Pahari is an endangered
Tibeto-Burman language
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spe ...
spoken by about 3,500 people in central
Nepal
Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...
.
Pahari is closely related to
Newar
Newar (; , endonym: Newa; , Pracalit script: ), or Nepami, are primarily inhabitants in Kathmandu Valley of Nepal and its surrounding areas, and the creators of its historic heritage and civilisation. Page 15. Newars are a distinct linguisti ...
, and has until recently been treated in the linguistic literature as a dialect of it. Pahari shares 55–65% of its basic vocabulary with Newar, which suggests the two are not
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
, and their speakers consider them to be separate languages.
The language is
endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...
as it is no longer being passed on to the next generation. The ethnic population number (as of 2011), but only a quarter of them are native speakers of the language.
[; .] Almost all Paharis speak
Nepali, while some are also fluent in the ethnic languages of their neighbours, like
Tamang or Newar. Pahari speakers are most numerous in
Lalitpur district, but there are also communities in nearby regions:
Sindhupalchok,
Makwanpur
Makwanpur District (; ), in Bagmati Province, earlier a part of Narayani Zone, is one of the List of districts of Nepal, seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The city of Hetauda serves as the district headquarters and also as the provincial headquart ...
,
Ramechhap
Ramechhap Municipality is a municipality in Ramechhap District in Bagmati Province of Nepal. It was established on 2 December 2014 by merging the former village development committees Old-Ramechhap, Okhreni and Sukajor. At the time of the 2011 ...
,
Rautahat,
Sindhuli
Sindhuli District (), a part of the Bagmati Province, is one of the List of districts of Nepal, seventy-seven districts of Nepal, a landlocked country located in South Asia. The district, with Sindhulimadhi Kamalamai as its headquarters, covers a ...
and
Kavre. There are at least two dialects – of Lalitpur and Sindhupalchok – and they are not mutually intelligible.
The term ''Pahari'' (पहरी ''paharī'', variously romanised as ''Pahari'', ''Pahri'', ''Pahi'', ''Padhi'', and ''Phri'') is an
exonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
, although the speakers themselves use it. The Paharis' own terms for the language are ''Pihi'' in Lalitpur District and ''Pahara'' in Sindhupalchok. The term ''Nagarkoti'' has also been in use since the 19th century by speakers in Lalitpur district. The word ''Pahari'' is ambiguous: it is also sometimes used in rural areas to refer to Nepali, and it is the common name for
several other languages of South Asia.
References
Sources
*
*
description of the variety of the hamlet of Kodku, Badikhel VDC, Lalitpur district*{{cite report, last = Smith, first = Brianne J., year= 2022, title = A Sociolinguistic Study of Pahari: A Language of Nepal, series = Journal of Language Survey Reports. 2022-003, url = https://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/92594
Mahakiranti languages
Languages of Nepal