Number of Speakers
Almost two-third of the population of Nepal speak Nepali as a native language. The Ethnologue website counts more than 17 million speakers worldwide, including 11 million within Nepal (from the 2001 census).
Nepali is traditionally spoken in the Hill Region of Nepal (Pahad, पहाड), especially in the western part of the country. Though Nepal Bhasa was the dominant language in the Kathmandu valley,Nepali is the most dominant nowadays.Nepali is now used in government and as the everyday language of a growing portion of the local population. Nevertheless the exclusive use of Nepali in the courts and government of Nepal is being challenged. Recognition of other ethnic languages in Nepal was one of the objectives of the Maoist insurgency.
In Bhutan those who speak Nepali (known as Lhotshampa) are estimated at about 35 percent of the population if all displaced Bhutanese refugees are counted (unofficial estimates of the ethnic Nepalese population ran as high as 30 to 40 percent, constituting a majority in the south), or about 242,000 people. Since the late 1980s, over 100,000 Lhotshampas have been forced out of Bhutan, accused by the government of being illegal aliens. A large fraction them were expelled in an "ethnic cleansing" campaign and presently live in refugee camps in eastern Nepal.
In India, there are a large number of Nepali-speaking people. There are an estimated 500,000 Nepali speakers in Sikkim. In Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts of West Bengal, there are about 1,400,000 Nepali speakers. In North-East India (states of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh), there are several million Nepali speakers. A considerable number of Nepali-speaking people are also present in many Indian cities such as Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Combining the Ethnologue figures with strong population growth in Nepal, the assumption of 20 million people with Nepali as their native language is a reasonable estimate for 2006.
Read more about this topic: Nepali Language
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