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 is no
Nepali humor is usually quite goofy in nature. Although I have noticed some instances of sarcasm and dry humor, this is definitely the exception, not the rule. When I was first learning Nepali I talked with a nice lady who enthusiastically told me a Nepali joke. Although I didn't understand everything at that time, I got the gist of it. It basically went like this:
For the sake of simplicity, in the examples of verb conjugation, we will mostly use the verb गर्नु garnu, "to do" There are a couple of irregular verbs in Nepali to keep in mind as well. However, most of the verbs will follow these rules. Nepali has different levels of politeness/respect, and with each level there is a corresponding verb conjugation. It's difficult to keep track of them all at first, so if you like you can just focus on the most polite forms to make it easier on yourself! To begin with... All Nepali verbs end with -नु -nu. To conjugate the verb into a different tense, you have to remove the -nu ending to leave the "stem" of the verb. In the case of गर्नु garnu, the stem would be गर् "gar." Then you can change the ending depending on the conjugation needed.
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