Santa and hisHelpers in Nepali Script
Santa and his reindeer travel all over the world, including the small, mountainous country of Nepal, the home of Mount Everest. So, Santa and his helpers’ names are written in the Nepali script for when he visits Nepal.
The Nepali script is syllabic – this means that all the letter symbols for a consonant such as m, n, k, l, b, and d for example, all have an in-built “a”. It would be as if we wrote English using “m” as meaning “ma”. To change the inbuilt vowel from “a” to something else or to cancel it out altogether, you would add an accent or extra symbol:
- For example, to turn “ma” = भinto just “m” – you add a little accent symbol underneath the letter symbol “ma” for example (the clues in the puzzle will help you figure out what this symbol looks like) – there is one exception and this is the letters-symbol “ra”, where the accent symbol for cancelling the “a” becomes part of the “ra” symbol (again, look carefully at the clues in the puzzle);
- To turn “ma” into “mi” – you add a straight vertical line before (=to the left of) the letter symbol “ma” and an accent on top to connect it to the top of the “ma” symbol;
- To turn “ma” into “mo” – you add a straight vertical line after (= to the right of) the letter symbol “ma” and an accent on top to connect it to the top of the “ma” symbol;
- To turn “ma” into “me” – you add an accent like the one in French è on top of the “ma” symbol;
- To turn “ma” into “mu” – you add an accent symbol underneath the letter symbol “ma” which looks a bit like an incomplete circle (again, you can see it in the clues in the puzzle);
- There are no capital letters in Nepali script.
In the grid on the next page, you have all the names of Santa’s reindeer – some have already been written in Nepali. Because not all English sounds have a direct match in Nepali, we have written the name in brackets in English alphabet first so you can see how it would be transliterated into Nepali.
TASK: Fill in the missing Nepali names in the grid!
Names in English: / Names in Nepali script:1 / Dasher (sh = 1 consonant in Nepali) / दशेरू
2 / Dancer (danser)
3 / Prancer (pranser) / पूरनूशेरू
4 / Vixen (viksen) / विकूसेनू
5 / Comet(komet)
6 / Cupid(kupid) / कुपिदू
7 / Donner / दीनूनेरू
8 / Blitzen(blitsen) / बूलितूसेनू
9 / Rudolph (rudolf) [the red-nosed reindeer]
10 / Ralph (ralv) [the infra-red-nosed reindeer]
11 / Santa
12 / Elves(elvs) / एलूवूसू