Nepali

Where it’s spoken

Nepali is the official language of Nepal, where it serves as the lingua franca for a country of unusual ethnolinguistic diversity. It is also one of India’s 22 scheduled languages and is co-official in the state of Sikkim. Bhutan has substantial Nepali-speaking communities, and Nepali diaspora communities live across the Gulf, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the UK (especially among British Gurkha veterans), and the United States.

What it sounds like

Nepali has the typical Indo-Aryan inventory of aspirated and unaspirated stops at five places of articulation, plus retroflex consonants. It has phonemic vowel nasalization. The verb system reflects social honorifics carefully — different verb forms address junior, peer, senior, and royal/divine subjects.

How it’s written

Nepali uses Devanagari script, the same writing system as Hindi and Marathi. Spelling is largely phonemic, though some Sanskrit loanwords preserve etymological clusters. There is a small tradition of writing with the indigenous Ranjana script, mainly for cultural purposes.

History

Nepali (also called Khas Kura or Gorkhali historically) developed from the Khas language of western Nepal. It rose to administrative prominence after the 18th-century Gorkha unification of Nepal under Prithvi Narayan Shah.