World Language Map

Where is Nepali spoken?

Nepali (नेपाली) is an Indo-European language, spoken in Nepal, India and Bhutan. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

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 Nepali is spoken

Nepali is spoken in 3 countries: Nepal, India and Bhutan. 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
Nepal44%13,693,856
India0.6%7,891,128
Bhutan17%150,373

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, Nepali 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 Nepali.

How many people speak Nepali?

Wikidata gives about 15.8 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). It also lists about 8.7 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 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 Nepali sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Nepali as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Indo-Iranian
  4. Indo-Aryan
  5. Middle-Modern Indo-Aryan
  6. Continental Indo-Aryan
  7. Midlands Indo-Aryan
  8. Indo-Aryan Northern zone
  9. Eastern Pahari
  10. Nepali

Related languages

Other languages in the Eastern Pahari group:

More about Nepali

Codes: ISO 639-3 npi, Glottolog nepa1254. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Nepali

Where is Nepali spoken?

Nepali is spoken in Nepal, India and Bhutan. Unicode CLDR puts it at 44% of the population of Nepal, which is about 13,693,856 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Nepali?

Wikidata gives about 15.8 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). 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 8.7 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2011).

Which language family is Nepali in?

Glottolog places Nepali in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Middle-Modern Indo-Aryan, Continental Indo-Aryan, Midlands Indo-Aryan, Indo-Aryan Northern zone and Eastern Pahari.

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