(January-February 1959)., The statement followed a certain amount of debate among the leaders of the various political parties;
Matrkaprasad Koirala, Kasiprasad Srlvastava and K.I.Singh supported Hindi, and B.P.Koirala allowed that it should be supported in the Tarai
30
regions. Despite these objections, King Mahendra's ordinance merely set the seal of official approval on the status of the language which was accordingly transformed from a de facto lingua franca into a de
jure national language.
A new Constitution, formulated in 1955/6 and promulgated in 1958, was the first to make any mention of language. All subsequent,
amended, constitutions, included a statement to the effect that Nepali in the devanagari script was the national language. In the Constitution of V.S.2015 (1958), the clause was:
devanagari lipima nepall bha§a nepalako rastra bhasa hunecha. "The Nepali language in the devanagari script will be the
31 national language of Nepal."
Various commercial laws have also made mention of language. The Nepal Company Ain of 1950 recommends that every Nepalese company keep
32
its accounts in Nepali. The revised Company Ain of 1964 added that companies would be permitted to keep accounts in both Nepali and English if they so desired. In such cases, however, the law would regard the
33 Nepali accounts as more authentic.
Nepali is also the language of the law courts. Although the Sarvocca Adalatako Niyama 2019 (High Court Rule 1962) makes no
stipulations regarding language in its recommendations for the appointment of advocates, pleaders, lawyers or agents, it is obvious that a sound knowledge of Nepali is essential. Advocates and lawyers are required
29. GrTsmabahadur Devkota: Nepalko Rajanitik Darpana, Kathmandu, (2nd edn.), 1979, p.411.
30. Ibid., pp.405-411.
31. BhattaraT, op.cit., 1976, p.25. 32. Ibid., p.26.
to hold an accredited university degree, and to have been employed 34
in Nepal for at least seven years. Another rule states that documents in languages other than Nepali will not be admitted as evidence in Nepalese courts until they have been translated into the
35 national language by a person approved by the court.
It is evident that Nepali is now established by law as the
national language in most areas of Nepalese life. Its status as the medium of education is a little less secure, and this will be analysed in more detail in a later chapter.
34. Ibid., pp.26-27. 35. Ibid., p.27.
Chapter 7
The Standardisation of Nepali
Functional Adequacy
The need for a national language is implicit in the development of linguistic nationalism and certain functions are prescribed for Nepali as the national language of Nepal. First, it must promote the integration of the various ethnic and linguistic groups of the country into a nation which is both linguistically uniform and distinct from the nations which surround it. Thus the main political function of Nepali is to encourage identification with the Nepalese nation-state. The Indian scholar, D.P.Pattanayak believes that the elevation of one's mother-tongue to the status of a national language is a panacea for all kinds of social evils: it brings "self-affirmation", "cultural rootedness" and bolsters group identity.^
Within the nation, the national language is also required to
facilitate communication between administration and public, and between the various communities of Nepal, Haugen notes that the encouragement of national loyalties requires "free and rather intense communications
2
within the nation" and thus a "single linguistic code" is essential.
In order that it might be compared favourably with the languages of other nations, the national language must also possess a standard written form in which a developed body of literature has been published. This aspect of nationalist aspiration is often emulatory: the imbalance which is perceived between the status of "new" literatures and those of more "established" languages such as English, or even Hindi, must be
1. D.P.Pattanayak: "Sociolinguistics and Language Planning1 in: Friedman (ed.): Seminar Papers in Linguistics, Kirtipur, 1976, p.18.
2. Einar Haugen: "Dialect, Language, Nation", American Anthropologist Vol.6 8, (1966), p.928.
redressed before "inferiority complexes" on the part of the former can be expunged.
Ballabh Mani Dahal, a prominent Nepalese linguist, prescribes three more specific functions for the national language of Nepal:
"A It should be efficient to be the medium of instruction for higher education.
j3 It should be capable of expressing the growing demand of complex, abstract and sophisticated ideas in the
field of science and technology and private and government activities.
_C It should be efficient for intertranslatability so that it can operate in a similar way to international
3
languages like English, French, German etc."
The objectives which are set for the development of Nepali thus amount to its achievement of an equal status with all the other national
languages of the world. As if in answer to Haugen's rather challenging statement that "a fully developed language....must meet the basic test
4
of adequacy", Dahal sets out a list of necessities for the Nepali language:
"_1 A standard grammar. 2_ Standard dictionaries.
