Nepali Translation Services in Bodhan

Nepali (English: /nɪˈpɔːli/; Devanagari: नेपाली, [ˈnepali]) is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Himalayas region of South Asia. It is the official, and most widely spoken, language of Nepal, where it also serves as a lingua franca. Nepali has official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration of West Bengal. It is spoken by about a quarter of Bhutan’s population. Nepali also has a significant number of speakers in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Uttarakhand. In Myanmar it is spoken by the Burmese Gurkhas. The Nepali diaspora in the Middle East, Brunei, Australia and worldwide also use the language. Nepali is spoken by approximately 16 million native speakers and another 9 million as a second language.

Nepali is commonly classified within the Eastern Pahari group of the Northern zone of Indo-Aryan. The language originated from the Sinja Valley, Karnali Province then the capital city of the Khasa Kingdom around the 10th and 14th centuries. It developed proximity to a number of Indo-Aryan languages, most significantly to other Pahari languages. Nepali was originally spoken by the Khas people, an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic group native to the Himalayan region of South Asia. The earliest inscription in the Nepali language is believed to be an inscription in Dullu, Dailekh District which was written around the reign of King Bhupal Damupal around the year 981. The institutionalisation of the Nepali language arose during the rule of the Kingdom of Gorkha (later became known as the Kingdom of Nepal) in the 16th century. Over the centuries, different dialects of the Nepali language with distinct influences from Sanskrit, Maithili, Hindi, and Bengali are believed to have emerged across different regions of the current-day Nepal and Uttarakhand, making Nepali the lingua franca.

Nepali is a highly fusional language with relatively free word order, although the dominant arrangement is subject–object–verb word order (SOV). There are three major levels or gradations of honorific: low, medium and high. Low honorific is used where no respect is due, medium honorific is used to signify equal status or neutrality, and high honorific signifies respect. Like all modern Indo-Aryan languages, Nepali grammar has syncretized heavily, losing much of the complex declensional system present in the older languages. Nepali developed significant literature within a short period of a hundred years in the 19th century. Around 1830, several Nepali poets wrote on themes from the Sanskrit epics Ramayana and the Bhagavata Purana, which was followed by Bhanubhakta Acharya translating the Ramayana in Nepali which received “great popularity for the colloquial flavour of its language, its religious sincerity, and its realistic natural descriptions”.

The term Nepali derived from Nepal was officially adopted by the Government of Nepal in 1933, when Gorkha Bhasa Prakashini Samiti (Gorkha Language Publishing Committee), a government institution established in 1913 (B.S. 1970) for advancement of Gorkha Bhasa, renamed itself as Nepali Bhasa Prakashini Samiti (Nepali Language Publishing Committee) in 1933 (B.S. 1990), which is currently known as Sajha Prakashan. Conversely, the term Gorkhali in the former national anthem entitled “Shriman Gambhir” was changed to Nepali in 1951. However, the term Nepali was used before the official adoption notably by Jaya Prithvi Bahadur Singh, now considered one of the national heroes of Nepal, who advocated for the embracement of the term.

The initial name of Nepali language was Khas Kura (खस कुरा), meaning language or speech of the Khas people, who are descended from the ancient Khasas of Mahabharata, as the language developed during the rule of the Khasa Kingdom in the western Nepal. Following the Unification of Nepal led by Shah dynasty’s Prithvi Narayan Shah, Nepali language became known as Gorakhā Bhāṣā (गोरखा भाषा; language of the Gorkhas) as it was spoken by Gorkhas. The people living in the Pahad or the hilly region, where it does not generally contain snow, called the language Parvate Kurā (पर्वते कुरा), meaning the speech of the hills.

Early forms of present-day Nepali developed from the Middle Indo-Aryan apabhraṃśa vernaculars of present-day western Nepal in the 10th–14th centuries, during the times of the Khasa Kingdom. The language evolved from Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Apabhraṃśa. Following the decline of the Khasa Kingdom, it was divided into Baise Rajya (22 principalities) in Karnali-Bheri region and Chaubise rajya (24 principalities) in Gandaki region. The currently popular variant of Nepali is believed to have originated around 500 years ago with the mass migration of a branch of Khas people from the Karnali-Bheri-Seti eastward to settle in lower valleys of the Karnali and the Gandaki basin.

