The Nepali manual alphabet is

fingerspelling Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf ...

devised for the Nepali alphabet-syllabary,

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

, to go with Nepalese Sign Language. It was developed by the

Kathmandu Association of the Deaf Kathmandu Association of the Deaf (KAD) is a non-governmental organization representing the deaf of Kathmandu, and is a member association of the National Federation of the Deaf Nepal. It is the first such association to be established, and in fact ...

(KAD), with support from

UNICEF UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to ...

. Based loosely on the formulations in the

American manual alphabet The American Manual Alphabet (AMA) is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United ...

and International manual alphabet, only the forms for the letters अ (from “a”), ब (from “b”), म (from “m”), and र (from “r”) can be said to derive directly from their Latin alphabet equivalent. All other letter finger-shapes are indigenous. See "Preface"

References

{{Manual alphabet Manual alphabet Nepali language