If you are planning a trip to fabulous Nepal, studying the culture of South Asia or are fond of the culture of the East, it is useful for you to understand what the Nepali language is. This article briefly talks about this interesting language, presents its history and demonstrates some of its distinctive features.
Nepal at a glance
Nepal is a small mountainous state in South Asia, located between the northern part of India and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It is no coincidence that it is called the "roof of the world", because on the territory of this small country there is more than half of all the mountains of the planet, the peaks of which are located above 8,000 meters above sea level. Among them is the famous Chomolungma, aka Everest.
In addition to the opportunity to conquer the top of the world, the country gives tourists stunning landscapes and a rich heritage of centuries-old culture.
What is the language in Nepal? Here you can hear many languages: Maithili, Bhojpuri, Tharu and others, but the main one is Nepali. Despite the fact that English is widely spoken in the state,and you will not be lost even with minimal knowledge of it, you can truly immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the state and penetrate its culture only with an understanding of Nepal.
What is
Nepali is the official and most numerous language of the Republic of Nepal. It is also spoken in India, Bhutan and Sikkim. In addition to Nepal, the status of the state is assigned to Nepal in the Indian state of Sikkim and in the Darjeeling district, West Bengal. The Nepalese language belongs to a subgroup of mountain dialects called Pahari, and it comes from the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Thanks to the influence of Hindi and Sanskrit, there are many similarities between them.
Sometimes the Nepali language is erroneously called Newar. Despite the fact that Kathmandu is currently the capital of the state, historically it has developed its own language, belonging to the Tibeto-Burmese group.
Due to the diversity of ethnic groups inhabiting Nepal, several names can be heard in different parts of the country:
- gurkhali;
- khas-kura;
- parbatia;
- lhotshammikha;
- Eastern Pahari, only found in linguistic literature.
Differences can be traced not only in the names, but also in its very content: the Nepalese language has a number of dialects. The closer to the interior of the country, the more complex and richer the language becomes. On the outskirts of Nepal, in places close to tourist ones, it is greatly simplified and becomes more understandable to the guests of the country.
In ancient times for writingused its own writing system - bhujimol, but over time it was replaced by the Indian script or Devanagari ("divine script"), also characteristic of Hindi and Marathi. The first written monument of the Nepalese language dates back to 1337. As for the literary language, it is relatively young and originates in the first decades of the 19th century.
Morphological features of Nepali
The lexical basis of the Nepali language is made up of words borrowed from Sanskrit. This alphabet consists of only 38 letters: 11 vowels and 27 consonants. Vowels form diphthongs.
Nepali nouns are either feminine or masculine when presented in the singular. Unlike most languages, changing nouns to numbers is optional and is often omitted if there is another feature indicating numbers.
Pronouns, unlike nouns, have no gender. It is also worth paying attention to the division of third person pronouns into those near and far from the speaker. In addition, there are three degrees of formality for Nepalese pronouns: low rank, medium rank and high rank.
Verbs in Nepali change by number, gender, rank and person, and are also conjugated according to tense, subspecies and one of the five moods.
As for adjectives, they can be both inflected and indeclinable. An interesting trend is towards the widespread use of feminine endings,substantiated by the influence of Hindi on the written language.
How to start chatting
Even a person who is unfamiliar with the Nepalese language has heard the famous "namaste" at least once in his life. Literally from Nepali, the expression is translated into Russian as “I salute God in you”, the expression is used in everyday speech for greeting, farewell, or instead of the question “How are you?” Namaste is characterized by the placement of hands, as for prayer. This gesture is analogous to the Western European handshake.
Despite all its idiosyncrasies, Nepali is an easy language to learn. In order to introduce yourself, you need to say: "Mero nam Shiva ho" ("My name is Shiva"). To find out the name of the interlocutor, just ask "Tapaiko us ke ho?".
When you don't understand or don't know something, ask the question "Yo ke ho?" ("What is it?") or "Ke bayo?" ("What's going on?").
