Nepali

Last Updated: 2020-07-01

COMPROMISED: certain diacritics used interchangeably and inconsistently marked

Background

Language Family: Indo-European / Indo-Iranian / Indo-Aryan / Northern Zone / Eastern Pahari

• Nepali is the official language of Nepal and is also spoken in India and Bhutan and by members of the Nepalese diaspora (Khatiwada 2009, 373). My rules are written based on the eastern Nepali dialect. Like many other Indic languages it has a left-to-right abugida alphabet.

Phonology

Consonants

• Acharya (1991) identifies palatal stops rather than alveolar affricates (p. 19).
  • I opted to follow the more recent analysis done by Khatiwada (2009).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops (plain)	p b	t̪ d̪		ʈ ɖ		k ɡ
Stops (aspirated)	pʰ bʱ	t̪ʰ d̪ʱ		ʈʰ ɖʱ		kʰ ɡʱ
Affricates (plain)			ts dz
Affricates (aspirated)			tsʰ dzʱ
Fricatives			s				ɦ
Nasals	m	n̪				ŋ
Trills			r
Approximants	w		l		j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• Nasal vowels are considered phonemic in Nepali (Khatiwada 2009, 377). /o/ does not have a contrastive nasal counterpart, but it may vary freely with it.
• I have chosen to follow the vowel outline by Khatiwada (2009), such that /ʌ/ is used rather than /ə/ (p. 377). This is based on the description that the vowel in question is lower and more back than schwa.
• Vowel length is not considered a phonemic feature (Khatiwada 2009, 378).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low-Mid			ʌ
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ai/, /au/

Alphabet

• Nepali is written using the Devanagari script (Bal 2004, 333–34). Each consonant comes with an inherent /ʌ/ following.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
क	/kʌ/
ख	/kʰʌ/
ग	/ɡʌ/
घ	/ɡʱʌ/
ङ	/ŋʌ/
च	/tsʌ/
छ	/tsʰʌ/
ज	/dzʌ/
झ	/dzʱʌ/
ट	/ʈʌ/
ठ	/ʈʰʌ/
ड	/ɖʌ/
ढ	/ɖʱʌ/
त	/t̪ʌ/
थ	/t̪ʰʌ/
द	/d̪ʌ/
ध	/d̪ʱʌ/
न; ञ; ण	/n̪ʌ/	the palatal and retroflex nasals are considered to be allophones of /n̪/ (Acharya 1991, 13)
प	/pʌ/
फ	/pʰʌ/
ब	/bʌ/
भ	/bʱʌ/
म	/mʌ/
य	/jʌ/
र	/rʌ/
ल	/lʌ/
व	/wʌ/
श; ष; स	/sʌ/	the voiceless retroflex and postalveolar fricatives are considered to be allophones of /s/ (Acharya 1991, 13)
ह	/ɦʌ/
Independent Character
अ	/ʌ/
आ	/a/
इ; ई	/i/	includes both the short and long variants given that vowel length is not contrastive
उ; ऊ	/u/	includes both the short and long variants given that vowel length is not contrastive
ऋ	/ri/
ए	/e/
ओ	/o/
ऐ	/ai/
औ	/au/
Diacritic
ा	/a/
ि; ी	/i/	includes both the short and long variants given that vowel length is not contrastive
ु; ू	/u/	includes both the short and long variants given that vowel length is not contrastive
ृ	/ri/
े	/e/
ै	/ai/
ो	/o/
ौ	/au/
ँ		called a candrabindu, this diacritic indicates nasalization of the preceding vowel (Bal 2004, 333)
ं	/n/	called an anusvar or sirabindu, this diacritic indicates a homorganic nasal with following stops (/n/ appears to be underlying); however, it is inconsistently marked and used interchangeably with the candrabindu (Bal 2004, 333) - this compromises the language to some extent
्		called a viram or halanta, this diacritic removes the inherent vowel /ʌ/ after a consonant (Bal 2004, 334)
ः	/ɦ/	called the visarga, this diacritic only appears in Sanskrit loanwords, so it won’t be transcribed in the rule set (Bal 2004, 334)

Lenition Rules

• /ɖ/ is realized as a retroflex flap when preceded by a vowel (Khatiwada 2009, 374).
• /pʰ/, /bʱ/, /kʰ/, and /ɡʱ/ may spirantize in spontaneous speech (Khatiwada 2009, 376).
• /r/ may be realized as a flap (Khatiwada 2009, 377):
  • Intervocalically (Pokharel 1989 as cited in Khatiwada (2009), p. 377)
  • Word-initially
  • Word-finally
• One consonant within a cluster may be deleted (unclear whether this is only word-initially) (Acharya 1991, 33).

Misc. Rules

• Consonants, apart from /ɦ/, /j/, and /w/, undergo gemination (Khatiwada 2009, 376).
• /d/ and /ɡ/ may be devoiced word-finally (Acharya 1991, 26).
• Velar stops become fronted preceding front vowels (Acharya 1991, 26).
• Non-syllabic /i/ and /u/ are realized as [j] and [w], respectively (Khatiwada 2009, 373).
• Vowel epenthesis occurs within consonant clusters (Acharya 1991, 32).
• Voiced aspirates may be realized without aspiration intervocalically and word-finally (Khatiwada 2009, 376).
• /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ may be realized as nasals postvocalically, preceding nasal vowels (Acharya 1991, 26).

References

Acharya, Jayaraj. 1991. Descriptive Grammar of Nepali and an Analyzed Corpus. Georgetown Univ Pr.

Bal, Bal Krishna. 2004. “Structure of Nepali Grammar.” Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya.

Khatiwada, Rajesh. 2009. “Nepali.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39 (3).

Pokharel, Madhav Prasad. 1989. “Experimental Analysis of Nepali Sound System.” PhD thesis, University of Pune.