Encyclopedia
Devanagari is an abugida
writing system used to
write, either along with other scripts, or exclusively, several
North Indian languages, including
Sanskrit,
Hindi,
Marathi,
Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Nepal Bhasa from
Nepal and sometimes Kashmiri and Romani. It is written and read from left to right.
The transliteration used in this article follows the popular IAST conventions. The ITRANS is a lossless transliteration scheme of Devanagari into
ASCII that is widely used on Usenet. In ITRANS, the word
Devanagari is written as "devanaagarii".
Origins
Devanagari emerged around 1200 AD out of the Siddham script, gradually replacing the earlier, closely related
Sharada script . Both are immediate descendants of the Gupta script, ultimately deriving from the
Brahmi script attested from the 3rd century BC; Nagari appeared in approx. the
8th century as an eastern variant of the Gupta script, contemporary to Sharada, its western variant. The descendants of Brahmi form the Brahmic family, including the alphabets employed for many other South and South-East Asian languages.
Etymology
Sanskrit nagari is the feminine of
nagara "urban", an adjectival vrddhi derivative from
nagara "city"; the feminine form is used because of its original application to qualify the feminine noun
lipi "script" . There were several varieties in use, one of which was distinguished by affixing
deva "deity" to form a tatpurusha compound meaning the "urban [script] of the deities ", i.e. "divine urban [script]". However, the widespread use of "Devanagari" is a relatively recent phenomenon; well into the twentieth century, and even today, simply "Nagari" was also in use for this same script. The rapid spread of the usage of "Devanagari" seems also to be connected with the almost exclusive use of this script in colonial times to publish works in Sanskrit, even though traditionally nearly all indigenous scripts have actually been employed for this language. This has led to the establishment of such a close connection between the script and Sanskrit that it is, erroneously, widely regarded as "the Sanskrit script" today.
Interpreted by popular etymology to refer to a "City of the Gods", the name in certain
Yogic traditions was taken to refer to the body of the individual. The philosophy behind this is that when one
meditates on the specific
sounds of the Devanagari alphabet, the written forms appear spontaneously in the mind.
Principles
Devanagari has 12
svara and 34
vyanjana . An
akshara is formed by the combination of zero or one
vyanjana and one or more
svar, and represents a phonetic unit of the
shabda . The
akshara is written by applying standard diacritical modifiers to the
vyanjana corresponding to the
svara. An
akshara is usually more basic and predictable than the
syllable in English. For example, the English 'cat' is written as two
aksharas, the 'k-a' and the 'ta'.
The
svara and
vyanjana are ordered and grouped logically for studying or reciting. Thus the pure sounds, 'a', 'i', 'u' and their lengthened versions are followed by the combined , nasal and aspirated forms. The
vyanjana themselves are grouped into 6 groups of 5 . The first five rows progress as velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and labial, corresponding to utilizing or touching the tongue to progressively outer parts of the mouth when making the sound. Additional
vyanjana are technically sonorants, sibilants or widely used conjunct forms. For each row or group, the columns logically progress to softer sounds, paired with aspirated forms, ending in the nasal form for that group.
Devanagari is written from left to right. In Sanskrit, words were written together without spaces, so that the top bar is unbroken, although there were some exceptions to this rule. The break of the top line primarily marks breath groups. In modern languages, word breaks are used.
The Devanagari writing system can be called an abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel , that can be changed with the different vowel signs. Most consonants can be joined to one or two other consonants so that the inherent vowel is suppressed. The resulting conjunct form is called a ligature. Many ligatures appear simply as two individual consonants joined together, and so are a form of ligature. Some ligatures are more elaborately formed and not as easily recognized as containing the individual consonants.
When reading Sanskrit written in Devanagari, the pronunciation is completely unambiguous. Similarly, any word in Sanskrit is considered to be written only in one manner . However, for modern languages, certain conventions have been made . There are also some modern conventions for writing English words in Devanagari.
Certain Sanskrit texts and
mantras are typically written with additional diacritical marks above and below the
akshara to denote pitch and tempo, to ensure completely accurate reproduction of the sound.