During the times of Sena dynasty, who ruled a vast area in Terai and central hills of Nepal, Nepali language became influenced by the Indian languages including Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha and Maithili. Nepali speakers and Senas had a close connect, subsequently, the language became the lingua franca in the area. As a result, the grammar became simplified, vocabulary was expanded, and its phonology was softened, after it was syncretised, Nepali lost much of the complex declensional system present in the older languages. In the Kathmandu Valley (then known as Nepal Mandala), Nepali language inscriptions can be seen during the reigns of Lakshmi Narasimha Malla and Pratap Malla, which indicates the significant increment of Nepali speakers in Kathmandu Valley.

The institutionalisation of the Nepali language is believed to have started with the Shah kings of Gorkha Kingdom, in the modern day Gorkha District of Nepal. In 1559, a prince of Lamjung, Dravya Shah established himself on the throne of Gorkha with the help of local Khas and Magars. He raised an army of Khas people under the command of Bhagirath Panta. Later, in the late 18th century, his descendant, Prithvi Narayan Shah, raised and modernized an army of Chhetri, Thakuri, Magars, Gurung people, and others and set out to conquer and consolidate dozens of small principalities in the Himalayas. Since Gorkha had replaced the original Khas homeland, Khaskura was redubbed Gorkhali “language of the Gorkhas”.

One of the most notable military achievements of Prithvi Narayan Shah was the conquest of Kathmandu Valley, a region called Nepal at the time. After the overthrowing of the Malla rulers, Kathmandu was established as Prithvi Narayan’s new capital. The Khas people originally referred to their language as Khas kurā (“Khas speech”), which was also known as Parbatiya (or Parbattia or Paharia, meaning language of the hill country). The Newar people used the term “Gorkhali” as a name for this language, as they identified it with the Gorkhali conquerors.[citation needed] The Gorkhalis themselves started using this term to refer to their language at a later stage. The census of India prior to independence used the term Naipali at least from 1901 to 1951, the 1961 census replacing it with Nepali.

Historically, Sanskrit has been a significant source of vocabulary for the Nepali language. According to exclusive phonological evidences observed by lexicographer Sir Ralph Turner, Nepali language is closely related to Punjabi, Lahnda, Hindi and Kumaoni while it appears to share some distinguishing features with the other Indo-Aryan languages like Rajasthani, Gujarati and Bangla. Ethnologist Brian Houghton Hodgson stated that the Khas or Parbattia language is an “Indian Prakrit” brought by colonies from south of the Nepalese hills, and the whole structure including the eighth-tenth portion of the vocabulary of it is “substantially Hindee” due to the influences and loanwords it shares with Arabic and Farsi.

Expansion – particularly to the north, west, and south – brought the growing state into conflict with the British and the Chinese. This led to wars that trimmed back the territory to an area roughly corresponding to Nepal’s present borders. After the Gorkha conquests, the Kathmandu valley or Nepal became the new center of politics. As the entire conquered territory of the Gorkhas ultimately became Nepal, in the early decades of the 20th century, Gorkha language activists in India, especially Darjeeling and Varanasi, began petitioning Indian universities to adopt the name ‘Nepali’ for the language. Also in an attempt to disassociate himself with his Khas background, the Rana monarch Jung Bahadur Rana decreed that the term Gorkhali be used instead of Khas kurā to describe the language. Meanwhile, the British Indian administrators had started using the term “Nepal” to refer to the Gorkha kingdom. In the 1930s, Nepal government also adopted this term fully. Subsequently, the Khas language came to be known as “Nepali language”.

The earliest Nepali grammar to have survived was written by Veerendra Keshari Aryal entitled “Nepali Vyakaran” and it is dated around 1891 to 1905. The grammar is based on Panini model and it equates Nepali with Prakrit and labels it as “the mountain Prakrit”. However, later the official institution established in 1912 for formalizing Nepali language, the “Gorkha Bhasha Prakashini Samiti”, accepted the 1920 grammar text entitled Candrika Gorkha Bhasha Vyakaran by Pandit Hemraj Pandey as the official grammar of the Nepali language. Nepali is spoken indigenously over most of Nepal west of the Gandaki River, then progressively less further to the east.

