Devanagari (देवनागरी)

Devanagari consonants don’t have special name (like in English ‘ei’ for ‘a’ etc.) but are known simply by the sounds they represent followed by the vowel ‘a’. e.g. त ‘ta’ न ‘na’. There are seven levels in which consonants are divided, I will give you those levels in this blog and we’ll observe how vowels interact with consonants.

  

vowels

Consonants

• Velar consonants

           क: k as in skip and kamraa ‘कमरा’ (room)

As we have seen previously, ‘a’ is ‘अ’ but this sound isn’t written so we assumed there’s an ‘a’ in words unless it is written at the beginning of a word. On the other hand, ‘aa’ is ‘आ’ but in this case it is written with ा symbol in words, unless there’s an ‘aa’ at the beginning as ‘aap आप’. Let’s see: ‘kamraa’ has an ‘a’ and ‘aa’ sound: कमरा, the first ‘a’ isn’t written so we assume and pronounce short sound for a; whilst at the end there´s ‘aa’ sound and आ turns into ा.

           ख: kh as in sinkhole and khaanaa ‘खाना’ (food, to eat)

           ग: g as in go and guru ‘गुरु’ (teacher)

In the case of ‘u’ and ‘oo’ sounds there’s another rule.

‘उ: u ऊ: oo’ but when we write these sounds turn into ‘ु and ू‘ as in गुरु guru. And as you can see, when we write r (र) + u (ु) it turns into रु.. letter R has an specific rule we will see later on.

          घ: gh as in doghouse ghar ‘घर’ (home)

          ङ: ṅ as in sing gaṅgaa ‘गंगा’ (Ganges river)

Here, letter ङ turns into a dot above the line, it usually happens with nasal consonants: n, ṅ, ņ, ñ, m. If one of the nasal consonants forms the first part of a conjunct it is normally replaced by a dot.  

ङ ṅ गंगा

ञ ñ पंजाब Punjab

ण  ṇ अंडा (egg)

न n हिंदी or हिन्दी (Hindi, both are correct)

म m लंबा or लम्बा (lambaa- long, tall. both are correct)

• Palatal consonants

च ca as in church and चम्मच cammc (pronounce ‘chamach’ means spon)

चम्मच after च and म्म is a short sound of ‘a’ as I explained in the first level.

छ chh as in pinchhit and छुट्टी chhuttee (holiday)

ु is u not ‘oo’. ट is letter t so tt is ट्ट. About vowel ‘I’ we know is इ and ‘ee’ is ई so when these sound are within a word turn into  ‘ि’ and ‘ी’ respectively as in हिन्दी hindi (even though we know it is ‘ee’ at the end, in roman letters is writen with ‘I’ not ‘ee’)

ज j as in jump and जनवरी janvree (pronounce ‘janvaree’ means January)

झ jh as in dodge, her and झूठ jhooth (lie)

ञ ñ as in पंजाब Punjab