Symbols of Devanagari
All the vowels in Devanagari are attached to the top or bottom of the consonant or to an <aa> vowel sign attached to the right of the consonant, with the exception of the <i> vowel sign, which is attached on the left. In the Devanagari vowel table below, the "Letter" column contains the symbol used when a vowel occurs without a consonant, the "Vowel sign with <p>" column contains the symbol used when a vowel is attached to a consonant, shown with the <p> letter as an example, the "Unicode name" column contains the name given in the
Unicode specification for the vowel, and the "IPA" column contains the
International Phonetic Alphabet character corresponding to the Hindi pronunciation of the Devanagari character.
Vowels
The vowels of the Devanagari script with their word-initial Devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant ?? , pronunciation in
International Phonetic Alphabet , equivalent in International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration and Indian languages transliteration and equivalents in Standard English are listed below:
| Independent Vowel | Diacritical mark with “??” | Pronunciation | Pronunciation with /p/ | IAST equiv. | ITRANS equiv. | English eqivalent | ? | ? | | | a | a | short Schwa: as the a in above or ago | ? | ?? | | | a | A | long open central unrounded vowel: as the a in father | ? | ?? | | | i | i | short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit | ? | ?? | | | i | I | long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine | ? | ?? | | | u | u | short close back rounded vowel: as u in put | ? | ?? | | | u | U | long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school | ? | ?? | | | e | e | long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game , or é in café | ? | ?? | | | ai | ai | a long diphthong: approx. as ei in height | ? | ?? | | | o | o | long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone | ? | ?? | | | au | au | a long diphthong: approx. as ou in house | ? | ?? | | | | R | short syllabic vowel-like Alveolar trill : | ? | ?? | | | | RR | long syllabic vowel-like Alveolar trill: a longer version of | ? | ?? | | | | LR | short syllabic vowel-like Alveolar lateral approximant: approx. as handle | ? | ?? | | | | LRR | long syllabic vowel-like Alveolar lateral approximant: a longer version of | |
Additional points:
- The vowel in Sanskrit is more central and less back than the closest English equivalent, . The schwa is always short in Sanskrit.
- All vowels in Hindi, short or long, can be nasalized. All vowels can have acute, grave or circumflex pitch accent .
- In Hindi, ? is pronounced as . The last three vowels in the table above do not occur in Hindi at all.
- Note that the ancient Sanskrit grammarians have classified the vowel system as velars, retroflexes, palatals and plosives rather than as back, central and mid vowels. Hence and are classified respectively as palato-velar labio-velar vowels respectively. But the grammarians have classified them as diphthongs and in prosody, each is given two matras. This does not necessarily mean that they are proper diphthongs, but neither excludes the possibility that they could have been proper diphthongs at a very ancient stage. These vowels are pronounced as long and respectively by most learned Sanskrit Brahmins and priests of today. Other than the "four" diphthongs, Sanskrit usually disallows any other diphthongs—vowels in succession, if occur, are converted to semivowels according to predetermined rules.
- In Sanskrit and in some other dialects of Hindi , the vowel is pronounced as a diphthong or rather than . Similarly, the vowel is pronounced in some words as the diphthong or rather than . Other than these, Hindi does not have true diphthongs—two vowels might occur sequentially but then they are pronounced as two syllables . Otherwise in Standard Hindi, is long near-open front unrounded vowel: as a in cat; is long open-mid back rounded vowel: as au in caught.
- The short open-mid front unrounded vowel , does not have any symbol or diacritic in devanagari script. It occurs only as an allophonic variant of schwa in certain words in the Standard khariboli dialect of Hindi. E.g., the orthography dictates that must be pronounced as , but it is actually pronounced as . It also occurs in loanwords from English, where it might be accorded a new vowel symbol of . The short open-mid back rounded vowel , does not exist in Hindi at all, other than for English loanwords. In orthography, a new symbol has been invented for it: .
- Unicode transliteration scheme differs for some characters from IAST scheme. The differences are: a?aa, i?ii, u?uu, ?rr, ?ll.
