| Group |
Indic (with Sanskrit,
Pali etc.), New Indic (with Marathi,
Punjabi etc.) |
| Geography & History |
About 10 million citizens of the Kingdom of Nepal, its emigrants in
India and Butan speak this language, which is official in Nepal. There
are a few documents from the Middle Ages written in Nepali; the modern
language is developing since the 19th century. There are kinds of dialects
in the mountainous regions of the country. |
| Phonetics |
In structure, Nepali is considered to lie in the middle between Hindi
and the East Indic Bengali language. As well
as in the East Indic tongues, its vowels have lost a distinction in length.
Consonants of Nepali include four series of stops (principal, aspirated,
retroflex, retroflex aspirated), a number of sibilants and affricates. |
| Morphology |
Nepali has totally lost the gender category; its numerous analytical
forms, especially those of the verb, are now in process of forming the
agglutinative declension system. The Indic ergative construction is not
so active as in other languages of the group. |
| Writing |
Devanagari script |
| Close Contacts |
One of the easternmost languages of the Indo-Aryan group, Nepali has
been developing in the Tibetan surroundings, adopting its culture, way
of life and a number of Tibeto-Burmese language features, especially from
Nevari. |
| Sample |
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| Picture |
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| More info |
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