Learn Devanāgarī

[clawgrip]

Also I'm going to request lessons for Devanagari script.

So, let’s learn Devanagari then. Devanagari is used to write Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and many other Indian languages, and it is also the script most commonly used in modern times to write Sanskrit. Because the script is used to write multiple languages, I will refrain from using IPA and simply use the standard transliteration scheme used for Indic scripts in general.
Devanagari is an alphasyllabary, meaning that, generally, every letter actually represents a combination of a consonant and vowel, the default, inherent vowel being /a/. The vowel can be altered by means of diacritic marks that are attached to consonants. Consonant clusters are generally rendered with ligatures that are formed in a fairly regular way, though some are fairly complex or unintuitive and must be learned separately. Modern Hindi tends to use ligatures much more sparingly than Sanskrit, and relies more on the readers knowledge of the language to know when the /a/ should be dropped.

Lesson 1: Standard Vowel Signs
I will start out by teaching how to mark the 10 basic vowels on consonants.

a Ø
ā ा
i ि
ī ी
u ु
ū ू
e े
ai ै
o ो
au ौ

Notice that o and au are simply combinations of a and e/ai.

We will now look at how these diacritics attach to consonant signs. In order to do that, though, we need to have a consonant sign to attach them to. Let’s take the first consonant of Devanagari:

क ka

Here is how we can write /k/ combined with all ten vowels:

क ka
का kā
कि ki
की kī
कु ku
कू kū
के ke
कै kai
को ko
कौ kau

It’s important to note here that the vowel sign ि comes before the letter it modifies. If your browser displays it after the letter, then you need to look into how to get your browser to support Devanagari and other Indic scripts.

[clawgrip]

Lesson 2: Velar Series
There are five consonants in the velar series. We have already learned क ka, so let’s learn the other four.

ख kha
This is an unvoiced, aspirated velar

ग ga
This is a voiced, unaspirated velar

घ gha
This is a voiced, aspirated velar

ङ ṅa
This is a velar nasal. Because most Indian languages don’t have a velar nasal except when followed by a velar stop, you will primarily see this one used only in ligatures. In Indic language studies, it is traditional to indicate the velar nasal with an n and superscript dot.

Exercise: transliterate the following:

घी, के, खै, गोख, काक, गूक

[clawgrip]

Lesson 3: Palatal Series
Like the velar series, there are five letters in the palatal series. The palatal stops of Sanskrit have in many modern languages become post-alveolar fricatives.

च ca
This is an unvoiced, unaspirated palatal stop.

छ cha
This is an unvoiced, aspirated palatal stop

ज ja
This is a voiced, unaspirated palatal stop. It looks like च but pointed in the other direction

झ jha
This is a voiced, aspirated palatal stop

ञ ña
This is the palatal nasal. Like the velar nasal, it generally only appears in ligatures.


Exercise: transliterate the following:

गाज, झाग, चीचीकूची, झुका, चकाचक

[clawgrip]

Lesson 4: Retroflex Series
Here are the five letters of the retroflex series. Traditionally in Indian language studies, retroflex consonants are marked with subscript dots.

ट ṭa
This is an unvoiced, unaspirated retroflex stop

ठ ṭha
This is an unvoiced, aspirated retroflex stop. Be careful not to confuse it with the similar ट!

ड ḍa
This is a voiced, unaspirated retroflex stop. Be careful not to confuse it with ङ, which has a dot on the right side.

ढ ḍha
This is an voiced, aspirated retroflex stop. Again, be careful not to confuse it with ट, which has no loop.

ण ṇa
This is the retroflex nasal.

Exercise: transliterate the following:

टाक, ढू, कुठि, गडु, कूणि, कीटज, जटाजूट, कैट, चणक

[clawgrip]

Lesson 5: Dental Series
In the Romanization, the dental consonants are differentiated from the retroflex consonants only by a subscript dot. Combined with the fact that English does not have a retroflex series at all, it can be easy for English speakers to confuse these two series, so take care!

त ta
This is an unvoiced, unaspirated dental stop

थ tha
This is an unvoiced, aspirated dental stop

द da
This is a voiced, unaspirated dental stop. Be careful not to confuse it with ढ. The pronunciation and appearance are both somewhat similar.

ध dha
This is a voiced, aspirated dental stop. Be careful not to confuse it with घ. The main difference is that ध dha is open on the top and has a loop, while घ is closed on the top and has no loop.

न na
This is the dental nasal. Be careful not to confuse it with ग. You can think of न as being an illustration of the shape of your tongue as you touch it against your teeth to make an /n/ sound.

