Nepal Bhasa

Nepal Bhasa (नेपाल भाषा also known as Newah Bhaye) 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 by the Newars (and may be referred to as Newari), who chiefly inhabit the towns of the Kathmandu Valley.

Classification

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

Phonology and writing system ¹

It is largely derived from Sanskrit. 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):

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

Vowels

Devanagari script is the one most popularly associated with Nepal Bhasa, although many other scripts have been used to write it. Devanagari, being an abugida script, non-word-initial vowels are expressed by diacritics; see Devanagari for details. The vowels of Nepal Bhasa with their word-initial devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant (/p/), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and of /p/+vowel) in IPA, equivalent in IAST and ITRANS and (approximate) equivalents in Standard English are listed below:

Alphabet	Diacritical mark with “”	Pronunciation	Pronunciation with /p/	IAST equiv.	ITRANS equiv.	Approximate English eqivalent
		or (two sounds are represented by the same letter)	or	a	a	short Schwa: as the a in above or sometimes like the u in under.
				ā	A	long Open central unrounded vowel: as the a in father
				i	i	short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit
				ī	I	long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine
				u	u	short close back rounded vowel: as u in put
				ū	U	long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school
				e	e	long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong), or é in café
				ai	ai	a long diphthong: approx. as ei in height
				o	o	long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong)
				au	au	a long diphthong: approx. as ou in house
					R	short syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: approx. as American Eng. bird or meter
					RR	long syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: a longer version of
					LR	short syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: approx. as handle
					LRR	long syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: longer version of

The long vowels are held about twice as long as their short counterparts. Also, there exists a third, extra-long length for most vowels, called pluti, which is used in various cases, but particularly in the vocative. The pluti is not accepted by all grammarians.

The vowels and continue as allophonic variants of Proto-Indo-Iranian , , and they are phonologically (conceptually) /ai/ and /au/ still in Sanskrit (hence in Nepal Bhasa) , and are categorized as diphthongs by Sanskrit grammarians even though they are realized phonetically as simple long vowels.

Additional points:

There are some additional vowels traditionally listed in the Sanskrit/Nepal Bhasa alphabet. They are :
- (called anusvāra), pronounced as (IAST: ). Its diacritic (the dot above) is used both for nasalizing the vowel in the syllable and for the sound of a vowel-like /n/ or /m/. ().
- (called visarga), pronounced as /əh/ (IAST: ).
- The diacritic }} (called chandrabindu), not listed in the alphabet, is used interchangeably with the anusvāra to indicate nasalization of the vowel ().
If a lone consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/virāma diacritic below ().
The vowel in Sanskrit is more central and less back than the closest English approximation, which is .
All vowels in Nepal Bhasa, short or long, can be nasalized. All vowels can have acute grave or circumflex pitch accent.
Note that the ancient Sanskrit grammarians have classified the vowel system as velars, retroflexes, palatals and plosives rather than as back, central and front vowels. Hence and are classified respectively as palato-velar (a+i) labio-velar (a+u) vowels respectively. But the grammarians have classified them as diphthongs and in prosody, each is given two mātrās. This does not necessarily mean that they are proper diphthongs, but neither excludes the possibility that they could have been proper diphthongs at a very ancient stage. These vowels are pronounced as long /eː/ and /oː/ respectively by learned Sanskrit Brahmins and priests of today. Other than the "four" diphthongs, Sanskrit/Nepal Bhasa usually disallows any other diphthong—vowels in succession, if occur, are converted to semivowels according to predetermined rules.
In the devanagari script used for Sanskrit/Nepal Bhasa, whenever a consonant in a word-ending position is without any virāma (ie, freely standing in the orthography: as opposed to ), the neutral vowel schwa () is automatically associated with it—this is of course true for the consonant to be in any position in the word. Word-ending schwa is always short. But the IAST a appended to the end of masculine noun words rather confuses the foreigners to pronounce it as —this makes the masculine Sanskrit/Nepal Bhasa words sound like feminine! e.g., shiva must be pronounced as and not as .

Consonants

Devanagari and IAST notation is given, with approximate IPA values in square brackets.

Semivowel			v			y
		Labial	Labiodental	Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Unaspirated
Stop	Aspirated
Nasal		m
Liquid				l	r
Fricative

The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit/Nepal Bhasa consonants with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel schwa (), and is named in the table as such.

|; English: name

	Unaspirated Voiceless	Aspirated Voiceless	Unaspirated Voiced	Aspirated Voiced	Nasal
Plosives
Velar	; English: skip	; English: cat	; English: game	; Aspirated /g/	; English: ring
Palatal	; ≈English: chat	; Aspirated /c/	; ≈English: jam	; Aspirated	; English: finch
Retroflex	; American Eng: hurting	; Aspirated	; American Eng: murder	; Aspirated	; American Eng: hunter
Apico-Dental	; Spanish: tomate	; Aspirated	; Spanish: donde	; Aspirated
Labial	; English: spin	; English: pit	; English: bone	; Aspirated /b/	; English: mine

|; English: vase

	Palatal	Retroflex	Dental/ Alveolar	Labial/ Glottal
Non-Plosives/Sonorants
Approximant	; English: you	; American Eng: tearing	; English: love
Sibilant/ Fricative	; English: ship	; Retroflex form of	; English: same	(glottal) ; English behind

Script

Nepal Bhasa is written in many scripts. The main scripts are Ranjana script, Prachalit, Brahmi, Golmol etc. These days Devanāgarī is often used. All the scripts proceed from left to right. All the scripts consist of two separate sets of alphabets- one vowels and the other consonants.

Brahmi is the oldest of the scripts. All other scripts are derived from Brahmi. Devanagari script is the most used font at the present because it is the official script of Nepal as well as is used widely in neighbouring India. Ranjana script was the most used script in ancient times. It is making a revival due to the recent cultural awareness. Prachalit script being similar to Devanagari is also in use. The Brahmi and Golmol scripts are rarely used in present.

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. Howvever, 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.

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.

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

English	Devanagari	Roman script
Hello	ज्वजलपा	Jwajalapa
What is your name?	छिगु नां छु खः ?	Chhigu naa chhu kha?
My name is ___	जिगु नां ___ खः	Jigu naa ___ kha
Happy New Year	न्हूदँया भितुना	Nhugu dan yaa bhintunaa
Mother	मां	Maa
Father	अबु	Abu
Grandmother	अजी	Ajee
Grandfather	अजा	Ajaa
Friend	पासा	Paasaa
Organization	गुठी	Guthi
House	छें	Chhen
Person	मनु	Manu
Medicine	वास	Waasa
News	बुखं	Bukhan
Dance	प्याखं	Pyakhan
Stage	दबली	Dabalee
Palace	लायकू	Layaku
Office	ज्यास	Jyaasa
Shop	पसल	Pasa/Pasal
Courtyard	चूक	Chooka
Brain	न्ह्यपु	Nhepu
Heart	नुगः	Nugah
Water	लः / ना	Lah / Naa

Reference

1 Sanskrit Extracted from Sanskrit page
2 ^*
3 Ethnologue entry

External links

Ethnologue
Michael Noonan, Recent Language Contact in the Nepal Himalaya (PDF).
^*, ज्वजलपा डट कम a window to Newar culture
^*

Tibeto-Burman languages

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