Devanagari

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Devanagari

( in English), or Nagari, is an abugida

Abugida

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia and is the world's youngest republic. It is bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by India....
. It is written from left to right, lacks distinct letter case

Letter case

In orthography and typography, letter case is the distinction between majuscule and Lower case letters. The term originated with the shallow Drawer s called type cases still used to hold the movable type for letterpress printing....
s, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together. Devanagari is the main script used to write Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a Standard language register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English language, for administration of the central government....
, Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan languages spoken by the Marathi people of western India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are 90 million fluent speakers worldwide....
, and Nepali

Nepali language

Nepali is a language in the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indo-European languages.It is the lingua-franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar ....
. Since the 19th century, it has been the most commonly used script for Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
and Pali

Pali language

Pali is a Middle Indo-Aryan languages or prakrit of India. It is best known as the language of the earliest extant Buddhism scriptures, as collected in the Pali Canon or Tipitaka, and as the liturgical language of Theravada....
. Devanagari is also employed for Gujari, Bhili

Bhili language

Bhili is a Western Indo-Aryan languages spoken in west-central India, in the region east of Ahmedabad district. Other names for the language include Bhagoria, Bhil, Bhilbari, Bhilboli, Bhilla, Lengotia, and Vil....
, Bhojpuri

Bhojpuri language

Bhojpuri is a regional language spoken in parts of north-central and eastern India. It is spoken in the western part of state of Bihar, the northwestern part of Jharkhand, and the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, as well as an adjoining area of southern plains of Nepal....
, Konkani

Konkani language

Konkani is an Indo-Aryan languages belonging to the Indo-European languages family of languages spoken in the Konkan coast of India. It has approximately 7.6 million speakers of its two individual languages, Konkani and Goan Konkani....
, Magahi, Maithili

Maithili language

Maithili is a language spoken in the eastern part of India, mainly in the Indian States and territories of India of Bihar and in the eastern Terai region of Nepal....
, Marwari

Marwari language

The Marwari language is spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan, but is also found in the neighboring state of Gujarat and in Eastern Pakistan....
, Newari, Pahari

Pahari

Pahari is a general terms for a range of dialects spoken across the Himalayan range, not limited to a single country in the subcontinent. The word is derived from 'pahar' meaning mountain....
(Garhwali

Garhwali

The Garhwali are a people of the hilly Garhwal Division of Uttarakhand, India. The Garhwali language belongs to the Pahari languages subgroup of Indo-Aryan languages....
and Kumaoni

Kumaoni

The Kumaoni are a people of the Kumaon Division of Uttarakhand, a region in the Indian Himalayas. Their Kumaoni language forms the Central subgroup of the Pahari languages....
), Santhali, Tharu, and sometimes Sindhi

Sindhi language

Sindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan. It is spoken by approximately 41 million people in Pakistan, and is also spoken by a minority 12 million in India; it is the third most spoken language of Pakistan, and the official language of Sindh in Pakistan....
, Panjabi

Punjabi language

'Punjabi' , , is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region and their diasporas. Speakers include adherents of the religions of Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism....
, and Kashmiri

Kashmiri language

Kashmiri belongs to the Dardic languages and is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in the indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It had about 5,554,496 speakers in India according to the Census of 2001....
.

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Encyclopedia

( in English), or Nagari, is an abugida

Abugida

Nepal

Letter case

Hindi

Marathi language

Nepali language

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
and Pali

Pali language

Bhili language

Bhojpuri language

Konkani language

Maithili language

Maithili is a language spoken in the eastern part of India, mainly in the Indian States and territories of India of Bihar and in the eastern Terai region of Nepal....
, Marwari

Marwari language

The Marwari language is spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan, but is also found in the neighboring state of Gujarat and in Eastern Pakistan....
, Newari, Pahari

Pahari

Garhwali

The Garhwali are a people of the hilly Garhwal Division of Uttarakhand, India. The Garhwali language belongs to the Pahari languages subgroup of Indo-Aryan languages....
and Kumaoni

Kumaoni

Sindhi language

Punjabi language

Kashmiri language

Gujarati language

Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan languages, and part of the greater Indo-European languages language family. It is native to the Indian state of Gujarat, and is its chief language, as well as of the adjacent union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli....
.

