Nepali Phonology
Encyclopedia
Nepali
is the national language of Nepal
. Besides being spoken as a mother tongue by more than 48% of the population of Nepal, it is also spoken in Bhutan and India. The language is recognized in the Nepali constitution as an official language of Nepal.
The variety presented here is standard Nepali as spoken in Nepal. There are three major dialects: eastern, central, and western. Though many dialects can be distinguished in Nepal and other South Asian countries, there is reported to be little variation in phonology from one to another.
—the ancestral language of Nepali—had a phonological distinction in vowel length (for example, /i/ versus /iː/ and /u/ versus /uː/), there is no such distinction in spoken Nepali. However, due to a process of h-deletion, there are words in which some speakers produce long vowels, such as [paaɽ] ('mountain'), analyzed phonemically as /pʌɦaɖ/.
As the above list shows, there are five nasal vowels, as . The high mid back vowel /o/ does not have a nasal counterpart at the phonological level; although the vowel [õ] does exist phonetically in the language, it is often in free variation with its oral counterpart, as in [hotso] ~ [hõtso] 'short', [bʱeɽaa] ~ [bʱẽɽaa] 'sheep'. Nasal vowels are not frequent in the Nepali lexicon, compared to a language such as French in which the number of nasal vowels is large. They occur mostly in verbs.
According to , the evidence for the distinctiveness of vowel nasalization is not nearly as strong as that for the distinctiveness of the six oral vowels. They state that minimal pairs are easily obtainable only for the vowel /a/. Examples are shown below:
'inside corner', /kãp/ 'tremble!' (2nd p. sg. imperative) ('shelter'), /bãs/ ('bamboo') ('rent'), /bʱãɽa/ ('pots') ('be heated!'), /tãt/ ('row') ('pressure'), /tsãp/ ('magnolia wood')
Other minimal pairs include /naũ/ ('name') vs. /nau/ ('barber') and /ɡaũ/ ('village') vs. /ɡau/ ('sing' 2nd p. sg. imperative). At the phonetic level, oral vowels can be nasalized when following a nasal consonant.
The glides [j] and [w] are nonsyllabic variants of /i/ and /u/, respectively. All consonants but these two, /l/, and /ɦ/ may also occur as geminates
between vowels. Apart from forming lexically distinctive words, as in /tsʌpʌl/ चपल ('unstable') and /tsʌppʌl/ चप्पल ('slipper'), gemination also forms the intensive degree of adjectives, as in /miʈʈʰo/ ('very delicious'), compare /miʈʰo/ ('delicious').
The murmured stops may lose their breathy-voice between vowels and word-finally. Non-geminate aspirated
and murmured plosives may also become fricatives (e.g. /sʌpʰa/ 'clean' → [sʌɸa]; /ʌɡʱaɖi/ 'before' → [ʌɣaɽi]).
Nepali language
Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
is the national language of Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
. Besides being spoken as a mother tongue by more than 48% of the population of Nepal, it is also spoken in Bhutan and India. The language is recognized in the Nepali constitution as an official language of Nepal.
The variety presented here is standard Nepali as spoken in Nepal. There are three major dialects: eastern, central, and western. Though many dialects can be distinguished in Nepal and other South Asian countries, there is reported to be little variation in phonology from one to another.
Vowels
Nepali has 11 phonologically distinctive vowels, including 6 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels (indicated in the IPA with tildes ~). Although SanskritSanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
—the ancestral language of Nepali—had a phonological distinction in vowel length (for example, /i/ versus /iː/ and /u/ versus /uː/), there is no such distinction in spoken Nepali. However, due to a process of h-deletion, there are words in which some speakers produce long vowels, such as [paaɽ] ('mountain'), analyzed phonemically as /pʌɦaɖ/.
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i ĩ | u ũ | |
| Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel... |
e ẽ | o | |
| Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel... |
ʌ ʌ̃ | ||
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a ã |
As the above list shows, there are five nasal vowels, as . The high mid back vowel /o/ does not have a nasal counterpart at the phonological level; although the vowel [õ] does exist phonetically in the language, it is often in free variation with its oral counterpart, as in [hotso] ~ [hõtso] 'short', [bʱeɽaa] ~ [bʱẽɽaa] 'sheep'. Nasal vowels are not frequent in the Nepali lexicon, compared to a language such as French in which the number of nasal vowels is large. They occur mostly in verbs.
