Nepali is an Indo-Aryan language. It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal. It is also spoken in certain parts of India, particularly by Indian Gorkha, and by a significant number of Bhutanese and some Burmese people. In India, Nepali is listed in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India having an official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and in West Bengal's Darjeeling district. Nepali developed in proximity to a number of Indo-Aryan languages, most notably the Pahari languages and Magahi, and shows Sanskrit influences. However, owing to Nepal's geographical area, it has also been influenced by Tibeto-Burman languages. Nepali is mainly differentiated from Central Pahari, both in grammar and vocabulary, by Tibeto-Burman idioms owing to close contact with the respective language group. Nepali language shares 40% lexical similarity with the Bengali language. British resident at Kathmandu Brian Houghton Hodgson has observed that it is, in eight-tenths of its vocables, substantially Hindi.

Historically, the language was first called the Khas language (Khas kurā), then Gorkhali or Gurkhali (language of the Gorkha Kingdom) before the term Nepali was coined. Other names include Parbatiya ("mountain language", identified with the Parbatiya people of Nepal) and Dzongkha Lhotshammikha ("Southern Language", spoken by the Lhotshampas of Bhutan). It is also known as Khe language among the Newar people and Pahari language among Madhesi and Tharus.

Computer writing of Nepali
Nepal
Outline
• Text Input, Internal Representation and
Display
• Script, Character set, Font
• Pre-Unicode Era, Pretending to Write in
Nepali
• Advent of Nepali Unicode
• Nepali Unicode and the Prevailing Issues,
Limitations
• Conclusion
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) ,PatanDhoka, Nepal,
April 5, 2011
Text Input, Internal Representation and
Display
• Text input →Input Device (Keyboard)
• Minimal unit of a text → Character
• Each character is represented internally by a character code
in the storage devices(main memory, disks etc.)
• Character code – different numerical values characteristic of
an encoding scheme(e.g., ASCII, UNICODE etc.).
• For example, the character code of the latin small letter A -
“a” as per ASCII(decimal) is 97.
• Display → Output Device(Computer screen, disks, printer)
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Nepal, April 5, 2011
Script, Character set, Font
• Every language with a written tradition has a
script or a writing system that it follows for
writing
• For example, Devanagari script for Nepali, Hindi,
Marathi and other languages
• Each script consists of a character set (a collection
of characters and symbols used for the language)
• We need a font for the computer system to
interpret the character codes and display on the
screen.
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Nepal, April 5, 2011
Pre-Unicode Era
Pretending to write in Nepali
- Purely managed by some hack fonts
- Text encoding (codes for each character of the text
based on ASCII encoding).
- For example, the Nepali character “ब” as per the
Preeti font is mapped to the letter “a” in the keyboard
and correspondingly assigned the latter’s code for
internal representation.
- Worse, no uniform character set mappings with
character codes
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Nepal, April 5, 2011
Pre-Unicode Era
Pretending to write in Nepali…
Disadvantages:
- Use of the computer confined to simply typing
- Lot of compromises in terms of typing
- Source and Target computers both need to have the same
font installed in their machines
- No consistent and uniform keyboard layouts (Keyboard
layouts differed according to fonts and what developers felt right
in terms of character key mappings)
- Typing difficult and requiring rigorous trainings
- Typed text lacks processing benefits (Sort, Find and Replace,
Arithmetic calculations etc. not possible)
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Nepal, April 5, 2011
Few conjuncts in Devanagari
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK),
PatanDhoka, Nepal, April 5, 2011
Much more exists…
Source: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm
Pre-Unicode era
Pretending to write in Nepali...
In Preeti In Times New Roman Character codes – ASCII(Decimal)
asdg asdg 97115100103
!@ !@ 3364
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Nepal, April 5, 2011
Fig.1. Keyboard layout for Preeti font
Advent of Nepali Unicode
• Font Standardization Project
• Allocation of a separate block for the
Devanagari script in the Unicode chart
• Development of Unicode compliant Fonts and
Keyboard Layouts
• Changes
– No more technical hassles in document transfer
and exchange
– Text processing possible for Nepali
– Choice of fonts available
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Nepal, April 5, 2011
Advent of Nepali Unicode…
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) ,
PatanDhoka, Nepal, April 5, 2011
Fig.2. Devanagari block (U+0900 –U+097F) in the Unicode chart
Advent of Nepali Unicode…
• Has opened up myriads of opportunities
– Blogs and social media (the medium being Nepali)
– Localization and local language computing
(Revolution in Nepali Language Computing -
NepaLinux, Spell checkers, Nepali Lexicon, Grammar
Analyzer, Machine Translation System, Dictionaries,
Thesauri, Text-to-Speech, Font developments,
Mobile applications, Internationalized Domain
Names, E-governance applications etc.)
• Unicode certainly has provided a good platform to
begin with but is it ideal for expressing the languages
of Nepal and the neighboring regions??
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) ,
PatanDhoka, Nepal, April 5, 2011
Nepali Unicode and the Prevailing
issues, Limitations
• The issue of the three conjuncts (क्ष,त्र,ज्ञ)
• Should/Should not they be assigned separate
code spaces?
• Where should they be placed in dictionaries,
telephone directories?
• Writing the languages of Nepal other than Nepali
in Nepali Unicode
• What are the limitations?
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) ,
PatanDhoka, Nepal, April 5, 2011
Nepali Unicode and the Prevailing
issues, Limitations…
• The World Wide Web is fast adopting Nepali
Unicode
• But there is very low adoption in print houses
– Formatting problems
– Legacy issues
– Unicode not supported in popularly used
applications like Adobe PageMaker
– Possible solutions (Use of converters)
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Conclusion
• Have come a long way from where it started
• Still much to achieve in terms of adoption
• Need to go for migration tools like Font
converters to ultimately switch hundred
percent to Unicode
• Although Unicode is officially adopted by the
Government in its policy, trainings and
awareness campaigns still a must nation wide
• Continuous discourse on the current
limitations of Nepali Unicode necessary
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) , PatanDhoka,
Nepal, April 5, 2011
Thank You
Queries??
Seminar on Writing the Languages of Nepal with the Computer organized by the Language Technology Kendra(LTK) ,
PatanDhoka, Nepal, April 5, 2011

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