Nepali

IP Leipzig/Zurich

Nepali is an Indo-European language and the lingua franca in wide areas of the Central Himalayas.

Nepali has been in contact with Chintang for at least about 150 years, and for the past few generations, most Chintang speakers have been bilingual in Nepali. This issue ties into a broader research issue that has been of long-standing interest in Himalayan linguistics: to what extent did Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European influence each other and in what directions?