Newar or Newari, known officially in Nepal as Nepal Bhasa, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the Newar people, the indigenous inhabitants of Nepal Mandala, which consists of the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions in Nepal.
A line from an inscription dated 1706 using the term "Nepāla Bhāṣā" in Pracalit script to refer to the language.
A stone inscription in Classical Newar at Bhaktapur.
Copper plate inscription at Swayambhunath, dated Nepal Sambat 1072 (1952 AD)
ka kha yā mye ("a song of ka and kha"), a Newar language poem written by Briddhi Lakhmi, the queen consort of Bhaktapur.
Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Sinitic languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese and the Tibetic languages. Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented.
Ancient Chinese text on bamboo strips