None of the online Nepali courses or YouTube channels are working for us!  We were trying to find a ready made, kid friendly course…but all we could find were random phrase memorisation style programs, or isolated grammar videos.

There was one free course, developed by the Nepali Peace Corp that does seem to scaffold Nepali in a way that helps you build on sentences…and explains the grammar so that you can learn how to put a sentence together and substitute words to say what you actually want to say!!!  But it is so old it looks like the pdf download was actually scanned from a document typed by a typewriter!!!!  It is not a kid friendly course at all.  I originally dismissed it for this reason….But it may be all we have to work with to help us build our Nepali!

SOOOOO…….I have spent the last week following the course myself, learning the aspects of Nepali grammar and memorising the sentences, and starting to get a feel for Nepali word order, and how the pronouns and verbs work in different sentences.  I’m a language teacher!!! So I am learning 1 step ahead of the kids, and creating our own resources to learn together in a more kid friendly way! 

I am creating our own documents as we go through the course, colour coding grammar aspects so that we can clearly see which word in the sentence is the pronoun, noun, verb, question word, adjective etc., so that we can start to substitute words in the sentence patterns as we learn them.  We have colour coded flash cards for games.  Kids are writing the conversations in the same colours, and memorising them.  We are learning vocab through kinesthetic gesture, props and music, what we call a WAM session, (words, action, music).  Most of the gestures in the above video are taken from Auslan Sign Language.  We use these to teach Chinese too, so we are already familiar.  Gestures help link meaning and aid in recall.  The music provides a rhythm and focus, plus the kids get to listen to their fave songs while learning Nepali 🙂

We are finding our way together, and relying on poor quality sound files for pronunciation.  So our plan is to learn as many conversations as we can each week, then hope to practice what we have learned via Facetime with a Nepali speaker 🙂

Below are the sentence patterns we are learning first, and the tables below that contain the vocab for those first sentence builders.  We have colour coded these on our files as Verbs-Red, Nouns-Blue, Adjectives-Green, Question words-Orange, Pronouns-Purple, Conjunctions and Other words-Black.  Sorry I cannot upload tables in colour on this blog 🙁 But you can see from the piks above how we have coloured our own learning materials 🙂

Conversation 1 

1. namaste.
2. namaste.
3. tapaaiko naam ke ho?
4. mero naam Aurora ho.
5. wahaako naam ke ho?
6. wahaako naam Lucas ho.
7. tapaaiko ghar kahaa ho?
8. mero ghar astreliya ho.
9. wahaako ghar kahaa ho?
10. wahaako ghar nepaal ho.  

Conversation 2  

1. yo ke ho?
2. yo kalam ho.
3. yo kasko kalam ho?
4. yo mero kalam ho.
5. tyo ke ho?
6. tyo kitaab ho.
7. tyo kasko kitaab ho?
8. tyo wahaako kitaab ho.
9. yo ni?
10. tyo tapaaiko kitaab ho.  

Conversation 3  

1. tyo ke ho?
2. yo kitaab ho.
3. tyo kasko kitaab ho?
4. yo mero kitaab ho.
5. kitaab kholnus. tapaaile ke gareko?
6. maile kitaab kholeko.
7. wahaale ke gareko?
8. wahaale kitaab kholeko.  

Conversation 4  

1. Lucas!
2. hajur.
3. tyo kalam ho?
4. hoina.
5. tyo ke ho ta?
6. yo kaapi ho.
7. tyo kasko kaapi ho?
8. yo mero kaapi ho. 

Conversation 5  

1. tyo ke ho?
2. yo kalam ho.
3. tyo kasko kalam ho?
4. yo mero kalam ho.
5. tapaaiko kalam kasto chha?
6. mero kalam kaalo chha.
7. kalam dinos. tapaaile ke gareko?
8. maile kalam dieko.  

Conversation 6 

1. tyo ke ho?
2. yo jholaa ho.
3. tyo kasko jholaa ho?
4. yo wahaako jholaa ho.
5. tyo jholaa kasto chha?
6. yo jholaa seto chha.
7. tyo jholaa dinos. tapaaile ke gareko?
8. maile jholaa dieko. 

Conversation 7 

1. Aurora!
2. hajur.
3. tyo kasko kitaab ho?
4. yo mero kitaab ho.
5. paDhnos. tapaaile ke gareko?
6. maile paDheko.
7. tapaaile kasko kitaab paDheko?
8. maile mero kitaab paDheko.

Verbs		Nouns
chha	Is (to be ) (to locate things and people) eg. the pen is on the table, He is at home Also quality of something or somebody	ghar	home, house
dinu	To give	jholaa	shoulder bag
garnu	To do	kaapi	note book
kholnu	To open	kalam	pen
paDhnu	To read	kamij	shirt
ho	Is (to be)  (define something or somebody) eg. This is my house Kathmandu is the capital	kitaab	book
hoina	Is not (negative of ho)	naam	name
chhaina	Is not (negative of chha)	astreliya	Australia

 

Questions		Pronouns
Kahaa	Where?	mero	my, mine
Ke	What?	tyo	that
Kasko	Whose?	yo	this
Kasto	What colour, How? (Qualitative)	wahaako	His,her,hers
		tapaaiko	your, yours

 

Adjectives		Conjunctions /other
kaalo	Black	hajur	Yes (polite)
seto	white	ta	then /so
		Namaste	hello
		ni	(particle) and how about…?