Nepali Language and Linguistics

Nepal is a country of great geographic, linguistic and ethnic diversity. Nepali is an official language of Nepal. It is also used as a lingua-franca in-and-out side of Nepal, particularly in Bhutan, Burma and some part of India.

Nepali finite verb inflects for person, number, gender and honorific status of the speech act participants (SAP). But do not worry, Nepali gender system is not crazy like German or Hindi. Nepali exhibits what Massica (1991) labelled an ''attenuated gender system''. It means it only shows biological gender of animate nouns. We don't care inanimate nouns very much and dump all as grammatically masculine! Well, few kinship terms show overt differentiation of gender, example keto 'boy' , keti 'girl'.

Nepali language is not very difficult if you are really interested to climb the mountains of Nepal. Go a head and find some good Nepali teachers having some linguistic knowledge. But I bet the best language teachers are available in the touristic streets of Thamel in Kathmandu! They will surely eat your mind once you are there! However, you will gradually start enjoying it!

Recently I have been glossing some Nepali texts for my research purpose. Oh, I did not find people consistent in using proper glosses. I think there should be something like -- Leipzig glossing rules designed for Nepali linguists too. (One should do it and upload somewhere!)

I just made a very small list for my own purpose which I think I should post in this blog for my own purpose, if not others!

-eko PFV.PTCP (perfective participle)
-ne IPFV.PTCP (imperfective participle)
-era CVB (converb)
-dai PROG (progressive)
-da SIM.CP (simultaneous conjunctive participle)
-na/nu INF (infinitive)

cases
-ko GEN (genitive)
-le ERG/INST (ergative, instrumental)
-laai DAT (dative)
-maa LOC (locative)

This is just a small part of my Nepali glossing file. I could not upload big tables here. Please let me know in my email if someone wants it.

Thanks! See you again!

Happy New Year 2068! नयाँ बर्षको शुभकामना तपाईहरू सबैलाई ।