NEPALI-ENGLISH 
                                                            
                                                         & 
                                                            
                                    ENGLISH-NEPALI 
                                             GLOSSARY 
                                                            
                                                                                             
                                                            
                                                  Shambhu Oja 
                                                     Banu Oja 
                                                    Mark Turin 
                                                Elisabeth Uphoff 
                                                            
                                                   second edition 
                                                            
                                                 South Asia Program 
                                                  Cornell University 
                                                      June 2004 
            
                                                ii 
         Introduction to the Second Edition 
          
         The Nepali language is spoken by around 20 million people in the Kingdom of Nepal, where it is 
         the national and official language. About 11 million of these speakers use Nepali as a mother 
         tongue. Outside of Nepal, Nepali is also spoken in north-east India and in much of Bhutan. On 
         account  of  its  widespread  use  in  the  states  of  West  Bengal  (particularly  in  the  district  of 
         Darjeeling) and Sikkim, the Indian Constitution recognizes Nepali as a major language of India. 
         While Dzongkha is the national language of Bhutan, Nepali is widely spoken by many of its 
         citizens  and  used  as  a  lingua  franca  across  the  country.  In  short,  Nepali  is  a  major  regional 
         language used in numerous South Asian countries. 
          
            Nepali is an Indo-Aryan language, and thus part of a linguistic grouping which includes 
         other South Asian languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati. Modern Indo-Aryan 
         languages  are  related  to  Sanskrit,  much  as  modern  European  languages  are  related  to  Latin. 
         Nepali is written in the Devanâgarî (or ‘Nagari’) script, which is also used for Hindi, Marathi and 
         Sanskrit. Nepali Devanâgarî has 12 vowels and 36 consonants. The script is essentially phonetic, 
         meaning that the pronunciation closely resembles the written form. The script is written from left 
         to right, with a top line indicating the word boundaries. 
          
            This volume is made up of two discrete glossaries, first Nepali-English and thereafter 
         English-Nepali. While similar, the lexical corpora which make up the two glossaries are actually 
         quite distinct. The Nepali-English Glossary closely follows the content of Shambhu and Banu 
         Oja’s Nepali Beginner’s Primer, and the lesson number in which a word is first used is given in 
         the penultimate column. This 51-page glossary is organised according to the Nepali alphabetic 
         order. The English-Nepali Glossary does not map directly onto the content of the lessons in the 
         primer,  but  rather  provides  an  extensive  corpus  of  terms  which  Cornell’s  Nepali  language 
         instructors have been asked to translate over the years. The content of this glossary reflects the 
         interests of generations of Cornell students who have studied anthropology, ecology, economics, 
         politics and sociology in Nepal and through Nepali. 
          
                             Shambhu Oja, Department of Asian Studies 
                             Mark Turin, Digital Himalaya Project 
                              
                             Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 
                             June 2004 
          
         Acknowledgements to the Second Edition 
          
         The production of the second edition of this Nepali-English and English-Nepali Glossary has 
         relied on the generous support of many individuals. First and foremost, without the financial and 
         administrative support of the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University, and specifically 
         Professor  Edward  M.  Gunn,  Ann  VanDeMark  and  Kim  Steber,  this  revised  and  reworked 
         glossary would never have seen the light of day. We are grateful for your trust and help. Second, 
         the Nepali Unicode font team at Madan Puraskâr Pustakâlaya in Kathmandu have been a pleasure 
         to work with. In particular, we would like to thank Amar Gurung and Pawan Chitrakar. Finally, 
         we would like to express our appreciation to members of the Cornell community, in particular to 
         Anne Stengle and Durga Bor at the South Asia Program for their help with the printing, Professor 
         Kathryn March for her unflagging support and Sara Shneiderman for her careful editorial eye. 
         Thanks  to  Ajay  Rai  of  Wandering  Spirits  for  the  front  cover  photo.  Needless  to  say,  any 
         remaining errors or typographical lapses are our responsibility. 
            
         iii   
           
         Introduction to the First Edition 
          
         The Nepali language program at Cornell faces several challenges that are likely to characterize 
         similar  programs elsewhere.  The number of students taking Nepali changes every year, each 
         student  has  a  different  level  of  ability  and  there  is  a  scarcity  of  published  Nepali  texts  and 
         dictionaries. Most importantly, most Nepali language students have specific but widely diverse 
         fields of interest. Some students come from the Peace Corps, some come after study or travel 
         abroad, and increasingly some come from Nepalese-American families. This means that they 
         have very different language backgrounds and very different reasons for wanting to learn Nepali. 
         Some want to work in development on irrigation or healthcare; others want to do PhD research on 
         questions of religious change or women’s issues; others simply want to be able to talk to older 
         members of their families. 
             
