Home to 5 dialects represented on Dialect Atlas, spanning 5 language families.
Spoken across eastern Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, and parts of southern Nepal. Carried abroad by indenture-era diasporas to Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad.
also: Nepal Bhasa, Newari
A Tibeto-Burman language of the Newar people of the Kathmandu valley. The historical lingua franca of medieval Nepal, with an extensive literary tradition.
also: Tangbe
A Tamangic (Tibeto-Burman) language of five villages in Upper Mustang, Nepal, with roughly 700 speakers worldwide. A sizeable share of the community now lives in New York City, where about half of the diaspora speakers are concentrated in a single Brooklyn apartment building.
also: Nepāli
An Indo-Aryan language and the official language of Nepal. Also a scheduled language of India, with substantial communities in Sikkim, West Bengal, and Bhutan.
also: Ban Raja
A language isolate of mid-western Nepal, historically spoken by forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers of the Dang valley and southern Rolpa. One fully fluent speaker remains; the language has no words for yes or no, expressing polarity through verb modification instead. Community revitalisation classes are ongoing.