Origins

Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family

Brahmic family

The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brahmi script....
of alphabets of Nepal, India, Tibet, and South-East Asia. It is a descendant of the Gupta script

Gupta script

The Gupta script was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated with the Gupta Empire of India which was a period of material prosperity and great religion and science developments....
, along with Siddham and Sharada. Eastern variants of Gupta called Nagari are first attested from the 8th century; from c. 1200 these gradually replaced Siddham, which survived as a vehicle for Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, and Sharada, which remained in parallel use in Kashmir

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" referred only to the valley lying between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal range; since then, it has been used for a larger area that today includes the Indian administerd state of Jammu and Kashmir consisting of the Kashmir...
.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
is the feminine of "urban(e)", a vrddhi

Vrddhi

Vrddhi is a Sanskrit word meaning "growth" . In Panini 's grammar, it is also a technical term for a group of long vowels. In Indo-European studies, it has become a term for the lengthened grade of the Indo-European ablaut vowel gradation peculiar to the Indo-European languages....
adjectival form of nagara "city". It is feminine from its original phrasing with lipi "script" as "urban(e) script", that is, the script of the cultured. There are several varieties of Nagari

Nagari script

The Nagari script appeared in Ancient India around the 8th century CE as an eastern variant of the Gupta script . In turn it branched off into several scripts, such as Devanagari script, Eastern Nagari script, Nandinagari, and Tibetan script, and also influenced the development of the Sarada-derived Gurmukhi script....
in use, one of which was distinguished by affixing Deva
Deva (Hinduism)

Deva is the Sanskrit word for "god, deity". It can be variously interpreted as a god, spirit, demi-god, Celestial, deity or any supernatural being of high excellence....
"god" or "deity" to form a tatpurusha compound meaning the "urban(e) [script] of the gods", or "divine urban(e) [script]".

The use of the name is relatively recent, and the older term is still common. The rapid spread of the term may be related to the almost exclusive use of this script to publish sacred Sanskrit texts in colonial times. This has led to such a close connection between Devanagari and Sanskrit that Devanagari is now widely thought to be the Sanskrit script; however, before the colonial period there was no standard script for Sanskrit, which was written in whichever script was familiar to the local populace.

Principles

As a Brahmic abugida

Abugida

An 'abugida' is a segment writing system which is based on consonants but in which vowel notation is obligatory. About half the writing systems in the world are abugidas, including the extensive Brahmic family of scripts used in South and Southeast Asia....
, the fundamental principle of Devanagari is that each letter represents a consonant, which carries an inherent vowel a [?]. For example, the letter ? is read ka, the two letters ?? are kana, the three ??? are kanaya, etc. Other vowels, or the absence of vowels, require modification of these consonants or their own letters:

Consonant cluster
Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s are written with ligatures ( "conjuncts"). For example, the three letters ??? kanaya may be joined to form ???? knaya, ???? kanya, or ????? knya.
Vowels other than the inherent a are written with diacritics
Diacritics

diacritics is an academic journal founded in 1971 at Cornell University. Articles serve to review important recent literature in the field of literary criticism and have covered topics in gender studies, political theory, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and other areas of interest....
. From ? ka we get ?? ke, ?? ku, ?? ki, ?? ka, etc.
For vowels without a consonant, either at the beginning of a word or after another vowel, there are full letters. Thus while the vowel u is written with the diacritic in ?? ku, it has its own letter ? in ?? uka and ?? kau.
A final consonant is marked with the diacritic , called the virama
Virama

Virama, or virama, is a generic term for the diacritic in many Brahmic scripts that is used to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter....
in Sanskrit, halanta in Hindi, and a "killer stroke" in English. This cancels the inherent vowel, so that from ???? knaya we get ????? knay. The halanta will often be used for consonant clusters when typesetting ligatures is not feasible.

Such a letter or ligature, with its diacritics, is called an "syllable". For example, ??? kanaya is written with what are counted as three akshara, whereas ????? knya and ?? ku are each written with one.

As far as handwriting is concerned, letters are usually written without the distinctive horizontal bar, which is only added once the word is finished being written.

Letters

The letter order

Collating sequence

The term collating sequence refers to the order in which character strings should be placed when sorting them.A common example is the familiar "alphabetic order", in which "Alfred" occurs before "Zeus" because "A" occurs before "Z" in the English alphabet....
of Devanagari, like nearly all Brahmi scripts, is based on phonetic

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
principles which consider both the manner

Manner of articulation

In linguistics , manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact....
and place of articulation

Place of articulation

In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact, where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an active articulator and a passive articulator ....
of the consonants and vowels they represent. This arrangement is usually referred to as the "garland

Garland

Garland, which in French originally denoted "wreath of flowers", may refer to:* Garland , a class of decoration, of which there are many types...
of letters". The format of Devanagari for Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
serves as the prototype for its application, with minor variations or additions, to other languages.

