Nepal Bhasa

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"Newari" redirects here. For other uses, see Newari (disambiguation).

Nepal Bhasa (नेपाल भाषा also known as Newah Bhaye and Newari) is one of the major languages of Nepal. It is one of the roughly five hundred Sino-Tibetan languages in the world, and belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of this family. It is the only Tibeto-Burman language to be written in the Devanāgarī script. It is spoken mainly by the Newars (and may be referred to as Newari), who chiefly inhabit the towns of the Kathmandu Valley.

Classification

Nepal Bhasa is classified as a language of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. It falls under Tibeto-Burman group of languages.

Facts and Figures

Area

• In Nepal: Kathmandu valley, Dolakha, Banepa, Dhulikhel, Panauti, Palpa, Trishuli, Nuwakot, Bhojpur, Biratnagar and other chief cities.
• In India: Sikkim, West Bengal, Bettiah, Andamans³
• In Tibet: Khasa

Number of speakers

Roughly 1,000,000 in Nepal according to 1991 census plus a few thousands outside Nepal.

Script ¹

Over the centuries, Nepal Bhasa has been written in many scripts, all of which are descended from the Brahmi script. All the scripts proceed from left to right, and include two separate sets of characters - a vowel set and a consonant set. Devanagari is the most widely-used script at the present, as it is the official script of Nepal as well as is used widely in neighbouring India. Ranjana script was the most widely-used script for Nepal Bhasa in ancient times, and is experiencing a sort of a revival due to recent cultural awareness. The Prachalit script, being similar to Devanagari, is also in use. The Brahmi and Golmol scripts are rarely used in present.

These days, Nepal Bhasa is normally written in the Devanagari script, which is also used to write Sanskrit, Nepali, Hindi, and many other languages of South Asia.

The sounds are traditionally listed in the order vowels, diphthongs, anusvara and visarga, stops and nasals (starting in the back of the mouth and moving forward), and finally the liquids and fricatives, written in IAST as follows (see the tables below for details):

a ā i ī u ū ṛ ṝ ḷ ḹ ; e ai o au

ṃ ḥ

k kh g gh ṅ; c ch j jh ñ; ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ; t th d dh n; p ph b bh m

y r l v; ś ṣ s h

An alternate traditional ordering is that of the Shiva Sutra of Pāṇini.

Dialects

The main dialects are ²:-

• Dolkhali (Dolakha)
• Sindhupalchowk Pahri (Pahri, Pahari)
• Totali
• Chitlang
• Kathmandu-Patan-Kirtipur (ञ - यल - क्येपु भाय्; Yen-Yala-Kyepu Bhaaye)
• Bhaktapur (ख्वप: भाय्; Khwapa Bhaaye)
• Baglung

In addition to these dialects, there are few sub-dialects spoken in Kathmandu valley and other parts of Nepal. These sub-dialects are spoken in surrounding villages of Kathmandu, Patan, Bhaktapur, Chitlang and Dolakha.The dialect spoken in Bandipur is the oldest form of Khwapa Bhaaye. The dialect spoken in Chainpur, Bhojpur, Terathum, Palapa is related to Kathmandu and Patan. The dialect spoken in Ridi, Baglung, Arughat is closer to Bhaktapur.

Literature

Main article: Nepal Bhasa literature

Nepal Bhasa literature has a long history. It has the fourth-oldest literature of the Sino-Tibetan languages (the first, second and third being Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese respectively).

Drama

Dramas are traditionally performed in open Dabu (stage). Most of the traditional dramas are related to deities and demons. Masked characters are central to such dramas. Music forms an important part of drama. Most of them are narrated with the help of songs sang at intervals. The drama as such resembles dance in many cases. The theme of most of the drama is to create a social wellbeing with morals illustrating the rise, turbulence and fall of evil. There are fixed dates in the Nepal Sambat (Nepal Era) calendar for performance of specific drama. Most of the dramas are carried out by specific Guthis.

Poetry

Poetry writing constituted a pompous part of medieval Malla aristrocracy. Many of the kings were well renouned poets. Siddhidas Mahaju and Chittadhar Hridaya are two great poets in the language.

Prose Fiction

Story

The art of verbal story telling is very old in Nepal Bhasa. There are a variety of mythical and social stories that have aided in establishing the norm of Kathmandu valley. Stories ranging from the origin of Kathmandu valley to the temples of the valley and the important monuments have been passed down verbally in Nepal Bhasa. Very few of them were in written form initially. However, with an increase in literacy rate and an awareness amongst the people, those stories have been penned down. Stories on other topics have also taken root.

History

Classical Newari is the name for the pre-1850 literary form of the language. It is no longer spoken or written, but it is an important source language for historians and philologists.

Development

Nepal Bhasa is the most Indianized of the Tibeto-Burman languages, and has had so many centuries of contact with neighboring Indo-Iranian languages that it has even developed noun inflection, a trait typical of the Indo-European family but extremely rare in Sino-Tibetan. It has absorbed other features of grammar as well, such as verb tenses. These influences are outstanding examples of fundamental traits of a language being passed on through language contact.

Some common phrases and terms

References

• 1 Sanskrit Extracted from Sanskrit page
• 2 [1]
• 3 Ethnologue entry

External links

• Ethnologue
• Michael Noonan, Recent Language Contact in the Nepal Himalaya (PDF).
• [2], ज्वजलपा डट कम a window to Newar culture
• [3]

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