What language do Nepalese speak?

Nepali belongs to Indo-European Indo-language family and is spoken in Nepal, Bhutan and parts of India. It is the official language of Nepal. About half of Nepalis speak Nepali as their mother tongue, while others speak it as their second language.

Nepali is a Pahari language distributed in the easternmost part, which is a group of languages used in the low-altitude areas of the Himalayas. Nepali language has a very close relationship with some Tibetan-Burmese language families during its development.

The most striking language is Niwar, which shows the influence of Tibeto-Burman. Nepali is similar to Hindi, but slightly conservative. Loanwords from Persian and English are less than Hindi, and more words come from Sanskrit.

Extended data:

The pronunciation of Nepali still retains some important features of ancient Hindi; For example, it still has a rolled tongue uh (camel, Bengali) and a voiced aspirated bhat (rice, Bengali and Gujarat are also bhats, but Kashmir is bat).

Because more than half of Nepal's population uses Tibeto-Burman language, Nepalese people are deeply influenced by Tibeto-Burman language, especially in vocabulary. Nepali characters are written in natural languages.

In China, China Communication University, PLA Foreign Languages Institute and Beijing Foreign Studies University are the only three universities in China that teach Nepalese, while China Radio International also broadcasts Nepalese. Most people don't learn Nepali, so there are fewer institutions. Mainly Tibetans learn more.