Vowels

The vowels and their arrangement are:

	Independent form	As diacritic with ?	Independent form	As diacritic with ?
(Guttural)	?	?	?	??
(Palatal)	?	??	?	??
(Labial Labial consonant Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant.... )	?	??	?	??
(Cerebral Retroflex consonant In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue is placed behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar consonant to palatal consonant region of the mouth.... )	?	??	?	??
(Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages.... )	?	??	?	??
(Palato-Guttural)	?	??	?	??
(Labio-Guttural)	?	??	?	??

Arranged with the vowels are two consonantal diacritic
Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
s, the final nasal
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
anusvara
Anusvara

Anusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word, and on the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....
? and the final fricative visarga
Visarga

Visarga is a Sanskrit word meaning "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology , is the name of a Phone , , written as IAST , Harvard-Kyoto , Devanagari ....
? (called ?? and ?? ). notes of the anusvara in Sankrit that "there is some controversy as to whether it represents a homorganic nasal consonant
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
[...], a nasalized vowel, a nasalized semivowel
Semivowel

Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllable vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the syllable nucleus of a syllable or mora ; they are not the most prominence part of the syllable....
, or all these according to context". The visarga represents post-vocalic voiceless glottal fricative
Voiceless glottal fricative

The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "Fricative consonant", is a type of sound used in some Speech communication languages which often behaves like a consonant, but sometimes behaves more like a vowel, or is indeterminate in its behavior....
, in Sanskrit an allophone
Allophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
of , or less commonly , usually in word-final position. Some traditions of recitation append an echo of the vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
after the breath: ?? . considers the visarga along with letters ? and ? for the "largely predictable" velar
Velar nasal

The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....
and palatal nasal
Palatal nasal

The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J....
s to be examples of "phonetic overkill in the system".
Another diacritic is the candrabindu/anunasika ?. describes it as a "more emphatic form" of the , "sometimes [...] used to mark a true [vowel] nasalization". In a New Indo-Aryan language such as Hindi
Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a Standard language register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English language, for administration of the central government....
the distinction is formal: the indicates vowel nasalization while the indicates a homorganic nasal
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
preceding another consonant: e.g. ???? "laughter
Laughter

Laughter is an audible expression , or appearance of merriment or happiness, or an inward feeling of joy and pleasure . It may ensue from jokes, tickling, and other stimuli....
, ???? "Ganges". When an akshara has a vowel diacritic above the top line, that leaves no room for the candra ("moon") stroke candrabindu, which is dispensed with in favour of the lone dot: ??? "am", but ??? "are". Some writers and typesetters dispense with the "moon" stroke altogether, using only the dot in all situations.
The avagraha
Avagraha

Avagraha is a Devanagari symbol used to indicate prodelision of an . It is usually transliterated with an apostrophe....
? (usually transliterated
Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
with an apostrophe
Apostrophe

The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets. In English it has two main functions: it marks omissions, and it assists in marking the possessives of all nouns and many pronouns....
) is a Sanskrit punctuation mark for the elision
Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphony effect....
of a vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
in sandhi
Sandhi

Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonology processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words....
: ??????? (< + ) "this one". An original long vowel lost to coalescence is sometimes marked with a double avagraha: ????????? (< + ) "always, the self". In Hindi
Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a Standard language register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English language, for administration of the central government....
, states that its "main function is to show that a vowel is sustained in a cry or a shout": ?????! . In Magahi, which has "quite a number of verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
al forms [that] end in that inherent vowel" , the avagraha is used to mark the non-elision of word-final inherent a, which otherwise is a modern orthographic
Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Orthography is derived from Greek language ????? orth?s and ???fe?? gr?phein ....
convention: ???? "sit" versus *???
The syllabic consonants , , and are specific to Sanskrit and not included in the of other languages. The sound represented by has been lost as well, and its pronunciation now ranges from (Hindi
Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a Standard language register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English language, for administration of the central government....
) to (Marathi
Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan languages spoken by the Marathi people of western India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are 90 million fluent speakers worldwide....
).
is not an actual phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
of Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
, but rather a graphic convention included among the vowels in order to maintain the symmetry of short–long pairs of letters.
There are non-regular formations of ?? ru and ?? ru.

