Jumli Language Letters

Jumli (जुम्ली) has no script of its own. It is written in Devanagari, the script of Nepali, Hindi and Marathi, read left to right with the letters hanging from a line along the top. The language has its own modified Devanagari orthography, which Nepal's Language Commission revised in 2022.

The Jumli writing system finalized by Nepal's Language Commission has 24 vowel characters; the standard Nepali chart lists अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ. Each one except अ also has a sign (matra) that attaches to a consonant: ज + ु = जु, म + ् + ल + ी = म्ली, which together spell जुम्ली. The standard Nepali consonant chart follows the old phonetic grid, five rows of five from क ख ग घ ङ to प फ ब भ म, then य र ल व and श ष स ह; the Jumli writing system finalized by Nepal's Language Commission has 41 consonant characters. School charts end with क्ष त्र ज्ञ, but those are joined pairs typed with the halanta, not separate letters.

Every consonant carries a built-in a, so ज alone is ja. The halanta ् (virama) removes it: before another consonant it makes a conjunct, as in म्ल in जुम्ली or र्ण in कर्णाली, and at the end of a word Nepali spelling writes it to show the word ends in a bare consonant, as in छन् "they are". Nasal vowels take the candrabindu ँ, as in गाउँ "village", the anusvara ं marks a nasal before a consonant, and the visarga ः appears in Sanskrit words such as दुःख "sorrow".

Jumli and Nepali: one script, two ways of speaking

Jumli is an Indo-Aryan variety classified in the Eastern Pahari group and closely related to Nepali. Linguists and the ISO 639-3 standard (code jml) list it as a language of its own, while some people call it a dialect of Nepali; Nepali is the language of schools and government in Jumla, and the two are closely related and share Devanagari.

That history runs through Jumla itself. The Sinja valley in Jumla district was the seat of the Khasa Malla kings, whose realm spread across western Nepal and into Tibet between the 11th and 14th centuries, and inscriptions in the Khas language from their time are among the oldest written records of the speech that became Nepali. That is why Sinja is often called the birthplace of the Nepali language; it is on UNESCO's tentative list of World Heritage sites.

Jumli uses a modified Devanagari orthography; Nepal's Language Commission adopted a revised version in 2022. Jumli and Nepali also differ in vocabulary, verb endings and pronunciation.

How to type Jumli on a keyboard and phone

Type Jumli with a Nepali keyboard. On Windows, add Nepali under Settings → Time & language → Language & region; its keyboard puts the Devanagari letters on the keys, and Win+Space switches back to English. Many people in Nepal instead install the free Nepali Unicode Romanized layout, where the keys follow their Latin sounds (k gives क), which is easier if you already type English. On a Mac, add the Devanagari or Devanagari – QWERTY input source under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources.

On a phone, add Nepali to Gboard. In Gboard's transliteration mode you type jumla in Latin letters and pick जुम्ला from the suggestions, which is a common way to write Facebook posts, song captions and messages. The suggestions follow standard Nepali spelling, so Jumli words may need a letter fixed by hand; copy anything missing, such as । ॥ or the digits ० to ९, from this page.

In HTML any letter can be written by its code: ज is ज, ् is the halanta ् and । is the purnabiram ।. Nepali fonts for posters and video thumbnails are decorative Devanagari fonts over the same Unicode letters.

Where Jumli is spoken

Nepal's 2021 census counted 8,338 people reporting Jumli as their mother tongue and 48,400 reporting it as an ancestral language. Its home is Jumla district and the neighbouring hill districts of Karnali Province in the mid-west, a high country of valleys along the Tila river, a tributary of the Karnali, with the district headquarters at Khalanga in Chandannath municipality, named after its Chandannath temple 🛕. Nepal's largest lake, Rara 🏞️, lies in neighbouring Mugu.

Nepal has no rupee sign of its own: prices are written रू or रु. before the number (रू ५००) or Rs. in English, and ₨ is the generic rupee sign people paste for it. Dates, prices and official documents in Nepal often use the Devanagari digits ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ alongside 0–9.

For the same letters in related languages, see the Nepali collection and the Dotyali collection for Doteli of Nepal's far west, and across the border in India the Kumaoni, Garhwali and Hindi collections; for Nepal's flag, food and landmarks as emoji, see the Nepal collection.

Jumla emoji: marshi rice, beans, apples and deuda

Jumla is known across Nepal for what it grows. Jumli marshi (मार्सी), a cold-hardy red rice planted at well over 2,000 metres among some of the highest rice fields in the world, is 🌾🍚, and in a plate of dal bhat 🍛. Jumli simi, the district's beans, are 🫘, and its apples 🍎 are sold in Kathmandu under the Jumla name, along with Jumla apple brandy.

The Jumli horse 🐎, a small, sure-footed mountain breed, takes its name from the district, and sheep and goats 🐑🐐 graze the high pastures. For prayer and festivals people send 🛕🙏🕉️, with 🪔 for Tihar lamps, and 🎶🧑‍🤝‍🧑 for deuda, the song and dance of the Karnali and far west in which a ring of people hold hands and answer each other in verses.

Together with the flag 🇳🇵 and the mountains 🏔️⛰️ these make the usual Jumla captions: 🇳🇵🏔️🍎 under a photo of the valley, or 🌾🍚 for the rice harvest.