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| web | Saturday 25th of December 2004 12:31:22 PM |
| some nepali words i learned last week - LEKHA -- write HERA - look BHANA - say HO - yes HOINA - no MA - i HAMEE - we TIMEE - you YO - This KETO - boy KETEE - gurl PURUSHA - male NAREE - female may be these things are known to all / was there in ealrier postings. i 'm just putting in .. thnks | |
| Anya | Saturday 25th of December 2004 07:39:24 PM |
| - Hi Web! Thank you so much for sharing what you've learned. Even if it does appear somewhere, it will be good review and you've written some things that got me thinking... There are many ways of phonetically spelling out Nepali words with English characters. Take a look Here, I tried to make a little standardization for spelling for all of us. I haven't seen the words you wrote for man and woman, I wonder which region they are from? As for boy and girl, those are the words I learned also (with a minor correction) and you can see how they differ only in the ending. In Nepali, you can tell right away the gender of a noun, (and adjectives, adverbs and verbs that describe it) because they follow the same suffix pattern. So-- Boy: keţā Girl: keţī (or keţee) still long "ee" sound. Masculine words end in a long 'ā' and feminine in a long 'ī' If you are talking about inanimate objects that do NOT have gender, for instance books (kitāb), you will see a case of "inflecting adjectives" where adjectives change endings depending on the number. e.g. great book - ţhūl[b]o[/b] kitāb great books - ţhūl[b]ā[/b] kitāb[b]harū[/b] [i]*the [b]-harū[/b] addition to anything makes that object plural.*[/i] | |
| anup | Thursday 06th of January 2005 08:47:28 PM |
| good going - well..very impressive..actually the word that web wrote for man and woman is actually in "Sanskrit" the old language, however those words are still used in very formal speeches Man = purusha woman = Naree regular words Man = Lognemanche Woman = Swasnimanche "manche = person" till then anup | |
| Anya | Sunday 09th of January 2005 04:28:20 AM |
| some questions - Anup, I keep meaning to ask you about the best way to transcribe from Devanagari to Romanized form. For instance, I see "it is" written as "chha" and I'm not certain exactly why? Is it to differentiate it from the phonetic "cha" which is 'ca' but pronounced as a 'ch' sound? Some websites seem to transcribe the ī sound as 'ee'..what is the convention there? I've also noticed that some books (the only ones I've seen so far) write the long 'a' as either 'aa' or 'a:' What is the best convention to use for that? I haven't been able to find a good grammar book (just a Sanskrit grammar one), and I'm wondering how many tenses there are and also from the complex subset, which ones are used predominantly? Dherai dhanyabad! | |
| rspdlp | Thursday 07th of April 2005 10:06:07 PM |
| - Hello everyone! What is the best resource for correct pronunciation. I am brand new to Phrase base, and going to Nepal this October. I was a linguistics major in college, so hopefully I will have at least a small working knowledge of conversational Nepali when I go. I am just starting today to learn Nepali, and I assumed a Nepali/English dictionary would be the best source of pronunciation. Any other input would be appreciated. | |
| Anya | Thursday 21st of April 2005 08:09:53 PM |
| - Namaste, Lindsay and I are both using Teach Yourself Nepali. When I got my copy it came with 2 CD's which give representative pronunciation for the dialogs and exercises in the book. I find them quite helpful. If you have access to this book it may help you in working on pronunciation before you go. It has at least three speakers which will attune your ears. Hope this helps, | |
| MeroBabu | Monday 27th of June 2005 03:30:35 AM |
| - These are the things I know. mero babu nanu sanu jindagani mayalu mero pati ra timro patni ma timlai derei maya garchu mero raja ma timlai miss garchu ma timlai chahanchra ra chahanchu Aau aana masanga gauna (gau na) Ma maya garchu timilai ati kinki timro myaa chokho chha :) Malai chikna man lagyo. Malai bhok lagyo. Malai poppi/chuppa/chuma dinchau? chimpu Sita didi, Indra dai moto babu :) namaste, namaskar (tapailai) kasto chha?? - (Malai) thik chha. Janchu, kanchu.... Yo/Tyo ke ho? Timi kaha chha?? | |