Consonants

The consonants and their arrangement are:

	(Stop Stop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms.... )				(Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue.... )	(Approximant)	(Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag... )
Voicing Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sound, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced.... ?
Aspiration Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents.... ?
(Guttural)	?	?	?	?	?			?
talavya (Palatal)	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
murdhanya (Cerebral Retroflex consonant In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue is placed behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar consonant to palatal consonant region of the mouth.... )	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
dantya (Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages.... )	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
(Labial Labial consonant Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant.... )	?	?	?	?	?	?

Rounding this out where applicable is ? , which represented the intervocalic lateral flap
Retroflex lateral flap

The retroflex lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. It has no symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but an ad hoc symbol may be easily created ....
allophone
Allophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
of the voiced retroflex stop in Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an Old Indic language. It is the language of the Vedas, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism, compiled over the period of the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BC....
, and which is a phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
in languages such as Marathi
Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan languages spoken by the Marathi people of western India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are 90 million fluent speakers worldwide....
and Rajasthani
Rajasthani language

Rajasthani is a language or language cluster of the Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by 36 million people in Rajasthan and other States and territories of India of India and in some adjacent areas of Pakistan....
.
Beyond the Sanskritic set new shapes have rarely been formulated. offers the following, "In any case, according to some, all possible sounds had already been described and provided for in this system, as Sanskrit was the original and perfect language. Hence it was difficult to provide for or even to conceive other sounds, unknown to the phoneticians of Sanskrit." Where foreign borrowings and internal developments did inevitably accrue and arise in New Indo-Aryan languages, they have been either ignored in writing, or dealt through means such as diacritic
Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
s and ligature
Ligature

Ligature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a mouthpiece to a woodwind instrument...
s (ignored in recitation).

The most prolific diacritic has been the subscript nuqta ?. Hindi
Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a Standard language register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English language, for administration of the central government....
uses it for the Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
sounds ?? q
Voiceless uvular plosive

The voiceless uvular plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. It is pronounced like [k], except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula....
a , ?? x
Voiceless velar fricative

The voiceless velar fricative, informally known as the hard ch, is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech communication languages....
a , ?? , ?? z
Voiced alveolar fricative

The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described....
a , and ?? f
Voiceless labiodental fricative

The voiceless labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is f....
a , and for the allophonic developments ?? and ?? . (Although ? could also exist but there is no use of it in Hindi.)
Sindhi
Sindhi language

Sindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan. It is spoken by approximately 41 million people in Pakistan, and is also spoken by a minority 12 million in India; it is the third most spoken language of Pakistan, and the official language of Sindh in Pakistan....
's implosives are accommodated with underlining ? : ??
Voiced velar implosive

The voiced velar implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g_<....
, ??
Voiced palatal implosive

The voiced palatal implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\_<....
, ??
Voiced alveolar implosive

The voiced alveolar implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d_<....
, ??
Voiced bilabial implosive

A voiced bilabial implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is b_<....
.
Aspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents....
sonorant
Sonorant

In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means a sound that's "squeezed out" or "spat out" is not a sonorant....
s may be represented as conjuncts/ligature
Ligature

Ligature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a mouthpiece to a woodwind instrument...
s with ? ha: ??? mha, ??? nha, ??? , ??? vha, ??? lha, ??? , ??? rha.
notes Marwari
Marwari language

The Marwari language is spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan, but is also found in the neighboring state of Gujarat and in Eastern Pakistan....
as using a special symbol for (while ? = ).

Conjuncts

You will only be able to see the ligatures if your system has a Unicode font installed that includes the required ligature glyphs (e.g. one of the fonts, see "external links" below).

As mentioned, successive consonants lacking a vowel in between them may physically join together as a 'conjunct' or ligature

Ligature (typography)

In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components, and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms" where the specific shape of a letter depends on context such as surrounding letters or prox...
. The government of these clusters ranges from widely to narrowly applicable rules, with special exceptions within. While standardized for the most part, there are certain variations in clustering, of which the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
used on this page is just one scheme. The following are a number of rules:

24 out of the 36 consonants contain a vertical right stroke (?, ?, ? etc.). As first or middle fragments/members of a cluster, they lose that stroke. e.g. ? + ? = ???, ? + ? = ???, ? + ? = ???. ? s(a) appears as a different, simple ribbon-shaped fragment preceding ? va, ? na, ? ca, ? la, and ? ra, squishing down these second members. Thus ??? sva, ??? sna, ??? sca ??? sla, and ??? sra.