Consonants
The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the equivalents in English/Spanish/Italian. The parentheses give the corresponding transliteration in IAST scheme—the most popular one. Each consonant shown below is by default followed by the neutral vowel schwa , and is given in the table in this form.
| Plosives |
|---|
| Unaspirated
Voiceless | Aspirated
Voiceless | Unaspirated
Voiced | Aspirated
Voiced | Nasal |
|---|
Velar | ; English: skip | ; English: cat | ; English: game | ; English: egg head | ; English: ring | Palatal | ; ˜English: chat | ; Aspirated | ; ˜English: jam | ; Aspirated | ; ˜English: finch | Retroflex | ; American Eng: hurting | ; Aspirated | ; American Eng: murder | ; Aspirated | ; No English equivalent | Apico-Dental | ; Spanish: tomate | ; Aspirated | ; Spanish: donde | ; Aspirated | ; Spanish: tonto | Labial | ; English: spin | ; English: pit | ; English: bone | ; English: abhor | ; English: mine | |
| Non-Plosives/Sonorants |
|---|
| Palatal | Retroflex | Dental/
Alveolar | velar/
Glottal |
|---|
Approximant | ; English: you | ; Spanish: martes | ; British English: love | ; ˜Italian: vuoto | Sibilant/
Fricative | ; English: ship | ; Retroflex form of | ; English: same | ; ˜English home | |
At the end of the traditional table of alphabets, three cosonantal clusters are also added: ??? , ??? and ??? . Other than these, sounds borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic are written with a dot beneath the nearest approximate letter. They are not included in the traditional listing. Many native Hindi speakers, especially those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak really good khariboli or Urdu, confused these sounds and pronounce them as the nearest equivalents in Sanskritized Hindi . These are:
Extra sounds
| Symbol | IPA Pronunciation and name | English equiv. | Confused with: |
|---|
?? | | Arabic: Qur'an | | ?? | | English: fun | | ?? | | German: doch | | ?? | | Persian: Mughal | | ?? | | English: zoo | | ?? | | | | ?? | | | | |
| | | | |
Additional points:
- The "r" of Sanskrit is as in Standard American English. In modern Sanskrit pronunciation, the vowel "?" is sometimes realised as or , although many people do make the ? In Hindi, is as pronounced in Spanish perro.
- There is no retroflex flap in Sanskrit. In modern Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages, they have sprung up as the allophonic flap variants of Sanskrit's simple voiced retroflex plosives. The in Sanskrit is not a flap but a simple nasal stop, although it is pronounced by modern pundits while chanting as a nasal variant of the voiced retroflex flap. Hindi has two proper retroflex flaps.
- Aspiration is actually a puff of breath that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers could try pronouncing the words "kite", "take", "chip" and "pat" with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corresponding unaspirated plosives must be pronounced with no significant puff of breath at all.
- For practicing the voiced aspirates, one could try: "drag him", "said him", "enrage him", "grab him". The voiced aspirated plosives are extremely important and frequent in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the only language that has faithfully preserved these original Proto-Indo-European stops.
- The dental consonants in Sanskrit are as in Spanish or French. They can be pronounced by pronouncing and by pressing the tip of the tongue against the back of the teeth rather than against the back of the alveolar ridge as done by English speakers. The normal "t" and "d" in IAST transliteration are the dental stops; and they occur much, much more frequently than the retroflex stops.
- The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how Americans pronounce "r". The retroflex flaps are pronounced in a similar way, by bringing the tongue's tip to the roof of the mouth and giving it a sharp flap downwards. However, bringing the tip of the tongue a bit above the normal alveolar ridge would also work fine. The normal alveolar plosives of English and do not exist as such in Sanskrit/Hindi.
- The palatal plosives of Sanskrit/Hindi do not have a sharp frictional sound following them, as what happened in English chips and jam. These are more of pure plosives than affricates.
- Sanskrit/Hindi has no . Its nearest equivalent is , which is very close to , but does not a friction or buzzing sound associated with it. But in consonant clusters, this may allophonically change to .
