Nepali language

Nepali (नेपाली) is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language and lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar. It is also one of the India's 23 official languages. Nepali has official language status in the formerly independent state of Sikkim and in West Bengal's Darjeeling district. It is widely spoken in the state of Uttaranchal as well as Assam.

Geographically, 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 the Nepali language can also be found in Bhutan and some parts of Burma.

Nepali developed in proximity to a number of Tibeto-Burman languages, most notably Nepal Bhasa, and shows Tibeto-Burman influences. Nepali is closely related to the Hindi-Urdu complex and is sometimes considered mutually intelligible to some extent, yet is more conservative with Sanskritic derivations and fewer Persian or English loan words.

Nepali is commonly written in the Devanagari script. There is some record of using Takri script in the history of Nepali, especially in western Nepal, Uttarakhand, and Himachal. Bhujimol is an older script native to Nepal, while Rajana script is another writing system historically used.

Nepali developed a significant literature within a short period of hundred years in the nineteenth century, fueled by Adhyatma Ramayana, Sundarananda Bara, Birsikka, an anonymous collection of folk-tales, and a version of the South Asian epic Ramayana by Bhanubhakta. The contribution of trio-laureates Poudyal, Devkota, and Sama took Nepali to the level of other world languages. The contribution of expatriate writers outside Nepal is also notable.

Historically, the language was first called Khaskura, then Gorkhali or Gurkhali, after the Gurkha ethnic group before the term Nepali became dominant. Other names include Parbatiya ("mountain language"), identified with the Parbatiya people of Nepal and Lhotshammikha ("southern language") of the Lhotshampa people of Bhutan.

Almost two-thirds of the population of Nepal are native speakers of Nepali. The Ethnologue website counts more than 17 million speakers worldwide, including 11 million within Nepal (from the 2001 census).

Nepali is traditionally spoken in the Hill Region of Nepal (Pahar), especially in the western part of the country. It is also the lingua franca in the Kathmandu valley, although the historically dominant language in this valley was Nepal Bhasa (also known as Newari). Nepali is now used in government and as the everyday language of a growing portion of the local population. Nevertheless the exclusive use of Nepali in the courts and government of Nepal is being challenged. Recognition of other ethnic languages in Nepal was one of the objectives of the Maoist insurgency.

Nepali nouns denoting male and female beings are sometimes distinguished by suffixation or through lexically differing terms. Nouns are otherwise not overtly marked (i.e. inanimate nouns, abstract nouns, all other animates).

Adjectives may be divided into declinable and indeclinable categories. Declinables are marked, through termination, for the gender and number of the nouns they qualify.

In Nepali the case-marking lies within a system of postpositions, equivalent to English prepositions.

Nepali has personal pronouns for the first and second persons, while third person forms are of demonstrative origin, and can be categorized as proximate and distal. The pronominal system is elaborate because of its differentiation on the lines of sociolinguistic formality. In this respect it has three levels or grades of formality/status: low, middle, and high. Pronouns do not distinguish gender.

Verbs in Nepali are highly inflected. Nepali verbs agree with the subject in number, gender, status and person. They also inflect for tense, mood, and aspect. Apart from these inflected finite forms, there are also a large number of participial forms.

Information: Wikipedia