Exercise: transliterate the following:

तिथि, दैन, धूण, चेतनी, घोटते, दीदि, धिति

[clawgrip]

Lesson 6: Labial Series
This is the final stop/nasal series.

प pa
This is an unvoiced, unaspirated labial stop

फ pha
This is an unvoiced, aspirated labial stop. Be careful not to confuse it with प. You can think of the extra hook as the extra air escaping.

ब ba
This is a voiced, unaspirated labial stop. Take care that you always include the inner line.

भ bha
This is a voiced, aspirated labial stop

म ma
This is the labial nasal. It is similar to भ, but it is closed at the top, like your lips when you make a labial nasal sound.

Exercise: transliterate the following:

भूमि, पेचु, बैजिक, गमति, गोपिटक, मुझे, फेनी

[clawgrip]

Lesson 7: Liquids
There are four letters representing liquids in the standard Devanagari inventory.

य ya
This is a palatal approximant

र ra
This is generally a dental tap or flap, or trill, depending on the language

This letter has irregular forms for the vowels u and ū: रु ru रू rū. As you can see, the vowel mark has been raised up to the right side, likely just for aesthetic reasons. (note: if these do not appear irregular to you, you will need to check your font/browser settings)

ल la
This generally a dental lateral approximant

व va
Depending on the language, this may be a labial or labio-dental approximant or a voiced labio-dental fricative. Be careful not to confuse it with ब; there is no inner line for व.

Exercise: transliterate the following:

यौग, लुठन, येमन, रूवुक, गोपवधूटी, भावेन परिणमते

[clawgrip]

Lesson 8: Fricatives
There are four more standard consonant signs left to learn, and they are all fricatives.

श ś
This is an unvoiced post-alveolar fricative. Be careful not to confuse it with भ. The main differences is that श is optionally closed on top while भ never is, and the bottom line is horizontal and connected in भ but angles downward in श.

ष ṣ
This is an unvoiced retroflex fricative. Be careful not to confuse it with प.

स s
This is an unvoiced dental fricative. Be careful not to confuse it with रा rā. Note that स has a crossbar in the middle.

ह h
This is a glottal fricative. It is voiced in Hindi, but may be unvoiced in other languages

Exercise: transliterate the following:

है, होला, रौही, शारदा, भीषित, हुडु, कोशीय, हथकरघा

[clawgrip]

Lesson 9: Independent Vowels and Four New Vowels

When vowels appear at the beginning of a word or after another vowel, they are written with a special vowel letter, rather than the vowel signs learned in Lesson 1. Here are the independent vowel letters for the ten vowel we learned in lesson 1:
अ इ उ ए ओ
a i u e o
आ ई ऊ ऐ औ
ā ī ū ai au

So for example, the word āgai is written आगै, and eka as एक.

I will now also introduce four additional vowels for Sanskrit:

ृ ऋ ṛ
In Sanskrit, this letter represents a short syllabic alveolar trill. However, in modern languages this vowel sign is now pronounced as ri or ru. As it was fairly common in Sanskrit, it can still be seen in in modern languages (cf. Hindi ऋण riṇa).

ॄ ॠ ṝ
This is a long syllabic alveolar trill. It is not really used outside of Sanskrit, and is not particularly common in Sanskrit anyway.

ॢ ऌ ḷ
This is a short syllabic lateral approximant. It is rare even in Sanskrit (appearing only in one verb root), and not really seen anywhere else.

ॣ ॡ ḹ
This is a long syllabic lateral approximant. This vowel is theoretical and doesn’t actually exist in Sanskrit or any other Indian language, so you will quite honestly never see this letter outside of lists of vowels. In fact, it was specifically created just to make the list look nice, since every other vowel has a short and long counterpart (ai and au are considered the long forms of e and o), so they thought ḷ should have two as well. (though interestingly, despite being completely useless, this letter actually survived all the way to Cambodia where it exists to this day in evolved form as ឮ).

Exercise: transliterate the following:

अगरी, वोढृ, भाई, औपाधिक, पृथा, ऐशानी, ऊठति, ऋघायते, कॄषु

[clawgrip]

Lesson 10: Important Diacritics
In this lesson I will introduce a couple important diacritics: candrabindu, anusvāra, and visarga.

