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.
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FSI 1979, lesson 24. Time-telling precision plus the calendar gap every visitor stumbles on. Minutes 1–5: telling time with the three quarter-hour modifiers — sawaa (quarter past, e.g. 'sawaa paanch' = 5:15), saadhe (half past, 'saadhe paanch' = 5:30), paune (quarter to, 'paune chha' = 5:45). Minutes 6–10: time-of-day vocabulary — bihaana (morning), diuso (midday/afternoon), saanjh (evening), raat (night). Minutes 11–15: the 12 Bikram Sambat months — Baisakh, Jeth, Asar, Saaun, Bhadau, Asoj, Kartik, Mangsir, Push, Magh, Falgun, Chait. Each month straddles two Gregorian months, never aligning. Minutes 16–19: BS is 56.7 years ahead of AD — so 2026 AD ≈ 2083 BS. The lesson drills the conversion: 'aaja kun mahina ho?' (what month is it today), 'aaja Baisakh 5 gate ho' (today is the 5th of Baisakh).
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Attribution
Audio courtesy of the US Foreign Service Institute (Public Domain) and hosted by Live Lingua. This page links directly to their CDN; we do not re-host or modify the audio.