Hindi Lesson 1: Varnamala pt 1
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
अंगूर anguur - grapes