_3_ An orthographic and spelling system which is simple and scientific.
4_ A standard dialect which is fixed and simplified.
_5^ Standard works in the language, both original and translated.
J5 ....effective measures to ensure that all Nepalese, whatever their mother-tongue, attain competence in
5 comprehension and expression in the language."
3. Ballabh Mani Dahal: "Linguistic Perspectives and Priorities in Nepal", in: Friedman (ed.), op.cit., 1976, p.156,
4. Haugen, op.cit., 1966, p.931. 5. Dahal, op.cit., 1976, p.156.
This brief list is actually quite a comprehensive categorisation of the areas in which development has progressed. Perhaps the earliest of these developments was the selection of a dialect of Nepali which was to be favoured as "standard".
A Standard Dialect
An exhaustive study of the varied dialects of Nepali has yet to be attempted; few specific dialects have been subjected to linguistic analysis, as such studies have tended to concentrate on the standard variety current in educated circles. Thus most dialects are still undefined, and Nepalese and foreign scholars have suggested a number of different classifications.
G.A.Grierson, the director of the Linguistic Survey of India, was unable to divide Nepali (his "Eastern Pahari, Khas Kura or Naipall") into its dialects, although he mentioned the varieties of the language which were spoken in Palpa and Darai and gave a specimen of the former.6
Other linguists have more recently proposed a variety of classificatory schemes. Kamala Sankrtyayana divided it into four main varieties:
7
Eastern, Central (standard), Central dialects and Western. Dayanand
8 9
Snvastava adopted the same scheme, but T.W.Clark and Balak^sna Pokharel^ both described three groups of dialects: western, eastern and central. Pokharel elaborated on this in his book Rasfrabhasa
('National Language') with an additional classification of the western
6. G.A.Grierson: Linguistic Survey of India, Vol.IX Indo-Aryan Family, Central Group, Part IV Specimens of the Pahari Languages and GujurT, Calcutta, 1916, p.18 and p.75.
7. Kamala Sankrtyayana, in: Sankrtyayana and Upadhyaya (ed.), Hindi Sahitya ka Byhat Itihas, vol.16: Lokasahitya, KasT (Banaras), 1960, p. 661.'
8. Dayanand Srivastava: Nepali Language. Its History and Development, Calcutta, 1962, p.xix,
9. T.W.Clark: Introduction to Nepali, London (2nd edn,), 1977, p. vii.
10. Balakrsna Pokharel: Nepali Bhasa ra Sahitya, Kathmandu (2nd edn.), 1968, pp.44-45.
group into near-west, mid-west and far-west dialects. Churamani
Bandhu is more circumspect in his classification, preferring to describe three broad families of sub-dialects in western, central and eastern Nepal and he backs up these assertions with a great deal of linguistic
4- 1 2
data.
It is clear from a study of these varied classifications that spoken Nepali can be divided into three main groups of dialects, on the basis of variations in pronunciation and vocabulary, and occasional minor grammatical differences:
1. Western Nepali. Dialects are most numerous and diverse in the
far western region of Nepal. No western dialect has been thoroughly analysed and none possesses a written form. In the extreme west, there is some influence on spoken Nepali from the Kumaoni language.
,2. Central Nepali. Central Nepal is generally regarded as the
region which extends from Jumla to Sallyan. This Central group of dialects is often - referred to as 'Western Nepali', as Nepalese tend to conceive of Kathmandu as the centre of their country. The names Sinjali, Jumli and Jumleli which are applied to these dialects refer back to
the early Nepali inscriptions which were found in this region. In an analysis of the Karnali dialect, Bandhu states that its vocabulary has between 81% and 87% concordance with that of "standard" Nepali. He estimates that the dialects diverged from a common ancestor sometime
13 between the 13th and 15th centuries.
