Hindi Alphabet (DevaNagari Varnamala; वर्णमाला)
DevaNagari (देवनागरी; नागरी) is a widely used script (लिपि/lipi). It is used by more than 250 million people! It is used for writing text of Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit and many other regional languages and dialects in the Indian subcontinent.
These pages are about alphabet of DevaNagari called 'Varnamala' (वर्णमाला). Varnmala is incorrect spelling while varn-mala is not incorrect! As per xNagari transliteration scheme varnamala can be written as varNNamaalaa. Varnamala is also called 'kakahara' (ककहरा; kakaharaa) or 'Aksharmala' (अक्षरमाला; AkShar-maalaa)!
If you want to see the pictures of DevaNagari alphabets (swar and vyanjan) and do not want to read the introduction of DevaNagari click following.
SKIP Reading Introduction;
GOTO Swar, Vyanjan & Matra...
One should not copy any text from the pages belonging to softfonts.com or hindidevanagari.com. If you find any similar text in any other reference please inform us. (report plagiary...)
DevaNagari Letters as Images
Your browser should be capable of displaying images because DevaNagari characters/glyphs are displayed as small pictures in gif format in these pages. The advantage of having icons of DevaNagari characters is that you may read these pages even if your browser can't display Unicode encoded DevaNagari. These pages do contain some Unicode-Nagari characters. These Unicode-Nagari characters may show up as question marks or boxes in older browsers!
The transliterated words of Sanskrit or Hindi which are unfamiliar (or not present in English dictionaries) are written in single quotation. Eg. 'varNNamaalaa'. When these translated (Sanskri/Hindi) words are used for the first time, their equivalent English words are given in parentheses along with the DevaNagari form, like 'swar' (स्वर/vowel). If a distinct plural form of a word does not exist in Hindi then a lowercase _s is appended (eg. swar_s). Though there are exception to above mentioned formatting (like in Headings, Lists, etc.). If a word is used many times, quotation marks are not used.
Hindi (DevaNagari) AkShar
Vowels and consonants together are called AkShar_s (अक्षर). AkShar means something immortal. 'kShar' (क्षर) means 'cease to exist' or 'which will not remain'. 'A' is used here as 'un', so 'AkShar' means something 'which remains'! So knowledge remains in the form of AkShar_s.
Simply speaking an AkShar is a letter.
In a chapter titled 'AkShar vignyaan' of a book titled 'vaidik sampatti', 'AkShar' is compared to an atom! Then why not to compare 'conjuncts' or 'syllables' to molecules. ;-)
'kShar' also means 'agnyaan' (lack of knowledge), so we can say 'AkShar' mean 'not lack of knowledge' or 'light of knowledge'!
Hindi (DevaNagari) _maatraaEN (matra_s)
All the vowels (except one) have a corresponding sign (or mark) called their maatraaEN (मात्राएँ). _maatraa means extent or amount! So a maatraa represent amount of a vowel. There are marks which are applied over vowels. These marks (like 'chandra-bindu') are 'vowel modifiers' and are also called matraEN.
Marks or signs of consonants like 'Anuswaar', 'visarg', 'reph' and 'rakaar' are also called maatraaEN! We will see what these marks means and how they look like!
DevaNagari is Syllabic
In DevaNagari, we do not always write characters one after the other.
The maatraaEN are applied over Consonants to form syllables. A maatraa represent amount of a vowel in a syllable. Syllable can be called शब्द-खन्ड!
Remember a maatraa is applied over an Akshar like a diacritic is applied over a letter in Latin. The main difference is that most of the maatraaEN connect to akshars while diacritics generally do not connect to the letters.
A conjunct is called a 'jod-akshar' (you guessed it right; 'jod' means join or joint).
Tentative Nagari _varNNamaalaa (Varnamala)
In DevaNagari, we can study alphabets under following categories.
| 1. | _swar_s (स्वर / Vowels & Diphthongs) | 13 |
| 2. | _vyaNjan_s (व्यंजन / Consonants) | 33 |
| 3. | _maatraaEN (मात्राएँ / Vowel-Signs / matras) | 12 |
| 4. | _chihn_s (चिह्न / Marks / chihnas) | 08 |
| 5. |
Aavashyak joDdakShar_s (आवश्यक जोड़ाक्षर / Essential Conjuncts) |
10 |
| 6. | ANk_s (अंक / Digits) | 10 |
| 7. | _viraam _chihn_s (विराम चिह्न / Punctuation Marks) | 10 |
| 8. | Anya (अन्य / Miscellaneous) | 08 |
So, there are more than 100 basic letter-forms in DevaNagari.
The first thought that comes to one's mind is that in comparison to about 70 characters in English you have to learn more than 100 alphabets in DevaNagari. Let me remind you that it is not only about learning more characters, its more than that. As you may know there are many rules for writing/forming DevaNagari words.
Think of the big reward! -
You will be able to write anything you speak - A N Y T H I N G !!
without having to worry much about how it will be pronounced.
You Write What You Speak
DevaNagari is a phonetics based script. Words are written largely according to phonetics (pronunciation). There are rules for pronouncing a written word. Possibility that a written word is pronounced differently is very less in Naagari. So, generally we get clear pronunciations of written words.
Indic languages do not require memorizing odd SPELLINGS. We need to just remember which matra/vowel is correct for a particular word; it also help in correctly pronouncing that word. It also help in preserving the correct pronunciations of words over period of time!!
Click here to read about swar, vyaNjan and matra.
Pictures of hindi alphabet are also shown.