#varnamala

Hindi is written in Devanagari, and the arrangement of all the letters is called Varnamala (garland of letters). There’s no letter case, meaning there’s no distinction between upper and lower case. It looks something like this: वर्णमाला

Above the actual letters, there’s a line that string them all together (like a garland!), and the words hang off the lines instead of resting on them, like in English.

For this lesson, let’s cover the vowels. These are called स्वर (svar). Hindi uses an abugida script, which means the vowels have secondary form called a मात्रा maatraa that is used in combination with consonants. For example, while ई would be used when it isn’t preceded by a consonant, and its maatraa, ी, is used when it IS preceded by a consonant.

Here are the svar!

The little circles represent the consonants’ position. For example, क+ी = की.

You may have noticed that अ doesn’t have a maatraa. This is because consonants inherently have the अ sound. For example, क has no written maatraa but is pronounced ka [kə].

Also, some of these don’t seem like vowels, specifically ऋ, अं, अः and अँ (similar function to अँ). However, this is just how they’re arranged and how natives learn them, so it’s best to include them when you’re learning vowels.

And those are the svar!

When we did these in school, most teachers used the following words to make the learning process easier. While we already know these words even before we learn how to read and write, and they aren’t very common or useful for beginners, but it could be interesting to know how natives learn their own language.

Don’t worry about consonants, we’ll get there soon!

अनार anaar - pomegranate

आम aam - mango

इमली imlii - tamarind

ईख iikh - sugarcane

उल्लू ulluu - owl

ऊन uun - wool

ऋषि riṣi - sage

एड़ी eṛii - heel

ऐनक ainak - glasses

ओखली okhali - mortar

औरत aurat - woman

Consonants in Hindi are called vyanjan and they’re mostly arranged according to the manner and place of articulation, making it easy to remember the order.

Manner essentially refers to the way in which different parts of your mouth interact to create a sound, and place refers to where this interaction happens. In this lesson, we’ll cover 5 rows of vyanjan, which is 5 PLACES of articulation.

क ख ग घ ङ

च छ ज झ ञ

ट ठ ड ढ ण

त थ द ध न

प फ ब भ म

Each row goes from unvoiced to voiced (with an unaspirated and aspirated version of each) to the nasal.

Aspirated consonants are consonants followed by a little burst of air, kind of like the way the letter p is pronounced in the word "pin" in English.

Row 1 consists of VELARS, which are pronounced near the back of the mouth, around the area you'd pronounce k or g in English.

Row 2 consists of palatals, which are pronounced near the middle of the roof of the mouth, like ch in English.

Row 3 consists of retroflex consonants, which are pronounced near the roof of the mouth as well, but the tongue is curled backwards. This doesn't have an exact parallel in English, but I suggest looking them up and trying to pronounce them since these are very common sounds in Hindi.

Row 4 consists of dental consonants, which are pronounced with the tongue up against the upper teeth. Think th in “the” but with your tongue actually touching your teeth.

Row 5 consists of labial consonants, which are pronounced with the lips against each other, like m or b in English.

Let's look at these rows in detail!

To end this lesson, here are a few words that use both these consonants and the vowels from the previous lesson. These words may not seem very useful, but they’re easy to pronounce and figure out.

कलम - pen (this word has another spelling, but we’ll get to it later)

खाना - food

गंदा - dirty

घंटा - hour

चुपचाप - quietly

छाता - umbrella

जादू - magic

झंडा - flag

टोपी - cap

ठीक - fine, proper

डाँट - scolding (noun)

ढक्कन dhakkan - lid (oh what’s that weird double letter? perhaps this will be covered in the future ;))

ताकत - strength

थका - tired

दाँत - teeth

धोना - to wash

नई - new

पेट - stomach

फेंकना - to throw

बदबू - bad smell

भूख - hunger