3. Eastern Nepali. The eastern dialects are generally more
homogenous than those of western Nepal and they include the "standard" variety and the important Darjeeling dialect. Pokharel states that Eastern Nepali is spoken in the region which extends from Dailekh and Sallyan in the west to Bhutan and Assam in the east, and he sub-divides
_ 14
it into Khasani, Parbati and Gorkhall. The same author states that
11. Balakrsna Pokharel: Rastrabhasa, Kathmandu (3rd edn.), 1979. pp.42-65.
12. Churamani Bandhu: Nepali Bhagako Utpatti, Lalitpur (3rd edn.), 1979, pp.57-58.
13. Churamani Bandhu: Karnali Lok Saipskrti Khanda 4 Bhasa, Kathmandu, 1971, p.8.
the sub-dialect of the Valley (Upatyakali) is a mixture of Parbati 15
and Gorkhali. The Darjeeling variety of spoken Nepali achieved a measure of literary respectability when the Rev.Turnbull used it as the basis for his grammar"^ and it became the medium for a number of Bible translations. Ballabh Mani Dahal suggests that it might have a "Tibeto-Burman sub-stratum", with the loss of oblique case forms, lack
17 of subject-verb gender concord and so on.
Although the Darjeeling dialect had its own supporters early in the century, the speech of Kathmandu has long been accepted, mostly tacitly, as the basis of standard literary Nepali. T.W.Clark explained
its continued prestige:
"There is a form of Nepali speech which can be called the Kathmandu dialect.... It is the language of the schools and the Trichandra College, and consequently of educated speech in the Valley.... because of its prestige as the language of educated people and because its use is being
consolidated by being taught in the schools, it seems probable that when a received standard Nepali emerges it will be found to be essentially the speech of Kathmandu rather than that of
18 the districts beyond the perimeter of the Valley."
On the spoken level, the evolution of a received standard Nepali is now almost complete and an increasing number of Nepalese are
becoming familiar with it. Written Nepali, too, is more or less uniform throughout India and Nepal; literacy is the most important factor speeding standardisation in the spoken language. Due to the often formal contexts of usage of written Nepali, however, a "high" variety has evolved which is becoming increasingly distant from its spoken counterpart. In fact, there could be said to be three forms of standard Nepali: the spoken norm, based on an ideal version of the Valley dialect, the ordinary written language of everyday literature and the formal "high" variety of scholars and administrators. Trends
15. Ibid., p.44.
16. A.Turnbull: Nepali Grammar and Vocabulary, Calcutta, 1887.
17. Ballabh Mani Dahal: A Description of Nepali, Literary and Colloquial (unpublished Ph.D. thesis), Poona, 1974.
of change in the latter two varieties are proceeding in almost exactly opposite directions: in popular literature, colloquialism is becoming more highly prized, in scholarly works more and more words are being borrowed from Sanskrit or English. Dahal makes the following
observation regarding the divergence of spoken and written Nepali:
"The Kathmandu dialect has been recognised as the so-called standard dialect of Nepali. At present Nepali has only a very sketchy and traditional grammar. New innovations have taken place in the phonology and grammar of Nepali since it was written. The spread of education has made possible the entry of different dialect features into standard Nepali. Moreover, the phenomenon of Sanskritisation and Anglicisation is becoming stronger... These inconsistencies seen in the language must be remedied by deciding the norm of the
19 standard dialect."
Scholarly written Nepali and its high-grade spoken counterpart have diverged from the colloquial speech of Kathmandu to the extent that the situation has become almost diglossic; these two varieties of the language are quite distinct from one another and they rarely exert any influence over one another. Haas described a theoretical situation in which this divergence had occurred:
"In some cases the division between the superposed standard and the vernaculars is almost precisely a division between writing and speech; the spoken norm that corresponds to the
20
written standard has lost its independence...."
A few scholars in Nepal have attempted to reunite "High" and "Low" Nepali by introducing "native" vocabulary instead of Sanskrit terminology;
19. Dahal, op.cit., 1976, p.157.
20. W.Haas in: Haas (ed.): Standard Languages. Spoken and Written, Manchester, 1982, p.25.
a more detailed account of their efforts will be given later in this study. There now follows an account of the efforts which have been made to standardise Nepali.
The Standardisation of Nepali Orthography and Spelling
In the introduction to his contribution to the Nepali Linguistics Seminar of 1974, Churamani Bandhu pointed out that orthography, once standardised, changes less than pronunciation. Thus the script and spelling system of any given language become steadily less closely related to its sound system with the passage of time:
"....the older the spelling system the worse it becomes as a phonological representation of the language but the greater the value of the system in terms of the body of literature
21