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Devanagari is a script to write languages in India like
Hindi, Sanskrit and
Marathi. Devanagari is also used to write Nepali.
"Deva" is the Sanskrit for god, and "Nagari" is a city; together they mean, literally, "City of the Gods" (when the compound is read as a shashtitatpurusha (see the entry on Sanskrit). This refers to the legend that the script was one used in such a city. (So, the compound really functions as a bahuvrihi) An often-used transcription variant is Devnagri.
Devanagari is partly phonetic in the sense that a word written in it can
only be pronounced in one way, but not all possible pronunciations can be written perfectly.
Devanagari has 34 consonants ("vyanjan"), and 12 vowels ("svar"). A
syllable ("akshar") is formed by the combination of zero or one or more
consonants, and one vowel.
(If you don't have a proper Unicode font installed, the Devanagari characters in the following tables may not appear correctly.)
Devanagari Vowels and Related Symbols
| Vowel | Transliteration | Pronunciation/Note |
|---|
| अ | a | 'a' as in about |
| आ | aa | 'a' as in art |
| इ | i | 'i' as in pit |
| ई | ii | 'ee' as in wheel |
| उ | u | 'u' as in put |
| ऊ | uu | 'oo' as in soot |
| ऋ | RRi | |
| ॠ | RRI | |
| ऌ | LLi | |
| ॡ | LLI | |
| ए | e | 'a' as in rate |
| ऐ | ai | |
| ओ | o | |
| औ | au | |
| ः | aH | visarga |
| ् | halant | suppresses inherent vowel |
When no vowel is written, 'a' is assumed. To specifically denote the
absence of a vowel, a halant is used.
The letters above are pronounced as in English, with the exceptions
of:
| Consonant | Pronunciation |
|---|
| |
| |
| |
| 'th' as in the |
| |
| |
Among these, 'L' and 'N' are not used in Hindi. The entire set is
used in Marathi.
There is no distinction of case, i.e. no uppercase and lowercase
letters.
Devanagari digits are written as follows:
The ITRANS notation
is a lossless transliteration scheme of
Devanagari into English. The letters used to represent Devanagari
alphabets in this notation have approximately the same pronunciation
in English. It is widely used on Usenet.
In ITRANS, the word Devanagari is written as "devanaagarii".
(Note: "Devanagari" is the most common transliteration. Others are
"Devnagri", "Devanagri", "Deonagri"(rare).)