Nepali phrasebook pronunciation · Pronunciation in Nepali phrasebook
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Pronunciation in Nepali phrasebook
Pronunciation in Nepali phrasebook
h A superscript "h" indicates that the proceeding consonant is aspirated. "Aspiration" just means that the sound involves a more forceful breath. At first it will sound like everyone around you is always on the verge of laughing -- "c -ha!- t" "d -ha!- og!" For now it's just important to remember that "th" is not the "th" sound in "that" -- there is no "th" sound in Nepali.
n A superscript "n" indicates that the proceeding vowel is nasal. To the English-speaking ear (don't try to visualize that too hard) nasalized vowels just sound like they are followed by a "n." Listen to yourself say words like "injury," "animal," and "young."
! The trickiest sound for non-natives are the "retroflex" consonants. Usually they are represented by a dot under the letter or by bold text, but I find that too easy to overlook so I'm using an exclamation mark. The retroflex consonants are what make an "Indian accent" sound "Indian." Think of Apu the Kwik E Mart owner, from the Simpsons, then:
Find your tongue
Find the inside of your mouth
Use your tongue to poke at the roof of your mouth
Notice there's a kind of ridge behind your top teeth
Curl your tongue so that the bottom of the tip is touching this ridge
Look in a mirror
Do you see the gross bottom of your tongue? Good!
Now say "Doh!" like Homer
Now find someone you know who can make the sound and have them show you
All the Nepali words you'll see here are written in "Roman Transliteration" -- which just means using the Roman alphabet to try and represent sounds in the Nepali alphabet (which isn't really an "alphabet" per se, but that's another conversation).
In English we use a combination of letters to represent different sounds, so the "a" in "father" is different from the "a" in "made" or "bat". In the transliteration of Nepali, one letter pretty much equals one sound. There are no silent "q"s or "k"s or "e"s. K-n-i-e-f is "K-nief," m-a-d-e is "ma-de," etc.
Consonants, with the exception of the aspirated and retroflex variety are pretty much what you'd expect.
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Nepali phrasebook Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.