Linguistic demography of Nepal

The focus of this paper is on demographic aspects rather than linguistics. However, it seems relevant to commence with semantics of some of Nepali terms relating to language. The first refers to the variation between bhasha in written form and kura (as boli in Hindi) in colloquiel speech for language or dialect. The second is the difference in pronunciation whereby bhasha means language or dialect despite the use of such terms as bhasha for the former and bhaskika for the latter. The various population censuses use the neutral term mother tongue. Normally, 'mother tongue' means one's native language, 'language' is the speech peculiar to a particular region. Drawing distinction between language and dialect is difficult for its tendency to be subjective and political. Thus, the report of the National-language Policy Advisory Committee remains non-committal by relying heavily on 36 languages reported in the census as well as making cursory references to 70 languages/dialects reported by researchers.