36,800 (2001 census), decreasing. No monolinguals. Ethnic
population: 52,200. Narayani Zone, Makwanpur, Chitwan districts;
Bagmati Zone, southern Dhading district; Gandaki Zone, southern
Gorkha district. 6b (Threatened). Language of recognized
nationality (2002, NFDIN Act, No. 20, Section 2C). Eastern
Chepang, Western Chepang. Bhujel [byh] is closely related to
Western Chepang, but has difficult intelligibility with Chepang
due to different pronominal suffix morphology. Dialects of
Chepang differ in verb forms. Similar in morphology to Kirati
languages. Lexical similarity: 98% with Bhujel [byh] (2004 R.
Caughley, based on 100-item word list). SOV; postpositions; noun
head final; no noun classes or genders; relatives before or
without noun heads; content q-word in situ; no prefixes, up to 8
suffixes; clause constituents indicated by case-marking; affixes
indicate case of noun phrase; verbal affixation marks person and
number; ergative; tense and aspect; voice; causatives;
comparatives; CV to CCCVCCC with certa