Language distribution in Nepal and question on unit of additional official language

Authors

  • Bhim Narayan Regmi Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3126/gipan.v4i0.35462

Keywords:

Nepalese languages, language distribution, majority language, language policy, official language

Abstract

Nepal has 123 languages within six families of spoken languages and a sign language. She has federal administrative structure and three levels of government. There is no majority language at national level. Nepali is the only majority language at province level with majority in 4 among the 7 provinces, and 21 majority languages at local level. The distribution of languages in terms of mother tongue speakers varies considerably among the different levels – national, province and local – as well as among the different units of the same level – among the provinces and among the local levels. According to the provision in the prevalent constitution, one or more majority language(s) spoken as mother tongue in a province can be additional official language of the province provided by the particular province through province law. This paper looks at the language data at different levels and concludes that the province is not the appropriate unit for use of additional official language in terms of cost effectiveness and inclusiveness, instead local level is the appropriate unit. Thus it suggests to consider local level as the unit of implementation and include the languages above 25% mother tongue speakers in the local level for the additional official language.

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Author Biography

Bhim Narayan Regmi, Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Bhim Narayan Regmi (bhimregmi@gmail.com) is Lecturer at Central Department of Linguistics (CDL), Tribhuvan University. He has authored, co-authored and edited six books in Nepali and published dozens of research articles as single and joint author on various areas of linguistics including corpus, phonetic and grammatical descriptions, spoken language features, language policy, orthography, literary criticism, folk song, and proverb in English and Nepali.

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Published

2019-12-31

How to Cite

Regmi, B. N. (2019). Language distribution in Nepal and question on unit of additional official language. Gipan, 4, 117–141. https://doi.org/10.3126/gipan.v4i0.35462

Issue

Section

Articles