...
See also Nepali Literature (Nepali: ) refers to literature written in the Nepali language. ...
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