The sound system of Nepali shares many features with other Indo-Aryan languages.

Vowels
Nepali has 6 vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. There are two dipthongs: /ai/ and /au/. All vowels can be oral or nasal. Nasalization makes a difference in word meaning.

xs	Front	Central	Back
High	i	xx	u
Mid	e		o
Low	x	a

as the first vowel in about

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of Nepali vowel letters.

Consonants
Nepali has 30 consonants.

• There is a contrast between aspirated vs. unaspirated stops and affricates, e.g., p—p, t—t, k—k, t- t, d- d. Aspirated consonants are produced with a strong puff of air.
• There is a contrast between apical and retroflex stops, e.g., t - , d- . Apical consonants are produced with the tip of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth, whereas retroflex consonants are produced with the tongue curled, so that its underside comes in contact with the roof of the mouth.
• Nepali permits few consonant clusters.

..xxx	.xxc	Bilabial	Apico-dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Alveo-palatal	Velar
Stops voiceless	unaspirated	p	t	x		.x.x..	k
	aspirated	p	t	x		....xx	k
Stops voiced	unaspirated	b	d	x		x	g
	aspirated	b	d	x		x	g
Fricatives	voiceless	xx	x	s	x
	voiced	x	x	z	x		x
Affricates	voiceless	x	x	x	xx	t- t	x
	voiced	x	x	x	x	d- d	x
Nasals	x	m	n	x
Laterals	x	......x	l	x		x.....	...x
Flap	x	..x.... .x	.	x		....	...x
Semi-vowels	.x	w	.xx	x	.x	j	.x

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of Nepali Consonant + Vowel syllables.

Nepali grammar has many commonalities with the grammars of other Indo-Aryan languages. Like all these languages, Nepali is agglutinative, i.e., it adds suffixes to roots to build words and to express grammatical relations. It also uses inflections for making certain grammatical categories.

Noun phrase
Nepali nouns have the following major characteristics.

• There are two numbers: singular and plural. Plural is marked by a plural marker which is not used if plurality is clear from the context.
• Gender distinctions are in the process of disappearing from the language.
• There are two cases: nominative and oblique.
• There is a strong system of classifiers, or counters, which are used when nouns are counted.
• There is a well-developed system of honorifics.

Postpositions
Nepali uses a number of postpositions which have case-like functions. They take the form of affixes attached to an entire phrase, rather than a single noun, e.g., possessive, ergative in the past tense, instrumental, and one which marks the accusative of animate nouns, etc. There are other postpositions which perform the function of prepositions.

Verb phrase
Nepali verbs have the following major characteristics:

• Nepali verbs occur in the following forms: root, imperfect stem, perfect stem, and infinitive. The stems agree with nouns in gender and number.
• There are three persons: 1st, 2nd, 2nd honorific, 3rd.
• There are two numbers: singular and plural;
• There are three tenses: present, past, future.
• There are two aspects: imperfective and perfective.
• There are three moods: indicative, imperative, optative.
• There are two voices: active and passive.

Politeness
Nepali has an elaborate system of pronouns, expressing various levels of politeness, depending on the gender, number, distance, and status of the referent.

There is an additional form for extremely formal situations. There is also a polite form of address.

Word order
The normal word order in Nepali is Subject - Object - Verb.

The basic vocabulary of Assamese is Sanskrit in origin, but over the years Nepali has borrowed words from other languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic, Hindi and English. Written Nepali is mostly influenced by Sanskrit. Spoken Nepali has many loanwords from neighboring Tibeto-Burmese languages.

Below are the Nepali numerals 1-10 in Romanization.

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of some common phrases in Nepali.