- The palatal sibilant of Sanskrit is very close to like the English sh in ship while the English phoneme is the voiceless postalveolar fricative with lip rounding). Today, speakers of Sanskrit vary the palatal fricative from to . In Hindi, it is always pronounced as in ship.
- The retroflex sibilant is pronounced like , but with the tongue curled upwards towards the roof of the mouth. In Madhyandini branch of Yajurveda, this phoneme is allowed to be pronounced at certain places as . In Hindi, this is pronounced as the English sh in ship.
- The Sanskrit is a voiced allophone of the normal h. In Hindi, it is pronounced as in home.
Another consonant is
? is not used in
Hindi. It is retroflex, and used in Vedic Sanskrit,
Marathi, and
Gujarati.
Ligatures
Consonant clusters of two or more phonemes are realized by combining the aksharas into ligatures. Typically, the preceding akshara loses its vertical stroke and is put in direct contact with the succeeding one. In cases of aksharas that do not have vertical strokes in their independent form, the following aksharas are usually placed underneath the preceding one. In some cases, the ligatures take forms not readily recognizable as composed of the individual aksharas . Consonant clusters involving <r> are treated as a special case: preceding <r-> is realized as a right-facing hook above the following akshara, and following <-r> appears as a slanted stroke attached to the vertical stroke of the preceding akshara. Similarly for a cluster /XYZa/, both X and Y would be "halved". There are many variants for this consonant cluster writing in Devanagari script. The most common system is shown below for the traditional table. Here the second vowel is taken to be /n/, followed by the schwa.
|
ka-group | | | | | | cha-group | | | | | | Ta-group | | | | | | ta-group | | | | | | pa-group | | | | | | ya-group | | | | | | va-group | | | | | | |
Diacritics
- ?? , pronounced as is used for nasalizing the vowel in the syllable, the word-final allophone of /m/ and /n/. The diacritic is used in certain shakhas instead of the anusvara in certain phonetic contexts.
- ?? , pronounced as is the word-final allophone of and .
- If a lonely consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/virama diacritic below .
- avagraha ऽ is used in western editions to mark elision of a word-initial in sandhi.
Accent marks
The pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit is written with various symbols depending on
shakha. In the
Rigveda,
anudatta is written with a bar below the line ,
udatta with a stroke above the line while
svarita is unmarked.
Numerals
Devanagari numerals
| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|
Encodings
ISCII
ISCII is a fixed-length 8-bit encoding. The lower 128 codepoints are plain
ASCII, the upper 128 codepoints are ISCII-specific.
It has been designed for representing not only Devanagari, but also various other Indic scripts as well as a Latin-based script with diacritic marks used for transliteration of the Indic scripts.
ISCII has largely been obsoleted by
Unicode, which has however attempted to preserve the ISCII layout for its Indic language blocks.
;See:
Devanagari in Unicode
The
Unicode range for Devanagari is U+0900 .. U+097F.
Grey blocks indicate characters that are undefined.
| | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F |
| U+090x | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| U+091x | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| U+092x | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| U+093x | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| U+094x | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | |
| U+095x | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | | | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? |
| U+096x | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| U+097x | ॰ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|
Devanagari Keyboard Layouts
Devanagari and Devanagari-QWERTY keyboard layouts for Mac OS X
The
Mac OS X operating system supports convenient editing for the Devanagari script by insertion of appropriate Unicode characters with two different
keyboard layouts available for use. To input Devanagari text, one goes to System Preferences ? International ? Input Menu and enables the keyboard layout that is wished to be to uses. One then views the keyboard layout at the at Apple Docs.
for example, the Devanagari-qwerty layout is:
| | |
INSCRIPT
Typewriter
Phonetic
See
See also
Software
- Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging - Macintosh
- Graphite - open source
- Pango - open source
- Uniscribe - Windows
- WorldScript - Macintosh, replaced by the Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging, mentioned above
- - Devanagari Input using English Keyboard
External links
Electronic resources
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- , a site by the Indian National Centre for Software Technology
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- Translation for Devanagari Script
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