The candrabindu is a superscript curve with a dot in it ँ
The anusvāra is a small, superscript dot ं without the curve
The visarga looks like a colon ः

Candrabindu indicates nasalization of the vowel. When writing Sanskrit in the Roman script, the candrabindu is almost always written as <ṃ>, but when Romanizing Hindi, it is also very often written as a tilde. Examples:

बँधा baṃdhā / bãdhā
हूँ hūṃ / hū̃

When there is already a sign above the letter, there isn't enough space to write a candrabindu, so anusvara is used instead:

में meṃ / mẽ
नहीं nahīṃ / nahī̃

The anusvāra performs a few functions related to nasalization. In addition to serving as a smaller version of the candrabindu, it also indicates homorganic nasal consonants before stops. In Hindi, the anusvāra can often be seen used in place of the candrabindu. Examples:
हिंदी Hindī / Hiṃdī
कंबोडिया Kamboḍiyā / Kaṃboḍiyā
कुआं / कुआँ kuā̃ / kuāṃ

The visarga ः represents a final voiceless glottal fricative generally Romanized as ḥ. It is very common in Sanskrit, but not nearly as much in Hindi, where it is sometimes replaced by ह.

वदामः vadāmaḥ

Exercise: transliterate the following:

बेटियाँ, छः, कितबें, युगांडा, पठामः, तंगी, हैं, बहुशः

[kanejam]

Wow this is really amazing! I was very impressed by your Khmer script lessons and I promised I would try to learn it but eventually just gave up. Hopefully devanagari isn't quite as difficult

Lesson 2:

Spoiler:

घी, के, खै, गोख, काक, गूक
- ghī, ke, khai, gegha, kāka, gūka

Wow I just started the exercises reading right to left. For some reason the devanagari script just looks backwards to me. Anyway, lesson 3:

Spoiler:

गाज, झाग, चीचीकूची, झुका, चकाचक
- gāja, jhāga, cīcīkūcī, jhukā, cakācaka

Lesson 4:

Spoiler:

टाक, ढू, कुठि, गडु, कूणि, कीटज, जटाजूट, कैट, चणक
- ṭāka, ḍhū, kuṭhi, gaḍu, kūṇi, kīṭaja, jaṭājūṭa, kaita, caṇaka

Interesting that ḍ and ṅ are based on the same character. Lesson 5:

Spoiler:

तिथि, दैन, धूण, चेतनी, घोटते, दीदि, धिति
- tithi, daina, dhuṇa, cetanī, ghoṭate, dīdi, dhiti

Lesson 6:

Spoiler:

भूमि, पेचु, बैजिक, गमति, गोपिटक, मुझे, फेनी
- bhūmi, pecu, baijika, gamati, gopiṭaka, mujhe, phenī

Lesson 7:

Spoiler:

यौग, लुठन, येमन, रूवुक, गोपवधूटी, भावेन परिणमते
- yauga, luṭhana, yemana, rūvuka, gopavadhūṭī, bhāvena pariṇamate

Lesson 8:

Spoiler:

है, होला, रौही, शारदा, भीषित, हुडु, कोशीय, हथकरघा
- hai, holā, rauhī, śāradā, bhīṣita, huḍu, kośīya, hathakarachā

Lesson 9:

Spoiler:

अगरी, वोढृ, भाई, औपाधिक, पृथा, ऐशानी, ऊठति, ऋघायते, कॄषु
- agarī, voḍhṛ, bhāī, aupādhika, pṛthā, aiśāgī, ūṭhati, ṛchāyate, kṝṣu

Lesson 10:

Spoiler:

बेटियाँ, छः, कताबें, युगांडा, पठामः, तंगी, हैं, बहुशः
- beṭiyāṃ, chaḥ, katābeṃ, yugāṇḍā, paṭāmaḥ, taṅgī, haiṃ, bahuśāḥ

I think I got the diacritics right in lesson 9, but for the syllabic resonantly I don't think they displayed correctly in my browser. All I saw were the standalone characters. Anyway, I hope splitting the lessons up like this doesn't make it hard to mark.

I've always liked the romanisation for Sanskrit, it just makes a lot of sense, except for ṃ which still works but takes a bit of getting used to.

[clawgrip]

Wow this is really amazing! I was very impressed by your Khmer script lessons and I promised I would try to learn it but eventually just gave up. Hopefully devanagari isn't quite as difficult

Thanks! I hope you'll find it useful. If there's anything you think I should change about how I'm presenting it, let me know.

I really like the entire Brahmic family of scripts and feel like I should do more of these. There are some interesting things hidden away in this family.

You made only a few mistakes:

Spoiler:

गोख
gegha :> gokha

हथकरघा
hathakarachā :> hathakaraghā

ऐशानी
aiśāgī :> aiśānī

ऋघायते
ṛchāyate :> ṛghāyate

I forgot to mention how easy it is to confuse घ with छ and ग with न!

