Language
Newars are bound together by a common language and culture. Their common language is Nepal Bhasa ("Newari" according to Statistics Nepal) or the linguistic progenitor of that language.
Nepal Bhasa already existed as a spoken language during the Licchavi period. Inscriptions in Nepal Bhasa emerged from the 12th century, the palm-leaf manuscript from Uku Bahah being the first example. Nepal Bhasa developed from the 14th to the late 18th centuries as the court and state language. It was used universally in stone and copper inscriptions, sacred manuscripts, official documents, journals, title deeds, correspondence and creative writing.
In 2001, there were approximately 825,000 native speakers of Nepal Bhasa. Many Newar communities within Nepal also speak their own dialects of Nepal Bhasa, such as the Dolakha Newar Language. Nepal Bhasa is of Tibeto-Burman origin but has been heavily influenced by Indo-Aryan languages like Sanskrit, Pali, Bengali and Maithili.
Read more about this topic: Newa People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... language is meaningful because it is the expression of thoughts—of thoughts which are about something.”
—Roderick M. Chisholm (b. 1916)
“The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.”
—Paul De Man (1919–1983)