World Language Map

Where is Kathmandu Valley Newari spoken?

Kathmandu Valley Newari (नेवाः भाय्) is a Sino-Tibetan language, spoken in Nepal and India. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Kathmandu Valley Newari is spoken

Kathmandu Valley Newari is spoken in 2 countries: Nepal and India. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Nepal3.3%1,027,039
IndiaNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Kathmandu Valley Newari is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Kathmandu Valley Newari.

How many people speak Kathmandu Valley Newari?

Wikidata gives about 894,000 first-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2011). It also lists about 33,000 second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2011). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Kathmandu Valley Newari sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Kathmandu Valley Newari as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Sino-Tibetan
  2. Himalayish
  3. Mahakiranti
  4. Newaric
  5. Newar
  6. Kathmandu Valley Newari

Related languages

Other languages in the Newar group:

More about Kathmandu Valley Newari

Codes: ISO 639-3 new, Glottolog newa1246. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Kathmandu Valley Newari

Where is Kathmandu Valley Newari spoken?

Kathmandu Valley Newari is spoken in Nepal and India. Unicode CLDR puts it at 3.3% of the population of Nepal, which is about 1,027,039 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Kathmandu Valley Newari?

Wikidata gives about 894,000 first-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2011). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 33,000 second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2011).

Which language family is Kathmandu Valley Newari in?

Glottolog places Kathmandu Valley Newari in the Sino-Tibetan family, in the branch Himalayish, Mahakiranti, Newaric and Newar.

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