| Nar Phu | |
| States: | Nepal |
| Region: | Manang district |
| Speakers: | 600 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Sino-Tibetan |
| Fam2: | Tamangic |
| Fam3: | Manang |
| Dia1: | Nar (Lower Nar) |
| Dia2: | Phu (Upper Nar) |
| Iso3: | npa |
| Glotto: | narp1239 |
| Glottorefname: | Nar Phu |
| Notice: | IPA |
Nar Phu, or ’Narpa, is a Sino-Tibetan variety spoken in the two villages of Nar and Phu, in the Valley of the Nar Khola in the Manang district of Nepal. It forms a dialect continuum with Manang and may be intelligible with it; however, the Nar and Phu share a secret language to confound Gyasumdo and Manang who would otherwise understand them.
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /i/ | pronounced as /u/ | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /e/ | pronounced as /o/ | |
| Open-mid | pronounced as /ɛ/ | ||
| Low | pronounced as /a/ | pronounced as /ɑ/ |
| Bilabial | Dental | Retroflex | Alveolo-palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | unaspirated | pronounced as /p/ | pronounced as /t/ | pronounced as /ʈ/ | pronounced as /k/ | ||
| aspirated | pronounced as /pʰ/ | pronounced as /tʰ/ | pronounced as /ʈʰ/ | pronounced as /kʰ/ | |||
| Affricate | unaspirated | pronounced as /ts/ | pronounced as /tɕ/ | ||||
| aspirated | pronounced as /tsʰ/ | pronounced as /tɕʰ/ | |||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /s/ | pronounced as /ɕ/ | |||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /n/ | pronounced as /ɲ/ | pronounced as /ŋ/ | |||
| Lateral | voiced | pronounced as /l/ | |||||
| voiceless | pronounced as /l̥/ | ||||||
| Rhotic | voiced | pronounced as /r/ | |||||
| voiceless | pronounced as /r̥/ | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /w/ | pronounced as /j/ | pronounced as /ɰ/ | ||||
Nar Phu distinguishes four tones: high falling, high level, low rising murmured, and mid/low falling murmured.
Nar-Phu has a different vowel system than other Tamangic languages, due to the amount of front vowels. Nar-Phu is a four-tone language. Tones 1 and 4 are falling; tones 3 and 4 are murmured. Tone 2 is distinguished by its clear, high quality. Nar-Phu has no formal gendered language system, but some suffixes are used to describe animals, even castrated male animals. Honorific Noun phrases are used when there is not a noun in place for said words.
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