| Nepal – The Voices of the Mountains |
| The recent official census in Nepal has confirmed that over 20 million people in Nepal alone utilize this language. This article traces the origins and the many branches of this language of the world’s only Hindu kingdom. |
| "Nepali", as the national language of Nepal is known, finds mention as a major Indian language in the Indian Constitution, on account of its widespread usage in parts of West Bengal, Assam and Sikkim. Nepali also features as a prominent language in Bhutan alongside Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan. |
| Nepali is considered to be a part of the Indo-Aryan language super family, making it a part of a linguistic grouping which includes major Indian languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati. Like these languages, Nepali also finds significant derivation from Sanskrit Nepali is written in a special form of the Devanagari script called Nepali Devanagari. Nepali Devanagari consists of 11 vowels and 33 consonants. The script is essentially phonetic and is written from left to right, with a top line indicating the word boundaries. |
| Nepali is generically called "Khaskura" by most natives who speak the myriad variants of this language and passes under various name, such as "Gorkhali" or "Gurkhali" (literally, the language of the Gurkhas) and "Parbatiya" (literally, the language of the mountains). Nepali is the easternmost of a family of languages known as 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 Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh. Nepali developed as a language in close proximity to a number of Tibeto-Burman languages, most notably Newari, and shows considerable Tibeto-Burman influences. |
| While Nepali is closely related to Hindi, it is considered to be a more conservative language, borrowing fewer words from Persian and English and using more Sanskritic derivations. In the modern context, Nepali is commonly written in the Devanagari script while it is earlier largely written in Bhujimol, an older script native to Nepal. |
| Nepali covers a large array of dialects and languages with minor variations across the length and breadth of this Himalayan Kingdom. A recent Ethnologue report states that there exists within Nepal, 73 languages of Tibeto-Burman origin, 16 of Indo-Aryan origin, one language of Dravidian origin (called "Kurukh") and one language of Austro-Asiatic origin (assumed to be a variant of the Khasi language spoken notably in Meghalaya). One group within the gamut of languages Nepali covers would be the Shauka language group. The Shauka language group, cover the prime language, Shauka, as well as the Byangsi, Chaudangsi and Darmiya dialects (often referred to as unique languages themselves). Another language that has appeared under the microscopes of several notable linguists has been the Kusunda language, originally existent in the West Nepal region. This language is reportedly facing extinction as numbers of Kuunda speakers have reportedly reached single-digit levels. However, the pioneering work by anthropologist Johan Reinhard and linguistic researcher Prof. Sueyoshi Toba stands as a comprehensive work encapsulating the essence of Kusunda. |
| Other languages of cultural and historical prominence in Nepal’s Himalayan reaches are the Chepang, Kham, Eastern Magar, Western Magar, Jerung, Newari, Kinnauri, Lepcha, Tshangla, Eastern Gurung, Western Gurung and the Sherpa languages. However, these languages show marked tonal variations with respect to each other while maintaining a large degree of scriptural similarity. Hence, these languages display a high sense of mutual intelligibility with each other and most dialects that constitute the fabric of the Nepali language. |
| The Nepali language also engendered an appropriately succinct literary culture during the second half of the nineteenth century, which included the "Adhyatma Ramayana" by Sundarananda Bara in 1833, "Birsikka", an anonymous collection of folk-tales, and the native form of the "Ramayana" by Bhanubhakta. There have been several translations of Sanskrit works, which form the mainstay of Nepali literature. |
| Newari received a rejuvenation of sorts recently with the publication of a weekly newspaper titled "Nepal Lipi", written entirely in the indigenous Newari script. The ambitious undertaking to transform the Nepali script into the Digital Age bore fruit with the release of the Nepali Unicode font package by the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Kathmandu on January 2003. The release was part of a coordinated program titled the "Nepali Font Standardization Project" organized by the Computer Association of Nepal (CAN). |
| With such vigorous projects and initiatives underway by Nepali enthusiasts, Nepali may very well soon be provided the means to transcend from the peaks of the Himalayas to the gateways of the Digital Era through avenues like BhashaIndia. |
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