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Devanagari 1 Devanagari Devanagari 1 Devanagari Devanāgarī देवनागरी Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Type abugida Languages Several Indian languages and Nepali Languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Awadhi, Marathi, Pahari (Garhwali and Kumaoni), Nepali, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Kurukh, Nepal Bhasa, and Sindhi. Sometimes used to write or transliterate Sherpa, Kashmiri and Punjabi. Formerly used to write Gujarati. Time period c. 1200–present Parent systems Brāhmī •• Gupta •• Nāgarī • Devanāgarī देवनागरी Child systems Gujarati Moḍī Ranjana [1] Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Sister systems Sharada ISO 15924 Deva, 315 Direction Left-to-right Unicode alias Devanagari Unicode range [2] U+0900–U+097F Devanagari, [3] U+A8E0–U+A8FF Devanagari Extended, [4] U+1CD0–U+1CFF Vedic Extensions Brāhmī The Brahmic script and its descendants Devanagari 2 Devanagari (/ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəriː/; Hindustani: [d̪eːʋˈnaːɡri]; देवनागरी devanāgarī — a compound of "deva" [देव] and "nāgarī" [नागरी]), also called Nagari (Nāgarī, नागरी, the name of its parent writing system), is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, does not have distinct letter cases, and is recognisable (along with most other North Indic scripts, with few exceptions like Gujarati and Oriya) by a horizontal line that runs along the top of full letters. Since the 19th century, it has been the most commonly used script for Sanskrit. Devanagari is used to write Standard Hindi, Marathi, Nepali along with Awadhi, Bodo, Bhojpuri, Gujari, Pahari, (Garhwali and Kumaoni), Konkani, Magahi, Maithili, Marwari, Bhili, Newar, Santhali, Tharu, Devanagari used in Melbourne Australia to and sometimes Sindhi, Dogri, Sherpa, Kashmiri and Punjabi. It was communicate in an advertisement formerly used to write Gujarati. Because it is the standardised script for the Hindi language, Devanagari is one of the most used and adopted writing systems in the world. Origins Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet, and South-East Asia. It is a descendant of the Gupta script, along with Siddham and Sharada. Eastern variants of Gupta called nāgarī are first attested from the 8th century CE; from c. 1200 CE these gradually replaced Siddham, which survived as a vehicle for Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, and Sharada, which remained in parallel use in Kashmir. An early version of Devanagari is visible in the Kutila inscription of Devanagari used in Public Transport Tickets at Bareilly dated to Vikram Samvat 1049 (i.e. 992 CE), which Mumbai demonstrates the emergence of the horizontal bar to group letters belonging to a word. Sanskrit nāgarī is the feminine of nāgara "relating or belonging to a town or city". It is feminine from its original phrasing with lipi ("script") as nāgarī lipi "script relating to a city", that is, probably from its having originated in some city. [5] The use of the name devanāgarī is relatively recent, and the older term nāgarī is still common. The rapid spread of the term devanāgarī may be related to the almost exclusive use of this script to publish Sanskrit texts in print since the 1870s. Principle As a Brahmic abugida, the fundamental principle of Devanagari is that each letter represents a consonant, which carries an inherent schwa vowel. This is usually written in Latin as a, though it is represented as [ə] in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The letter क is read ka, the two letters कन are kana, the three कनय are kanaya, etc. Other vowels, or the absence of vowels, require modification of these consonants or their own letters: Devanagari text from Vayu Puran Devanagari 3 • A final consonant is marked with the diacritic ्, called the virāma in Sanskrit, halant in Hindi, and occasionally a "killer stroke" in English. This cancels the inherent vowel, so that from क्नय knaya is derived क्नय् knay. The halant is often used for consonant clusters when typesetting conjunct ligatures is not feasible. • Consonant clusters are written with ligatures (saṃyuktākṣara "conjuncts"). For example, the three consonants क्, न्, and य्, (k , n, y), when written consecutively without virāma form कनय, as shown above. Alternatively, they may be joined as clusters to form क्नय Devanagari in Dictionary knaya, कन्य kanya, or क्न्य knya. This system was originally created for use with the Middle Indic languages, which have a very limited number of clusters (the only clusters allowed are geminate consonants and clusters involving homorganic nasal stops). When applied to Sanskrit, however, it added a great deal of complexity to the script, due to the large variety of clusters in this language (up to five consonants, e.g. rtsny). Much of this complexity is required at least on occasion in the modern