? r(a) as a first member takes the form of a curved upward dash above the final character or its a-diacritic. e.g. ??? rva, ???? rva, ????? rspa, ?????? rspa. As a final member with ? ? ? ? ? ? it is two lines below the character, pointed downwards and apart. Thus ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???. Elsewhere as a final member it is a diagonal stroke jutting leftwards and down. e.g. ??? ??? ???. ? ta is shifted up to make ??? tra.

As first members, remaining vertical stroke-less characters such as ? d(a) and ? h(a) may have their second member, shrunken and minus its horizontal stroke, placed underneath. ? k(a), ? ch(a), and ? ph(a) shorten their right hooks and join them directly to the following member.

The conjuncts for and are not clearly derived from the letters making up their components. The conjunct for is ??? (?? + ?)and for it is ??? (?? + ?).

The table below shows all the 1296 viable symbols for the biconsonantal cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s formed by collating the 36 fundamental symbols of Sanskrit as listed in . Scroll your cursor over the conjuncts to reveal their romanizations (in IAST-International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration) and IPA pronunciations.

Biconsonantal conjuncts

	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	???	???
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
???
???

New Indo-Aryan languages may use the above forms for their Sanskrit loanwords (or otherwise).

Accent marks

The pitch accent

Pitch accent

Pitch accent is a linguistics term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in Pitch to give prominence to a syllable or Mora_ within a word....
of Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an Old Indic language. It is the language of the Vedas, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism, compiled over the period of the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BC....
is written with various symbols depending on shakha

Shakha

A shakha , is a Hindu theological school that specializes in learning certain Vedas texts, or else the traditional texts followed by such a school....
. In the Rigveda

Rigveda

The Rigveda is an ancient Indian subcontinent sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dedicated to the Rigvedic deities . It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas....
, anudatta is written with a bar below the line, svarita with a stroke above the line while udatta is unmarked.

Punctuation

Periods may be marked with a vertical line: "I".

Numerals

**Devanagari numerals**
?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

Transliteration

There are several methods of transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
from Devanagari into Roman scripts

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
. The most widely used transliteration method is IAST

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a popular transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Brahmic family....
. However, there are other transliteration options.

The following are the major transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
methods for Devanagari:

ISO 15919

A standard transliteration convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard of 2001. It uses diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
s to map the much larger set of Brahmic graphemes to the Latin script. See also . The Devanagari-specific portion is nearly identical to the academic standard for Sanskrit, IAST

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a popular transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Brahmic family....
.

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST)

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a popular transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Brahmic family....
is the academic standard for the romanization of Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
. IAST is the de-facto standard used in printed publications, like books and magazines, and with the wider availability of Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts. It is based on a standard established by the Congress of Orientalists at Athens

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
in 1912.

The National Library at Kolkata romanization

National Library at Kolkata romanization

The National Library of India romanization is the most widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. This transliteration scheme is also known as Library of Congress and is nearly identical to one of the possible ISO 15919 variants.The tables below mostly use Devanagari but include letters from Kannad...
, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts

Brahmic family

The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brahmi script....
, is an extension of IAST

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a popular transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Brahmic family....
.

Harvard-Kyoto

Compared to IAST

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a popular transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Brahmic family....
, Harvard-Kyoto

Harvard-Kyoto

The Harvard-Kyoto Convention is a system for transliteration in ASCII the Sanskrit language and other languages that use the Devanagari script. It is predominantly used informally in e-mail, and for electronic texts....
looks much simpler. It does not contain all the diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
marks that IAST contains. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters

Capital letters

Capital letters or majuscules [IPA pronunciation: /m?'d??skjuls, 'm?d???skjuls/], in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, etc., may also be called capitals, or caps....
that can be difficult to read in the middle of words.

