Nepali (नेपाली) or Nepalese in English is the
official language of Nepal.
Nepali Language is also spoken in Bhutan,
parts of India and parts of Myanmar (Burma). In Bhutan there
live more than 35% of people of Nepali origen who speak Nepali Language. They
run Radio and Television Service in Nepali for which they used to invite Nepali
specialists. In India,
Nepali Language is one of the country's 23 official languages: Nepali has
official language status in the formerly independent state of Sikkim and in West Bengal's Darjeeling district. The influence of the
Nepali language can also be seen some parts of Burma. Nepali developed in
proximity to a number of Tibeto-Burman languages, most notably Kirati and
Gurung, and shows Tibeto-Burman influences.
Historically, this language was first
called Khaskura (language of the khas jaati), then Gorkhali or Gurkhali (language of the Gurkha), and after
that the unifier of Nepal- Prithvi Narayan Shah unified small kingdoms into one
big Nepal than this language got the name as Nepali- the language of whole
Nepalese People. Other names include Parbatiya (language of people living in mountain
region of Nepal) and Lhotshammikha (the southern language of the
Lhotshampa people of Bhutan).
Script
and literature
The mother of Nepali language is Sanskrit,
and is commonly written in Devanagari script as Sanskrit and Hindi. There is
some record of using Takri script in the history of Nepali, especially in
western Nepal,
Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh. Bhujimol is an older script native to Nepal, while
Ranjana script is another writing system historically used.
Nepali writers created a significant number
of high quality literature within a short period of hundred years in the 19th
century fueled by Adhyatma Ramayana; Sundarananda Bara (1833); Birsikka, an
anonymous collection of folk tales; and a version of the South Asian epic
Ramayana by Bhanubhakta. The contribution of three Great Nepali Writers, namely
Lekhnath Poudyal, Laxmi Prasad Devkota (Muna Madan), and Balkrishna Sama took
Nepali to the level of other world languages. The contribution of expatriate
writers outside Nepal,
especially in Darjeeling and Varanasi
in India,
is also notable. In the past decade, there are many contributions to Nepalese
literature from Nepalese diaspora in Europe, America and other Asian countries.
Number
of speakers
More than two-thirds of the population of Nepal speak
Nepali as a mother tongue. 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 Hilly
Region of Nepal (Pahad, पहाड), especially in the western part of the country. Nepali Language is
the official language used in government offices 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.
Known as Lhotshampa in local language, number
of speakers of Nepali Language in Bhutan is estimated at about 35
percent of the population if all
displaced Bhutanese refugees are counted. Unofficial estimates of the ethnic
Nepalese population ran as high as 30 to 40 percent, constituting a majority in
the south of Bhutan,
or about 242,000 people. Since the late 1980s, over 100,000 Lhotshampas have
been forced out of Bhutan,
accused by the government of being illegal aliens. A large fraction them were expelled in
an "ethnic cleansing" campaign and presently live in refugee camps in
eastern Nepal.
Some of them have been accepted by Canada,
America, Australia and already left Nepal.
There is a large number of Nepali-speaking
people in India.
There are around 500,000 Nepali speakers in Sikkim. In Darjeeling
and Jalpaiguri districts of West Bengal, there
are about 1,400,000 Nepali speakers. In North-East Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya,
Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh there are several
million Nepali speakers. A considerable number of Nepali-speaking people are
also present in many Indian cities.
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