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Audio lessons
FSI Nepali Basic Spoken Course
All 25 lessons of the Foreign Service Institute's Nepali Basic Course — 8 hours of pattern drills and real classroom audio. The same curriculum US diplomats used for decades, grouped by level below.
Audio courtesy of the US Government (Public Domain) via Live Lingua. MP3 files stream directly from their CDN — we never re-host the audio.
Beginner (10 lessons)
- beginner26 min
Greetings, names, and numbers (lessons 1-2)
Opening Namaste, exchanging names, basic ho/hoina identity statements, and the cardinal numbers 1-10. This is the canonical FSI opener.
Listen - beginner19 min
This and that — yo, tyo, demonstratives (lesson 3)
Pointing at things and naming them. Yo (this), tyo (that), and the cha/chaina pattern for stating that something is present.
Listen - beginner13 min
Question words — ke, ko, kaha, kati (lesson 4)
All Nepali question words start with क. Drill the five most useful: what, who, where, how much, and which.
Listen - beginner15 min
I, you, we — pronouns and honorifics (lesson 5)
ma, hami, tapai, timi, ta — when to use which, and why mixing them up offends. Drills with the verb hunu (to be).
Listen - beginner25 min
Family members and kinship (lesson 6)
buwa, aamaa, didi, daai, bhaai, bahini — the relations every tourist hears at a homestay. Plus the kinship-as-address custom.
Listen - beginner21 min
Directions and places (lesson 7)
kahaa, yahaa, tyahaa — here, there, where. Asking where things are with the cha verb and locative postpositions.
Listen - beginner15 min
Time, days, and the clock (lesson 8)
Telling time in Nepali — kati bajyo, baje, ghanta. The seven days of the week, and morning/afternoon/evening.
Listen - beginner17 min
Food and drink — dal bhat to chiya (lesson 9)
Ordering at a teahouse, asking for salt, declining politely, and the verb khanu (to eat/drink).
Listen - beginner17 min
Shopping and prices (lesson 10)
How much, that's expensive, give me a discount — kati, mahango, sasto. Numbers up to one thousand.
Listen - beginner16 min
Numbers and counting extended (lesson 23)
Beyond 1-10: tens, hundreds, thousands, the Nepali lakh/karod system, ordinals (pahilo/dosro/tesro), and the classifier 'jana' for people vs 'wata' for things.
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Intermediate (15 lessons)
- intermediate26 min
Past tense intro — gareko, khaeko (lesson 11)
Your first taste of the perfective. How yesterday's actions look in Nepali, and why the auxiliary chha/thiyo matters.
Listen - intermediate23 min
Weather, seasons, and the monsoon (lesson 12)
garmi, chiso, paani parchha — talk about the weather like a local. Plus Nepal's six (or two, depending who you ask) seasons.
Listen - intermediate16 min
Health and illness (lesson 13)
Telling a pharmacist what hurts — taauko dukhyo, peṭ dukhyo, jwaro aayo. Body parts and the dative experiencer.
Listen - intermediate27 min
Travel and transport (lesson 14)
Buses, taxis, planes, and the verb jaanu (to go). How to ask when a bus leaves and where it goes.
Listen - intermediate13 min
Trekking vocabulary and culture (lesson 15)
lekh, ukaalo, oraalo, paani — the mountain words you'll use every day above 3000m, plus the cultural etiquette of teahouse stays.
Listen - intermediate12 min
Stories — telling what happened (lesson 16)
Stringing past-tense verbs together to tell a simple story. The conjunctive bhanera and time markers like 'tyaspachi'.
Listen - intermediate18 min
Sample conversations — restaurant and market (lesson 17)
Two full FSI dialogues at natural speed. First in a restaurant ordering dal bhat; second bargaining at a vegetable bazaar in Kathmandu.
Listen - intermediate14 min
Festivals and culture — Dashain and Tihar (lesson 18)
Vocabulary for Nepal's biggest festivals — Dashain blessings, Tihar lights, Bhai Tika sister-brother ritual, plus the calendar dates and key phrases.
Listen - intermediate24 min
Hospitality and homestay (lessons 19-20)
Being a guest in a Nepali home. The 'khaana khaanu bhayo?' culture of food-as-greeting, ritual hand-washing before meals, and how to politely decline more dal bhat without offense.
Listen - intermediate27 min
Caste, class, and social structure (lessons 21-22)
How Nepal's caste structure surfaces in everyday speech — kinship-as-address, when to use which 'you', and why a porter and a CEO get spoken to differently. Sensitive but unavoidable knowledge.
Listen - intermediate19 min
Time and the Bikram Sambat calendar (lesson 24)
Telling time precisely (saadhe, paune, sawaa), the 12 Nepali months from Baisakh to Chait, and converting between the Gregorian and Bikram Sambat dates.
Listen - intermediate22 min
Religious and ceremonial vocabulary (lessons 25-26)
The Hindu-Buddhist ceremonial vocabulary every visitor encounters at temples — puja, prasad, tika, aarti, prashanti, plus how to address monks and priests respectfully.
Listen - intermediate21 min
Geographic vocabulary — Nepal's three regions (lessons 27-28)
The Terai (plains), Pahad (hills), and Himal (high mountains) — vocabulary for landforms, elevation, river systems, and the political 7-province administrative map.
Listen - intermediate14 min
Modern technical and digital vocabulary (lesson 29)
SIM cards, data packs, eSewa and Khalti mobile payments, the verbs used to charge a phone or top up data, and how the Internet-era loanwords get absorbed into Nepali.
Listen - intermediate25 min
Review and final recap (lesson 30)
The final FSI lesson — a comprehensive review that drills you through every major pattern from lessons 1 through 29. Use this as a diagnostic before moving to intermediate Nepali materials.
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