Literary legend
Bhanubhakta and the grass cutter
A grass cutter's wish to leave something behind shames the young poet into writing the Ramayana in Nepali.
Language profile
Nepali
नेपाली / खस कुरा
Nepali grew out of the Khas speech of the Karnali basin, spread with the Gorkha state, and is now the lingua franca linking every province. Its dialect map — Doteli, Baitadeli, Jumli, Purbeli — is itself a record of migration.
- Language family
- Indo-European › Indo-Aryan
- Script
- Devanagari
- Speakers
- ≈ 16 million (L1 + L2)
- Status
- Vital
- Also called
- Khas Kura, Gorkhali, Parbatiya
- Greeting
- नमस्ते — Namaste
Where it is spoken
Geographic distribution
Nationwide
Script
Devanagari
Writing sample
नेपाली भाषा — स्वागत
Scripts carry more than sound: letterforms, numerals and orthographic conventions record centuries of contact, patronage and revival.
Numbers 1–5
- 1एक ek
- 2दुई dui
- 3तीन tin
- 4चार char
- 5पाँच panch
Words & expressions
Everyday speech
नमस्ते
Namaste
Hello
तपाईंलाई कस्तो छ?
Tapailai kasto chha?
How are you?
धन्यवाद
Dhanyavad
Thank you
फेरि भेटौँला
Pheri bhetaunla
See you again
Alphabet
Letters and numerals
Devanagari
Official script of Nepal, used for Nepali and most Indo-Aryan and many Tibeto-Burman languages of the country.
Vowels
अआइईउऊऋएऐओऔअंअः
Consonants
कखगघङचछजझञटठडढणतथदधनपफबभमयरलवशषसहक्षत्रज्ञ
Numerals
०१२३४५६७८९
Words
Core vocabulary
नमस्ते
namaste
greetings
पानी
pani
water
घर
ghar
house
माया
maya
love
साथी
sathi
friend
खाना
khana
food
हिमाल
himal
snow mountain
धन्यवाद
dhanyabad
thank you
Idioms & sayings
How the language thinks
हात्ती आयो हात्ती आयो फुस्सा
Hatti aayo hatti aayo phussa
All that fuss for nothing.
आफ्नो आङको भैंसी देख्दैन
Aafno aangko bhainsi dekhdaina
Blind to one's own faults.
बाँदरको हातमा नारिवल
Bandarko hatma nariwal
A coconut in a monkey's hand — a resource in the wrong hands.
History
How Nepali came to be written and spoken
12th century
Earliest Khas inscriptions in the Karnali region.
1768–1846
Language of the Gorkhali court spreads across the unified state as the administrative tongue.
1830s–1900s
Bhanubhakta's Ramayana, Motiram Bhatta's editing and the first presses build a literary canon.
Today
Nepal's official language, with the country's largest digital corpus and the base for most Nepali NLP models.
Tales
Told and retold
Indigenous knowledge
Knowledge carried in the language, not in books
Parma labour exchange
Reciprocal farm labour between households, counted in days rather than cash.
Kulo irrigation committees
Hill canals maintained by user groups with water turns fixed by contribution.
AI preparedness index
How ready is Nepali for language technology?
Overall readiness
1.70%
readiness score from the global index of 6,000+ world languages
AI resource readiness0.04%
Infrastructural readiness37.96%
Socioeconomic readiness3.30%
ISO 639-3
npi
Speakers (index)
24,131,000
Endangerment
Safe
Open datasets
38
Published models
57
Wikipedia articles
0
Dictionary exists
Yes
Full text corpus
Yes
These figures place Nepali on the readiness index: how much machine-readable text, speech and model work already exists, and how far the digital and socioeconomic conditions around its speakers support building them. A low AI resource score is exactly where corpus collection changes the outcome.
Source: global language readiness index (Nepali, npi). Scores are readiness percentages across the full index of 6,000+ languages.
Stories
Oral tradition
Modern classic
Muna Madan
Laxmi Prasad Devkota's jhyaure-metre poem of a trader who leaves for Lhasa and a wife who waits — the best-loved book in the language.
Songs & music
Sung heritage
♪
Jhyaure
Folk metre
Hill work-song rhythm that shaped modern Nepali poetry.
Recording being catalogued
♪
Deuda
Far-western circle song
Linked-arm improvised singing of Sudurpashchim and Karnali.
Recording being catalogued
Culture & traditions
Festivals, dress, food, craft
Festivals
DashainTiharMaghe Sankranti
Dress
Daura suruwal, dhaka topi, gunyu cholo.
Food
Dal bhat tarkari, sel roti, gundruk.
Crafts
Dhaka weaving of Palpa and Terhathum, khukuri forging.
People & community
The people who keep Nepali alive
Spoken as a first language across the hills and as a bridge tongue in every market, school and radio broadcast in the country.
Language → People → Place → Culture → Heritage
Nepali → Spoken as a first language across the hills and as a bridge tongue in every market → Nationwide → Dashain → audio, video, text and images held with community consent.
Related languages
Doteli
डोटेली
Indo-European › Indo-Aryan (Khas)
Magar Dhut
मगर ढुट
Sino-Tibetan › Magaric
Tharu
थारू
Indo-European › Indo-Aryan (cluster)
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