Coco's Nepal

When living in Nepal, I have had to text in Nepali several times. Although I was familiar enough with reading the language in textbooks, Nepali texting was a completely different story. I was really surprised by the different shortcuts and surprising letter combinations that Nepali people use when texting. So I am compiling some things I've noticed here for Nepali learners! Nepali is a language spoken by about 16 million people in Nepal and neighboring countries. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family and uses a script called Devanagari, which consists of 36 consonant characters and 12 vowel characters. ( Reference ) However, not everyone has access to a Nepali keyboard or knows how to type with Devanagari letters. That's why many Nepali people use the Latin alphabet when texting or chatting online. There are different ways of transliterating Nepali into Latin letters, depending on personal preference, convenience, and familiarity. Some common ...

  Vowels Vowels have an independent form (usually when used alone or at the beginning of a syllable) as well as a combined form (when combined with a consonant sound.) The combined form looks different than the independent form and modifies the look of the consonant letter in different ways. Independent Form Combined Form (when combined with a consonant) Roman Transliteration Pronunciation अ क        a “uh” like “ago” आ का       ा ā “ah” like “naan bread” इ कि       ि i “ee” like “feet” Or   “ih” like “pit” ई की       ी ī “ee” like “feet” उ कु       ु u “oo” like “book” Or “oo” like “fo...

Nepali is written using the Devanagari script, like Hindi. This script uses an “alphabet” that is different from the English alphabet.  As you can see in this image, the “consonants” come packaged with a vowel on the end - “a”. So क, which is the basic K sound, is not “K”, but “ka” (pronounced “kuh”). The same is true for the other letters. Unless combined with another vowel (क ka +ओ o = को ko), the basic form of the consonant is going to be the consonant sound + “a”. But… not always. Yes, as with most languages, NOTHING can be as simple as it should be! Many words in Nepali omit this “a” vowel sound at the end of some consonants, and to a new learner, it can be so frustrating to figure out where, how, and why that happens. For example, take the word धन्यबाद - “thank you” in Nepali. This is a very common word, maybe even the first one you learned in Nepali. At the end there, we have द - which, if you refer to the chart up above, is “da”. But this word धन्यबाद i...