According to , the evidence for the distinctiveness of vowel nasalization is not nearly as strong as that for the distinctiveness of the six oral vowels. They state that minimal pairs are easily obtainable only for the vowel /a/. Examples are shown below:
'inside corner', /kãp/ 'tremble!' (2nd p. sg. imperative) ('shelter'), /bãs/ ('bamboo') ('rent'), /bʱãɽa/ ('pots') ('be heated!'), /tãt/ ('row') ('pressure'), /tsãp/ ('magnolia wood')
Other minimal pairs include /naũ/ ('name') vs. /nau/ ('barber') and /ɡaũ/ ('village') vs. /ɡau/ ('sing' 2nd p. sg. imperative). At the phonetic level, oral vowels can be nasalized when following a nasal consonant.
Diphthongs
recognizes ten diphthongs:| diphthongs | Example | Gloss | Orthography |
|---|---|---|---|
| /ui/ | /dui/ | 'two' | दुई |
| /iu/ | /dziu/ | 'body' | जीउ |
| /ei/ | /sʌnei/ | 'trumpet' | सनै |
| /eu/ | /euʈa/ | 'one' | एउटा |
| /oi/ | /poi/ | 'husband' | पोइ |
| /ou/ | /dʱou/ | 'wash!' | धोऊ! |
| /ʌi/ | /kʌile/ | 'when' | कैले |
| /ʌu/ | /dzʌu/ | 'barley' | जौ |
| /ai/ | /bʱai/ | 'younger brother' | भाइ |
| /au/ | /au/ | 'come!' | आऊ! |
Consonants
Spoken Nepali has 27 consonants in its native system| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Retroflex Retroflex consonant A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ŋ | |||||||||||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
p pʰ |
b bʱ |
t̪ t̪ʰ |
d̪ d̪ʱ |
ts tsʰ |
dz dzʱ |
ʈ ʈʰ |
ɖ ɖʱ |
k kʰ |
ɡ ɡʱ |
||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
s | ɦ | ||||||||||||
| Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet... |
r | |||||||||||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
(w) | l | (j) | |||||||||||
The glides [j] and [w] are nonsyllabic variants of /i/ and /u/, respectively. All consonants but these two, /l/, and /ɦ/ may also occur as geminates
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
between vowels. Apart from forming lexically distinctive words, as in /tsʌpʌl/ चपल ('unstable') and /tsʌppʌl/ चप्पल ('slipper'), gemination also forms the intensive degree of adjectives, as in /miʈʈʰo/ ('very delicious'), compare /miʈʰo/ ('delicious').
The murmured stops may lose their breathy-voice between vowels and word-finally. Non-geminate aspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
and murmured plosives may also become fricatives (e.g. /sʌpʰa/ 'clean' → [sʌɸa]; /ʌɡʱaɖi/ 'before' → [ʌɣaɽi]).
Loanword consonants
Loanwords from Sanskrit introduce further consonants that are not active in the phonological inventory of the spoken language for some educated speakers, occurring in borrowed words where they are prescriptively pronounced as described in Sanskrit grammars. The retroflex nasal [ɳ] occurs in the speech of some speakers, in words such as /baɳ/ वाण ('arrow'). A posterior sibilant [ʃ] occurs in such words as /nareʃ/ नरेश ('king'). The language does not have any minimal pairs opposing /s/ and /ʃ/, and speakers sometimes use these sounds interchangeably.See also
- Nepali literatureNepali literatureNepali Literature refers to the literature written in the Nepali language and should not be confused with Nepalese literature; a work that is classified as Nepali literature does not necessarily have to be written by a Nepalese/ written in Nepal. Much of today's Nepali literature is widely written...
- Languages of NepalLanguages of NepalThere are some 120 native languages of Nepal, belonging to the Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian language families.The official language of Nepal is Nepali , formerly called Khaskura then Gorkhali. The 2001 census counted 11 million native speakers in Nepal and it is spoken as...