I also noticed a mistake of my own: the word in lesson 10 should be कितबें, not कतबें. (it means books in Hindi; it's a loanword from Arabic. The final एँ is a plural suffix).

Interesting that ḍ and ṅ are based on the same character.

It's actually just a case of convergent evolution:

They eventually added a dot when the two letters became too similar to distinguish.

I think I got the diacritics right in lesson 9, but for the syllabic resonantly I don't think they displayed correctly in my browser. All I saw were the standalone characters.

Some fonts don't have all the required characters, especially when they're rare/useless.

I've always liked the romanisation for Sanskrit, it just makes a lot of sense, except for ṃ which still works but takes a bit of getting used to.

ṃ seems normal and natural to me for Sanskrit, but it bugs me when it's used for Hindi. I don't know why.

[clawgrip]

Lesson 11: Elimination of Vowels Part 1: Virāma and Easy Ligatures
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Indian languages probably knows that not all consonants are followed by vowels.

Devanagari (along with many other Brahmic scripts, for that matter) has two solutions, the simplest and most painless of which naturally being the least commonly used. Most of the time, the script relies on ligatures that sometimes get pretty complicated and confusing. But anyway let’s ease into it.

Look at this sign: ्. It's called virāma (or halant in Hindi). Placing this under a consonant will erase the vowel. Example:

प pa
प् p

In Sanskrit, this is only used at the end of a sentence, because Sanskrit will happily ignore word boundaries if it means it can use a ligature instead. In Hindi it’s basically never used since Hindi phonotactics make it pretty clear to native speakers when the short a should be dropped. You will probably see it more often online, because whenever your installed font doesn’t support a given ligature, the computer will default to using virama, which, even if differing from how it is normally written, is still perfectly legible. Some more examples:

म् m
ड् ḍ
फ् ph

However, it's not that simple. Let's look at र first. When र is combined with other consonants, it takes special forms. Because I am trying to ease you in, I will just teach you the easiest of its two compound forms: cluster-initial र. This takes the form of a little hook on top of the letter.

र्प rpa

Again, if you only see र + ् + प it means your font is not sufficient or your browser is not set up correctly, and you’re going to have this problem from here on out. To proceed, you’ll need to look into finding a better and more complete font.

This appears together with ī, e, and ai vowels:

पर्णी parṇī
गर्तेश garteśa

Note that the hook appears on the vowel sign, not the consonant:
गुर्दा gurdā

Anusvāra appears inside the hook:

सर्कें sarkeṃ

Incidentally, this also happens with the independent ī vowel, but I forgot to tell you:

परछाईं parchāīṃ

Now let’s take a look at your new friends: letters with right-side bars. Look at this list of letters:
ख ग घ च ज झ ञ ण थ ध न प ब भ म य ल व श ष स
You’ll notice that each letter in this list has a vertical bar on the right side. Normally, to form a ligature with these letters, all that is necessary is to remove this bar:

ग्ल gla
स्क ska
भ्य bhya
न्न nna

Certain ligatures push the first letter into an open space if it's available:
प्त pta (yes this looks incredibly similar to स, but it is written differently and not the same. In स, the left portion is a single stroke, and the crossbar is a second stroke. In प्त, the top portion is a single stroke (as in प) and the bottom is the second stroke (as in त))
ष्ट ṣṭa

Special note goes to क, which, though lacking a vertical bar, still forms pretty regular ligatures:
क्व kva

You can consider the resulting ligature to be one letter. This means that the short i vowel will appear on the left of the entire thing:
ग्लि gli
स्कि ski
भ्यि bhyi
न्नि nni
प्ति pti
ष्टि ṣṭi

There are of course times when these letters form irregular and unusual ligatures, but we’ll worry about those later.

Exercise: transliterate the following:

तुर्की, स्याही, गुप्ता, उर्दू, अच्छा, मक्कल्ल, अंडरवर्ल्ड, extra hard challenge: बुद्ध

[kanejam]

No these lessons are wonderful! Don't change anything

Spoiler:

तुर्की, स्याही, गुप्ता, उर्दू, अच्छा, मक्कल्ल, अंडरवर्ल्ड, extra hard challenge: बुद्ध
- turkī, syāhī, guptā, urdū, acchā, makkalla, aṇḍaravalṛḍa, budhda (should this be Buddha?)

I recognise a few of these words. It's unfortunate that I don't know more Hindi.

I've always found the derivations of the Brahmic script to be crazy and ridiculous, such simple letterforms end up so complicated and not resembling their original form at all.

