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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Nepal Bhasa

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Nepal Bhasa / Newar Wikipedia

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submitted verification final decision
  This proposal has been approved.
The Board of Trustees and language committee have deemed that there is sufficient grounds and community to create the new language project.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

The requested project was created at new: at an indeterminate date. Note that this request was approved before the implementation of the standardised Language proposal policy, and should not be used as a model for future requests. Shanel 19:06, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal summary
  • Language details: Nepal Bhasa (Newah Bhaye, new ISO 639-3)
  • Editing community: Eukesh(NP), Pratisara(N)
    List your user name if you're interested in editing the wiki. Add "N" next to your
    name if you are a native speaker of this language.
  • Relevant pages: —
  • External links:
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.
  • Approximate number of speakers: 1,000,000
  • Location(s) spoken: Nepal
  • Closely related languages, if any: Tibetan, Kirant, Nepali, Sanskrit
  • Nepal Bhasa is one of the largest and oldest Tibeto-Burman language. It is these days widely written in Devnagari Script.
  • Devnagari is more frequently used at present because it is officially used in Nepal. Scripts as Ranjana and Prachalit was the most used in the past. Nowadays, due to recent revival of the cultural values, the more forgotten scripts like Ranjana and Prachalit are being used more often. Other scripts like Bhunjinmol and Golmol which are considered to be a bit more evolved form of Brahmi and even Brahmi are not used at all and serve for historical references only.
  • This is in response to User:N-true's comments. Thanx for support but Newari is the word assigned by the Khas and westerners to the language of Nepal Bhasa. Nepal Bhasa was the official language of Medieval Nepal. Medieval Nepal consists of the federation of Malla states that occupied the Kathmandu valley and its peripheries. After Prithivi Narayan Shah, a Khas king from western Nepal, became the king of Nepal, the Khas language was renamed as Nepali for political benefit. As Nepal Bhasa sounds very similar to Nepali, it was tagged Newari just because the majority of the people who spoke the language at that time were Newars. Most of the speakers of Nepal Bhasa find this term "Newari" offensive and the usage of the term "Newari" has been criticized many a times by Nepal Bhasa experts. However, as the Nepalese Government especially the Government media still stubbornly continues to address the language by its imposed name rather than the native one, many people are confused about the matter. So, respecting the feelings of those that are speaking and preserving the language rather than the Government policy which in long run wishes to leave no other language in Nepal other than Khas language, I think the proper name of the language is "Nepal Bhasa" or "Newah Bhaye" rather than Newari. -Eukesh
  • In the ethnologue report (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=new), it has been stated that the usage of "Newari" to denote Nepal Bhasa is considered offensive by Newars. In fact, I have learned that people are requesting ethnologue to remove any mention of the language as Newari. So, the proposed domain of new.wikipedia.com might be provocative. Hence, if the developers have not initiated their work on this project, a domain name of nb.wikipedia.org (nb for Nepal Bhasa) might just be used to avoid controversies. Developers, sorry for the inconvenience. -Eukesh 21:24, 18 May 2006
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