            It has been our goal at Cornell to teach not only basic skills in spoken and written Nepali 
         but to try to make our students linguistically competent in their chosen fields of specialization as 
         well. Because of the difficulties in locating texts and reference books to suit all their varying 
         needs, we have tried to create new kinds of instructional materials for Nepali which could: 
          
            (a)  teach increasingly complex grammatical structures 
            (b)  tailor  additional  vocabulary  and  dialogues  to  individual  students’  professional 
              directions 
            (c)  wherever  possible  utilize  material  from  Nepalese  school  books,  folk  stories, 
              literature,  songs,  proverbs,  Radio  Nepal/Nepal  TV,  taped  conversations,  or  other 
              sources not created solely for the classroom 
          
            We began the Nepali Computer Project in 1988 with support between 1988 and 1992 
         from  the  Northeast  Consortium  for  Language  Teaching  and  Learning,  Cornell  South  Asia 
         Program, and the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Our objective has been to 
         develop  an  integrated  system  to  provide  Nepali  language  instructors  with  flexible  teaching 
         materials that can be readily adapted to suit their students’ varying numbers, abilities, and wide 
         range  of  interests.  For  this  reason  we  chose  a  computer-based  system  because  it  offered  the 
         flexibility of organization and presentation that we needed. 
            At  present,  the  project  consists  of  a  Beginners’  Primer,  a  Beginning  Reader,  an 
         Intermediate Reader, and this Glossary which has been compiled from the vocabulary contained 
         in the other materials using a computer database. All of the words in this glossary are coded by 
         subject and by the chapter or story in which they are first introduced, so that it would be possible 
         to print out specific vocabulary lists according to topic of interest and/or level of study. 
            It  has been a long and informative voyage from our first days, trying to produce new 
         materials for each level of students. These volumes represent the effort not only of the language 
         instructors and their main assistants, but also the cumulative questions, problems, and needs of 
         students in Nepali language classes at Cornell for almost ten years. We hope that these volumes, 
         and those that will follow, will continue to serve them in all of their diverse needs. 
             
                             Professor Kathryn March 
                             Department of Anthropology 
                             Cornell University 
          
                             Ithaca, New York 
                             1992 
                          
                                                                                                                       iv 
                     Acknowledgements to the First Edition 
                      
                     The Nepali Computer Project at Cornell owes thanks to many people. First, of course, is the 
                     Cornell South Asia Program which is making this publication possible and which has backed the 
                     Nepali  language  offerings  at  Cornell  since  1984.  We  would  like  to  thank  the  Northeast 
                     Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning for their financial support of this project. The 
                     Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Cornell, too, provided invaluable support 
                     both in the basic support of the Nepali language program and in the person of Ann VanDeMark, 
                     without whose administrative savvy any of this work would have been unthinkable. Professor 
                     James Gair’s Sinhala glossary provided an important early model and inspiration for our efforts. 
                     And Professor Kathryn March was ever behind the project with constant advocacy and support. 
                     But above all, we are indebted to all the students through the years of Nepali teaching at Cornell 
                     who have read, revised, and added to this work. And of those students we are especially grateful 
                     for the special assistance of Christopher Scott and Bhushan Tuladar. 
                      
                              We are glad to be able to offer this printed version of our Nepali language materials. 
                     However, please bear in mind that this is a first edition and may contain spelling or other errors. 
                     We would deeply appreciate feedback both on technical and methodological presentation so that 
                     we can make the second edition better. 
                      
                                                                       Banu Oja, Shambhu Oja, Elisabeth Uphoff 
                      
                                                                       Ithaca, New York 
                                                                       1992 
                      
                     Technical Notes 
                      
                     Work  on  the  first  edition  of  this  glossary  started  in  1988  using  an  early  Apple  Macintosh 
                     computer,  a  database  package  called  FileMaker+  and  the  Kånchi  NR  Devanagari  font.  The 
                     glossary was subsequently published in 1992. 
                      
                     The second edition was prepared in May 2004 by Shambhu Oja and Mark Turin, using the Nepali 
                     Unicode environment devised by the Madan Puraskâr Pustakâlaya library in Kathmandu, Nepal. 
                     The original glossary was retyped as a tabulated Microsoft Word document, checked and then 
                     sorted according to the Nepali and English alphabetical orders. We have used a Unicode Nepali 
                     font called Kalimati, which is freely downloadable from the Madan Puraskâr Pustakâlaya website 
                     along  with  the  keyboard  layout  .  The  updated  version  of  this  bilingual 
                     glossary is currently being formatted as a searchable database for online delivery. 
                      
                      
                     List of Abbreviations 
                      
                             an         =    anthropology (words dealing with kinship or religion) 
                             ag         =    agriculture 
                             g          =    general (basic glossary) 
                             h          =    household (food, utensils, parts of houses) 
                             p          =    politics