[clawgrip]

Spoiler:

अंडरवर्ल्ड
aṇḍaravalṛḍa :> aṇḍaravaṛlḍa
In a sense, the ligature is made first, and then the r is applied, so the r will always be first. Actually this word is just "underworld" borrowed into Hindi.

extra hard challenge: बुद्ध
budhda (should this be Buddha?)
Yeah, it's Buddha. It may seem out of order, but actually it's an example of vertical stacking with da on top and dha under it (that's why the top line is not open like it usually is for dha). I haven't taught this yet, but wanted to get you thinking for yourself a bit!

I recognise a few of these words. It's unfortunate that I don't know more Hindi.

I've always found the derivations of the Brahmic script to be crazy and ridiculous, such simple letterforms end up so complicated and not resembling their original form at all.

They sure do. You should look at Sinhalese.

[clawgrip]

Lesson 12: Elimination of Vowels Part 2: Cluster-final r and some irregular clusters
I need to be clear with you right away on something. Devanagari has hundreds of possible ligatures, and it’s impossible for me to teach all of them to you. Instead, I’m just going to show you some examples and give you the knowledge you need to learn to decipher them yourself.

That being said, I'm now going to show you a bunch of ligatures. We’re going to take a look at cluster-final र for syllables like kr, tr, etc. This is generally formed by attaching a small, diagonal line to the lower left of the letter. The location it’s added is generally anywhere that is convenient or aesthetic, but it’s not so hard to figure out.

क्र ख्र ग्र घ्र च्र ज्र झ्र ञ्र ण्र त्र थ्र द्र ध्र न्र प्र फ्र ब्र भ्र म्र य्र ल्र व्र ष्र स्र ह्र
kra khra gra ghra cra, jra, jhra, ñra, ṇra, tra, thra, dra, dhra, nra, pra, phra, bra, bhra, mra, yra, lra, vra, ṣra, sra, hra

Letters with rounded bottoms get a special form:

ङ्र छ्र ट्र ठ्र ड्र ढ्र
ṅra, chra, ṭra, ṭhra, ḍra, ḍhra

There's also a pretty irregular one:
श्र
śra

As you can see, the placement of that line might not always be quite what you guessed, but for the most part it’s not completely out of left field either.

Nevertheless, śra is not the only irregular ligature. There are many others. Here are a few common ones:
त्त tta
क्त kta
क्ष kṣa
ज्ञ jña (in Hindi, often pronounced gya)

Exercise: transliterate the following:

क्षत्रिय, राज्ञीपद, व्रैह भूत्तम, न्यक्त, भवतः वर्गशिक्षकः कः?

[kanejam]

Ah I understand my confusion about the word Buddha, I was on my phone browser, which obviously has a different font to my computer browser in terms of devanagari. The प्त pta ligature just looked like a regular ligature of the प+त, but the ष्ट ṣṭa ligature did show up as one above the other. On my computer neither of them show up that way; they just look like the regular ligatures. The द्ध ddha ligature still shows up but looks funny, the dha is squished. On my phone it wasn't so squished but it was also pushed more to the left. So while both browsers support the basic ligatures (all the r+C and C+r ligatures seem to show up fine as well) they don't quite manage all of them. Just looking at the font on my computer, the characters are all a little bit different as well, although still very recognisable.

Spoiler:

क्षत्रिय, राज्ञीपद, व्रैह भूत्तम, न्यक्त, भवतः वर्गशिक्षकः कः?
- kśatriya, rājñīpada, vraiha bhuttama, nyakta, bhavataḥ vargaśikśakaḥ kaḥ?

The two ligatures त्त tta, क्त kta show up just as regular ligatures, so obviously something's wrong there as well; the other three क्ष kśa, ज्ञ jña, श्र śra show up though. I'll check on my phone later to see if they show up fine there.

I had a look at Sinhalese and wow. I have always thought the same about Tamil as well.

[clawgrip]

Good work, no mistakes. Except for a mistake that was actually my mistake. I mislabelled क्ष. It's actually kṣa.

The next post is going to use images because most computers are not going to have fonts that include the ligatures I'm going to show.

This should clear up those ligatures:


The shapes of tta and kta are easier to understand and remember if you think of the left side of the त and क as having been unfolded or straightened to make space, and then a second त was added underneath it. This is more obvious in some other typefaces; there is an amount of variation in the exact appearances of some ligatures.

[kanejam]

Okay that's great. Most of them looked as I guessed. On my phone browser the ddha ligature looked more clearly like a d over a dh. I think that it's less transparent in the image you posted. otherwise it shouldn't be too tricky. The only problem is that tta looks pretty close to ta!

Looking forward to the next lesson as always

[Przemysław]

Clawgrip, you forgot the letter <om>. :)