Indo-Aryan languages, due to the large number of clusters allowed and especially due to borrowings from Sanskrit. • Vowels other than the inherent a are written with diacritics (termed matras). For example, using क ka, the following forms can be derived: के ke, कु ku, की kī, का kā, etc. • For vowels as an independent syllable (in writing, unattached to a preceding consonant), either at the beginning of a word or (in Hindi) after another vowel, there are full-letter forms. For example, while the vowel ū is written with the diacritic ू in कू kū, it has its own letter ऊ in ऊक ūka and (in Hindi but not Sanskrit) कऊ kaū. Such a letter or ligature, with its diacritics, is called an akṣara "syllable". For example, कनय kanaya is written with what are counted as three akshara, whereas क्न्य knya and कु ku are each written with one. As far as handwriting is concerned, letters are usually written without the distinctive horizontal bar, which is added only once the word is completed. Letters The letter order of Devanagari, like nearly all Brahmic scripts, is based on phonetic principles that consider both the manner and place of articulation of the consonants and vowels they represent. This arrangement is usually referred to as the varṇamālā "garland of letters". The format of Devanagari for Sanskrit serves as the prototype for its application, with minor variations or additions, to other languages. Vowels The vowels and their arrangement are: Independent form Romanised As diacritic with प Independent form Romanised As diacritic with प kaṇṭhya a ā (Guttural) अ प आ पा tālavya i ī (Palatal) इ पि ई पी oṣṭhya u ū (Labial) उ पु ऊ पू Devanagari 4 mūrḍhanya ṛ ṝ (Retroflex) ऋ पृ ॠ पॄ dantya ḷ ḹ (Dental) ऌ पॢ ॡ पॣ kaṇṭhatālavya e ai (Palato-Guttural) ए पे ऐ पै kaṇṭhoṣṭhya o au (Labio-Guttural) ओ पो औ पौ • Arranged with the vowels are two consonantal diacritics, the final nasal anusvāra ं ṃ and the final fricative visarga ः ḥ (called अं aṃ and अः aḥ). notes of the anusvāra in Sanskrit that "there is some controversy as to whether it represents a homorganic nasal stop [...], a nasalised vowel, a nasalised semivowel, or all these according to context". The visarga represents post-vocalic voiceless glottal fricative [h], in Sanskrit an allophone of s, or less commonly r, usually in word-final position. Some traditions of recitation append an echo of the vowel after the breath: इः [ihi]. Masica (1991:146) considers the visarga along with letters ङ ṅa and ञ ña for the "largely predictable" velar and palatal nasals to be examples of "phonetic overkill in the system". • Another diacritic is the candrabindu/anunāsika ँ. describes it as a "more emphatic form" of the anusvāra, "sometimes [...] used to mark a true [vowel] nasalization". In a New Indo-Aryan language such as Hindi the distinction is formal: the candrabindu indicates vowel nasalisation while the anusvār indicates a homorganic nasal preceding another consonant: e.g. हँसी [ɦə̃si] "laughter", गंगा [ɡəŋɡɑ] "the Ganges". When an akshara has a vowel diacritic above the top line, that leaves no room for the candra ("moon") stroke candrabindu, which is dispensed with in favour of the lone dot: हूँ [ɦũ] "am", but हैं [ɦɛ̃] "are". Some writers and typesetters dispense with the "moon" stroke altogether, using only the dot in all situations. • The avagraha ऽ (usually transliterated with an apostrophe) is a Sanskrit punctuation mark for the elision of a vowel in sandhi: एकोऽयम् ekoyam (< ekas + ayam) "this one". An original long vowel lost to coalescence is sometimes marked with a double avagraha: सदाऽऽत्मा sadātmā (< sadā + ātmā) "always, the self". In Hindi, Snell (2000:77) states that its "main function is to show that a vowel is sustained in a cry or a shout": आईऽऽऽ! āīīī!. In Madhyadeshi Languages like Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithili, etc. which have "quite a number of verbal forms [that] end in that inherent vowel", the avagraha is used to mark the non-elision of word-final inherent a, which otherwise is a modern orthographic convention: बइठऽ baiṭha "sit" versus *बइठ baiṭh • The syllabic consonants ṝ, ḷ, and ḹ are specific to Sanskrit and not included in the varṇamālā of other languages. The sound represented by ṛ has also been lost in the modern languages, and its pronunciation now ranges from [ɾɪ] (Hindi) to [ɾu] (Marathi). • ḹ is not an actual phoneme of Sanskrit, but rather a graphic convention included among the vowels in order to maintain the symmetry of short–long pairs of letters. • There are non-regular formations of रु ru and रू rū. Consonants The table below shows the consonant letters (incombination with inherent vowel a) and their arrangement. To the right of the Devanagari letter it shows the scientific transcription (IAST), the phonetic value (IPA) and the corresponding Urdu letter. Devanagari 5 sparśa anunāsika antastha
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