Nepali; Nepalese; नेपाली
Native Speakers: 16 million; L2 Speakers: 9 million
Nepal, India, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepali diaspora
Official: Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, and other Dutch dependencies. Minority language in Germany and French Flanders.
Indo-Aryan, Eastern Pahari
Nepali is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language. It includes several honorific registers, used based on the relationship of the speaker to the person (or people) being spoken to. It uses an “attenuated gender” system in terms of grammatical gender, and adjectives are divided into declinable and indeclinable categories. Like its ancestor, Sanskrit, Nepali verbs are highly inflected and must agree with the subject in number, gender, status, and person, as well as being inflected for tense, mood, and aspect. Nepali also uses two infinitives.
There are roughly 123 languages in Nepal, while Nepali serves as the lingua franca. In addition to separate languages such as Tibetan, Sherpa, and Tamang (which come from different language families), there are numerous dialects of Nepali. According to Ethnologue, many of these are generally not mutually intelligible with Standard Nepali. These include Baitadeli, Bajhangi, Bajurali (Bajura), Humli, and Acchami, among others.
Devanagari script
There are more than 200,000 Nepalis and Nepali-Americans currently living in the U.S. The largest communities are found in Texas, New York, and California. Many Nepali immigrants and refugees received temporary protected status (TPS) in the U.S. following the massive earthquake in 2015.
At Latitude Prime, we offer Nepali translation, Nepali interpretation, and Nepali localization services in numerous specialized subject areas and multiple dialects. Whether you need to translate medical records from Nepali to English, need a Nepali interpreter for an immigration hearing in San Diego, or want to localize your website into Nepali to market your products or services in Nepal and local Nepali communities, Latitude Prime has the customized language solution to meet all of your Nepali language needs.
