4. Chihns (चिह्न / Marks)

Following are the main Chihns. These are as important as mukya-matras.
A. Halant (Vowel Omission Sign)
B. Anuswar (Nasal Consonant Sound Sign)
C. Chandrabindu (Nasalisation Sign)
D. Visarga (Aspirate Sign?)
E. Nukta (Diacritic Mark)
These are sometimes called matras. We mentioned matra means extent or amount of akshar. So 'Halant' should not be called a matra! It is a matra remover that removes inherent matra 'a' from consonants.

A. Halant (Vowel Omission Sign)

To pronounce two consonants separately in a word we need at least one vowel between them!

But sometimes we form syllables containing more than one consonant without any vowel in between them. In such cases it becomes necessary to remove the inherent vowel 'a' in all the consonants except the last one. The last one is generally called base 'Akshar'.

Eg. 1. 'स्‌व' (Akshar-Sa Halant Akshar-Va) is pronounced as 'sv' and not as 'sav'. So halant has removed the inherent vowel from the Akshar-Na that preceded it.

2. 'नड्डा' (Akshar-Na Akshar-Da Halant Akshar-Da) is pronounced as 'nadda'. So halant has removed the inherent vowel from the Akshar-Da that preceded it.

There are three ways to represent/show a Nagari consonant without the inherent 'a'.

The simplest way is to put a halant after the consonant. Like 'मुन्‌ना', 'गुड्डा', 'स्‌व'.

Another way is to remove 'Akar' (if any) from the consonant. Like 'मुन्ना', 'स्व'.

Yet another way is to form a conjunct. Like 'मुन्‍ना', गुड्‍डा.

Generally scholars used to create lot of conjunct forms instead of adding halant. But now-a-days different fonts control formation of conjunct differently. Our font 'Akhil HE' forms most of the frequently used conjuncts. There are some conjuncts which were used frequently but their use is decreasing in modern Hindi. These forms (below base once) makes it difficult to render DevaNagari text properly at small point sizes. Our font renders best possible bit-combinations at small point sizes.

5 to 8 --- to be translated

These sections are being translated from the original document written in Hindi.

You may find some related information in a page about transliteration from DevaNagari to Latin.