I was born in Kathmandu to Newar parents, the original inhabitants of the Valley, yet I grew up without learning my mother tongue, Nepal Bhasa. My parents, with the best of intentions, taught us English and Nepali—languages of success and survival in a world that had set ours aside. They believed they were giving us a future. But in that choice, I lost more than words. A Newar without language, I felt alien in the very culture that was meant to be mine.

 

The quiet disappearance of Nepal Bhasa has been so normalized in daily life that I was shocked to find out it had entered UNESCO’s “definitely endangered” list. This slow, subtle and devastating loss has stretched across generations, affecting us in ways we are yet to fully grasp.

 

Our textbooks glorified the “unification” of Nepal by Prithvi Narayan Shah, concealing how the vision of Ek Bhasa, Ek Desh (One Language, One Nation) was achieved by erasing linguistic diversity. In a country of 123 languages, mine did not merely disappear—it was deliberately muted in the name of nation building. 

 

I began to learn my language by asking my parents to teach me, and slowly, our relationship shifted. My father, a former coin-maker, counts money in Nepal Bhasa with me, joking that I might finally get a discount at the local shop. My mother, who had been pressured into using only Nepali after her marriage, lights up when I get a word right. I try to tread with care as a lifetime of pent up shame, anxieties and yearnings meet the fragile joy of learning.

 

No census counts the intimacy of a shared memory, the tenderness of language passed between generations, or the weight of an inherited silence.