Year: 2013

Vocabulary: Geography And Infrastructure

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Let’s look at the surroundings and the geography! Urban components (human made structures are included) Place: ठाउँ (thau) Land: जमिन (jamin) Land (plot): जग्गा (jagga) Mountain: हिमाल (himal) Hills: पहाड (pahaad) Plains: तराई (tarai) River: खोला (khola) Lake: ताल (taal) Forest: जंगल (jangal) Sea: सागर (saagar) Ocean: महासागर (saagar) Desert: मरुभूमि (marubhumi) Residence: बासस्थान (baasasthan) House: घर (ghar) Kitchen Garden: बारी (baari) Garden: बगैँचा (bagaichaa) Field: खेत (khet) Household: घरबार (gharbaar) Neighbour: छिमेकी (chimeki) Neighbourhood: छरछिमेक (charchimek) Community: बस्ती (basti) Street (as in the street you live in): टोल (tol) Road: सडक (sadak) Road (casual): बाटो (baato) A Narrow Road:  गल्ली (galli) A Narrow … Read more

Vocabulary: Directions

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To look around a place, we need to know our directions, right? Direction is called ‘दिशा’ (disha) in Nepali. (no, not the other one [दिसा; disa] which means excrement!)  Back पछाडि (pachāḍi) Down तल (tala) East पूर्व (pūrwa) Front अगाडि (agāḍi) Left (casual) देब्रे (debre) Left बायाँ (bāyā~) North उत्तर (uttar) Right (casual) दाहिने (dāhine) Right दायाँ (dāyā~) … Read more

Special Characters And Variations

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INTRODUCTION Consonant clusters appear frequently throughout text, with some clusters appearing more often than others. In order to increase writing speed and condense some frequently used clusters, special glyphs were created to represent these clusters. Thus, special characters are ligatures or glyphs that represent frequently occurring consonant clusters. Take the cluster ‘tr’, which has a special … Read more

Handwritten Script

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INTRODUCTION In every language, differences exist between the handwritten version and the printed version of the script. We were writing long before the printing press was created by Gutenberg, and most definitely ages before digitization. For example, the printed version of the alphabet “a” looks very different to its digital counterpart. Given that everything is … Read more

Vocabulary: Body Parts

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EXTERNAL BODY PARTS Armpit काखी (kākhī) Backbone ढाड (ḍhāḍ) Beard दाह्री (dāhrī) Belly भुडी (bhuḍī) Bellybutton नाइटो (nāiṭo) Body जिउ (jiu); शरीर (śarīr) Body hair भुत्ला (bhutlā) Breast(s) स्तन (stan) [med.]; बुबु (bubu) Buttocks चाक (cāk) Cheek गाला (gālā) Chest छाती (chātī) Chin चिउँडो (ciu~ḍo) Ear कान (kān) Elbow कुहिनो (kuhino) Eye आँखा (ā~khā) Eyebrow … Read more

Vocabulary: Numbers (31-60)

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 are written १, २, ३, ४, ५, ६, ७, ८, ९ and ०respectively. For example, 1, 12, 53, 79 and 42 will be १, १२, ५३, ७९ and ४२ respectively when we write it in Devanagari Script. 31 =  एकतीस (ektis) 32 =  बत्तीस (battis) 33 =  तेत्तीस (tettis) 34 … Read more

Vocabulary: Numbers (1-30)

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Perhaps one of the vastest number names belong to Nepali. Unlike in English, each number till 100 has a unique name. Most young people cannot even count beyond 40! For now, let’s just learn till 30. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 are written १, २, ३, ४, ५, ६, ७, … Read more

Vocabulary: Vegetables

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Let’s learn vegetable names! Of course I know that botanically Tomatoes are fruits but here we just say it as a vegetable. Same with other so called vegetables like ‘lemon’ and ‘pumpkin’. Baby Pumpkin गट्टा (gaṭṭā) Beans गेडागुडी (geḍāguḍī) Bitter Gourd करेला (karelā) Cabbage गोभी (gobhī) Carrot गाजर (gājar) Cauliflower काउली (kāulī) Coriander धनिया (dhaniyā) Cucumber काँक्रा … Read more

Reading The Devanagari Script

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INTRODUCTION Over the previous few lessons, we have gone through the script in thorough detail. Now that you know how to write the script, it is now important how to read the Devanagari script as well. We will also look at how to pronounce words. Fortunately, Nepali is a very phonetic script. There are some … Read more

Cases And Case Markers: Introduction

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INTRODUCTION One of the more dreaded things while learning other languages are cases. This is especially true if you are a native English speaker because English by itself does not really have cases. Well, that would be misleading as all languages do have some cases. Cases are simply forms of words that express what they do in … Read more