Hindi Lesson 2: Varnamala pt 2
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.
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)
ढक्कन dhakkan - lid (oh what’s that weird double letter? perhaps this will be covered in the future ;))