Nepal Bhasa (also known as Newari) is a language spoken by Newar community in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It is one of the roughly five hundred Sino-Tibetan languages in the world, and belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of this family. It has the fourth-oldest literature of the Sino-Tibetan languages (the first, second and third being Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese respectively).
Nepal Bhasa is the most Indicized of the Tibeto-Burman languages, and has had so many centuries of contact with neighboring Indo-Iranian languages that it has even developed noun inflection, a trait typical of the Indo-European family but rare in Sino-Tibetan. It has absorbed other features of grammar as well, such as verb tenses. These influences are outstanding examples of funamental traits of a language being passed on through language contact.
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Last updated: 05-07-2005 10:44:59
