What language is spoken in Kathmandu?

Nepali is the working language of Kathmandu, though you'll hear Nepal Bhasa (Newari) spoken in older neighborhoods like Asan and around Patan Durbar Square, where the Newar community has roots going back over a thousand years. The Devanagari script covers shop signs, menus, and the hand-painted route boards on local buses. It is the same alphabet used for Hindi, so travelers familiar with one can parse the other. Most restaurant menus in Thamel come in English, but walk 500 meters south into Jhochhe or east toward New Road and menus switch to Devanagari-only. Street signs around Durbar Marg tend to carry both scripts, though the English transliterations are wildly inconsistent. "Kathmandu" itself appears as काठमाडौं, काठमांडू, or Kathmandu depending on who painted the sign.

English in Kathmandu's tourist zones is limited, and the distribution is uneven. In Thamel, where most first-timers stay, hotel staff, trekking agency workers, and waiters at places like OR2K and Rosemary Kitchen speak functional English. At Tribhuvan International Airport, immigration officers and the taxi pre-pay counter manage fine. Past Thamel's perimeter, English drops fast. At Ratna Park bus station, where local buses leave for Bhaktapur (NPR 40, about 25 cents at 150.9 NPR per dollar), almost no one speaks English. Market vendors in Asan Bazaar, the narrow-laned spice district where turmeric dust hangs in the air and vendors call out prices in rapid Nepali, communicate only in Nepali and Newari. Grab and Uber don't operate in Kathmandu. You'll use local apps like Pathao or inDrive, and drivers rarely speak English beyond "hello" and the destination name. Have your hotel write your destination in Devanagari before you get in a cab.

You'll need fewer Nepali phrases than guidebooks suggest. "Namaste" (नमस्ते) with palms pressed together works for hello, goodbye, and general respect. Nepalis notice when you skip it. "Dhanyabad" (धन्यवाद, thank you) matters less day-to-day than "kati ho?" (कति हो?, how much?), which you'll use 10 times daily at vegetable stalls, for taxi fares, and at the ticket counter for Basantapur Durbar Square (NPR 1,000 for foreigners, about $6.60). "Mitho chha" (मिठो छ, it's delicious) said to the owner of a dal bhat shop after your first plate of steaming rice, yellow lentil soup, and sautéed greens will earn you a real grin and sometimes a free second helping. Dal bhat refills are traditionally unlimited across Nepal.

Google Translate handles Nepali reasonably well for text input, though the camera-scan function struggles with hand-painted Devanagari on peeling wooden shop fronts, which make up about half the signage outside Thamel. Download the Nepali language pack offline before you land at Tribhuvan. Most Kathmanduites under 30 have studied English in school since grade 1, but classroom English and conversational fluency are different things. You might find a college student happy to chat at a cafe in Lazimpat, then struggle to ask for directions 2 blocks away in Balaju. Worth noting, the Nepali head-wobble, a tilt-and-shake that looks like "no" to Western eyes, means "yes" or "okay." That misread trips up more visitors at Kathmandu's ticket counters than any vocabulary gap.