Basic Nepali Course Resources

We are following the Basic Spoken Nepali Course produced by the Nepali Peace Corps, which is free to download from their site.  For convenience, here is the Basic Course PDF Basic-Course-in-Spoken-Nepali pdf-1ga6twb , and the conversation sound files 1 and 2 can be downloaded from the site link above.

The resource is great for building up sentence structure in Nepali, but isn’t ‘kid’ friendly.  So as a family we have put together some resources to help families learn the vocabulary along the way.

Gestures and music can help with retention of vocabulary, doing an action brings meaning association and focus to the word, music rhythm keeps us on task, allowing for multiple intelligences to be activated in the brain….like an aerobics session for our brain 🙂

The big bonus is, the action we have used in the videos are taken from the AUSLAN Sign Bank online dictionary.  So not only does the action help us remember the Nepali, we are also learning vocab for two languages for no extra effort!

If you are following the Peace Corps course, you can use these videos to help you learn the vocab too.

Here is an example of one of the videos, watch and follow the instructions below it.

Instructions:

Watch the first part of the video…the Nepali words are spoken together with the AUSLAN sign on the first beat of the song.  There is then pause for you to repeat the word and do the sign on the second beat of the song.  Keep watching and ‘echoing’ the word and sign.  The Nepali and English words have also been typed into the video for a visual of the word and English meaning.  Do this as may times as you need to learn the actions and words.

Then watch the second part of the video, which only has the ACTION being performed, and no Nepali or English reference typed to see.  This is kind of like a fun test.  You watch the action, then in the second beat copy the action and say the Nepali word out loud.  Each action is repeated, so you have a second chance to get the word right if you stumbled the first time.  If you keep stumbling and can’t keep up with the beat, repeat the first part of the video till you are confident with your actions and words. Keep repeating the ‘test’ till you can say the Nepali words to the beat!

Please note that we are learning Nepali ourselves, and have produced these videos for our learning, just sharing with anyone that would like some fun help remembering the vocab.  For correct pronunciation of the vocab please practice with a Nepali speaker, and use the sound files that go with the actual course 🙂

Still not sure what to do???

Here is an example of a WAM (Words/Action/Music) exercise that has both leader and students.  The leader says the word and does the action, the students ‘echo’ both.  Second time through, the leader only performs the action, the students echo the action AND say the word out loud, kind of like a test, prompted only by the action.

The series of videos we have produced to learn with, ONLY have the leader part.  YOU are the student and have to interact with the video, echoing the first round, and then REMEMBERING the word the second round.

Have fun. As we make the videos we will add more pages.  At the moment here are the videos we have made:

Links to videos created to help learn the vocabulary to the ‘Basic Spoken Nepali Course’ – (Created by Nepali Peace Corps)

Lesson 1 – Pronouns and adjectives

Lesson 1 – Verbs and Question Words

Lesson 1 – Nouns

Lesson 2 –

Lesson 2 –