Part 1 of the Nepali Constitution deals with the official language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Under Article 6, the official “language of the nation” will be “all languages spoken as the mother tongues in Nepal”. In Article 7, the official language of Nepal have been written, which includes Nepali in Devanagari script:

On 31 August 1992, the Parliament of India passed a bill to amend the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India to give Konkani, Manipuri, and Nepali as a languages with official status in India. Nepali has official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration of West Bengal. Nepali also has a significant number of speakers in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Uttarakhand.

Despite Nepali language being spoken by about a quarter of population in Bhutan, it has no official status in Bhutan. The native speakers of Nepali are known as Lhotshampa (“southerners”). Many of Nepali-language speaking Bhutanese people were displaced by various laws enacted by the Bhutanese government.

According to the 2011 national census, 44.6% of the population of Nepal speaks Nepali as its first language. and 32.8% speak Nepali as a second language. Ethnologue reports 12,300,000 speakers within Nepal (from the 2011 census).

Nepali is traditionally spoken in the hilly regions of Nepal. The language is prominently used by the government of Nepal and is the everyday language of the local population. The exclusive use of Nepali in the court system and by the government of Nepal, however, is being challenged. Gaining recognition for other languages of Nepal was one of the goals of the decades-long Maoist insurgency.

In Bhutan, native Nepali speakers, known as Lhotshampa, are estimated at 35% of the population. This number includes displaced Bhutanese refugees, with unofficial estimates of the ethnic Bhutanese refugee population as high as 30 to 40%, constituting a majority in the south (about 242,000 people).

According to the 2011 Census of India, there were a total of 2,926,168 Nepali language speakers in India.

Nepali is the third-most spoken language in the Australian territory of Tasmania, where it is spoken by 1.3% of its population, and fifth-most spoken language in the Northern Territory, Australia, spoken by 1.3% of its population.

Nepali developed significant literature within a short period of a hundred years in the 19th century. This literary explosion was fuelled by Adhyatma Ramayana; Sundarananda Bara (1833); Birsikka, an anonymous collection of folk tales; and a version of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana by Bhanubhakta Acharya (d. 1868). The contribution of trio-laureates Lekhnath Paudyal, 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.

Dialects of Nepali include Acchami, Baitadeli, Bajhangi, Bajurali, Bheri, Dadeldhuri, Dailekhi, Darchulali, Darchuli, Gandakeli, Humli, Purbeli, and Soradi. These dialects can be distinct from Standard Nepali. Mutual intelligibility between Baitadeli, Bajhangi, Bajurali (Bajura), Humli, and Acchami is low. The dialect of Nepali language spoken in Karnali Province is not mutually intelligible with Standard Nepali. The language is known with its old name as Khas Bhasa in Karnali.

Vowels and consonants are outlined in the tables below.

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].

Nepali has ten diphthongs: /ui̯/, /iu̯/, /ei̯/, /eu̯/, /oi̯/, /ou̯/, /ʌi̯/, /ʌu̯/, /ai̯/, and /au̯/.

and are nonsyllabic allophones of and , respectively. Every consonant except , , 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.

Final schwas may or may not be preserved in speech. The following rules can be followed to figure out whether or not Nepali words retain the final schwa:

Note: Schwas are often retained in music and poetry to add extra syllables when needed.

Nepali is a highly fusional language with relatively free word order, although the dominant arrangement is SOV (subject–object–verb). There are three major levels or gradations of honorifics: low, medium and high. Low honorific is used where no respect is due, medium honorific is used to signify equal status or neutrality, and high honorific signifies respect. There is also a separate highest level honorific, which was used to refer to members of the royal family, and by the royals among themselves. Like all modern Indo-Aryan languages, Nepali grammar has syncretized heavily, losing much of the complex declensional system present in the older languages. Instead, it relies heavily on periphrasis, a marginal verbal feature of older Indo-Aryan languages.

Nepali is written in Devanagari script.

In the section below Nepali is represented in Latin transliteration using the IAST scheme and IPA. The chief features are: subscript dots for retroflex consonants; macrons for etymologically, contrastively long vowels; h denoting aspirated plosives. Tildes denote nasalised vowels.

The following is a sample text in Nepali, of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with a transliteration (IAST) and transcription (IPA).