ITRANS

The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Brahmic family, particularly, but not exclusively, for Devanagari ....
is a lossless transliteration scheme of Devanagari into ASCII

ASCII

Usenet

Usenet, a portmanteau of "user" and "network", is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It evolved from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name....
. It is an extension of the Harvard-Kyoto

Harvard-Kyoto

The Harvard-Kyoto Convention is a system for transliteration in ASCII the Sanskrit language and other languages that use the Devanagari script. It is predominantly used informally in e-mail, and for electronic texts....
scheme. In ITRANS, the word Devanagari is written as "Devanaagarii". ITRANS is associated with an application of the same name that enables typesetting in Indic scripts

Brahmic family

The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brahmi script....
. The user inputs in Roman letters and the ITRANS pre-processor displays the Roman letters into Devanagari (or other Indic languages). The latest version of ITRANS

ITRANS

The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Brahmic family, particularly, but not exclusively, for Devanagari ....
is version 5.30 released in July, 2001.

ALA-LC Romanization
ALA-LC Romanization

ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association-Library of Congress....

romanization is a transliteration scheme approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, and widely used in North American libraries. Transliteration tables are based on languages, so there is a table for , one for , etc.

Encodings

ISCII

Indian Script Code for Information Interchange is a coding scheme for representing various writing systems of India. It encodes the main Indic scripts and a Roman transliteration....
is a fixed-length 8-bit encoding. The lower 128 codepoints are plain ASCII

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
, 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 superseded by Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
, which has however attempted to preserve the ISCII layout for its Indic language blocks.

Devanagari in Unicode

The Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
range for Devanagari is U+0900 .. U+097F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

Devanagari Keyboard Layouts

Devanagari and Devanagari-QWERTY keyboard layouts for Mac OS X

The Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems....
operating system supports convenient editing for the Devanagari script by insertion of appropriate Unicode characters with two different keyboard layout

Keyboard layout

A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key?meaning associations of a Computer keyboard, typewriter, or other alphanumeric keyboard keyboard....
s available for use. To input Devanagari text, one goes to System Preferences ? International ? Input Menu and enables the keyboard layout that is to be used. The layout is the same as for INSCRIPT/KDE Linux:

INSCRIPT / KDE Linux

This is the India keyboard layout for Linux (variant 'Deva')

Typewriter

Phonetic

See

Software

Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging
Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging is the set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text starting with Mac OS Mac OS 8 and in Mac OS X....
- Macintosh
- The Phonetic Hindi Writer with AutoWord lookup and Spellcheck for MS Word and OpenOffice.org for Windows.
Pango
Pango

Pango is a free software and open source software computing library for rendering internationalized texts in high quality. Different font backends can be used, allowing cross-platform support....
- open source (GNOME
Gnome

A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
)
Uniscribe
Uniscribe

Uniscribe is the Microsoft Windows set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text, especially complex text layout. They are implemented in the Dynamic-Link Library USP10.DLL....
- Windows
WorldScript
WorldScript

WorldScript was the multilingual text rendering engine for Apple Macintosh before Mac OS X was introduced.Starting with version 7.1, Apple unified the implementation of non-Roman script systems in a programming interface called WorldScript....
- Macintosh, replaced by the Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging, mentioned above
- Devanagari Input using English Keyboard
- The indic script typing tool with support for Devanagari through a Windows desktop executable or Firefox Extension.

Devanagari

Origins

Principles

Letters

Vowels

Consonants

Conjuncts

Biconsonantal conjuncts

Accent marks

Punctuation

Numerals

Transliteration

ISO 15919

IAST

Harvard-Kyoto

ITRANS

ALA-LC Romanization
ALA-LC Romanization

ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association-Library of Congress....

Encodings

ISCII

Devanagari in Unicode

Devanagari Keyboard Layouts

Devanagari and Devanagari-QWERTY keyboard layouts for Mac OS X

INSCRIPT / KDE Linux

Typewriter

Phonetic

See also

Software

Bibliography

External links

Electronic typesetting

Fonts

Documentation

Tools and applications

Devanagari

Origins

Principles

Letters

Vowels

Consonants

Conjuncts

Biconsonantal conjuncts

Accent marks

Punctuation

Numerals

Transliteration

ISO 15919

IAST

Harvard-Kyoto

ITRANS

ALA-LC RomanizationALA-LC RomanizationALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association-Library of Congress....

Encodings

ISCII

Devanagari in Unicode

Devanagari Keyboard Layouts

Devanagari and Devanagari-QWERTY keyboard layouts for Mac OS X

INSCRIPT / KDE Linux

Typewriter

Phonetic

See also

Software

Bibliography

External links

Electronic typesetting

Fonts

Documentation

Tools and applications

ALA-LC Romanization
ALA-LC Romanization

ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association-Library of Congress....