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Devanagari is the name of the script used in North Indian languages like Hindi and Marathi. Like how English, French, German etc use Latin as its written script.
In English one can use 5 vowels with letters to produce different sounds, in Devnagri, you can pronounce mainly in 13 different ways. There are 7 to 8 additional vowels which aren't commonly used; hence I will keep them out to keep this simple.
One thing I want to make clear about Devanagari from the beginning. This script was used by Sanskrit, which is Indian equivalent to Latin, and Sanskrit is the epitome of perfection. Devanagari is like Math, a word can only be pronounced in one way. What I mean by this is, in English words like 'put' can be pronounced in two different ways i.e. 1. Put it here and 2. Put used while golfing. If you are using a word like Potato, the British and American pronunciations are different for the same word (spelling). In Devanagari there are 2 different spellings, one for British version of Potato and another for American.
In Devanagari you only need to memorize 32 letter are 13 main vowels and you can spell most words in any language, no need to memorise anything. I wanted to know about 'Massachusetts' and I wrongly typed Massachusets; the search engine says 'Did you mean Massachusetts', you won't have that problem in Devanagari, because you don't need to memorise anything.
There aren't spelling bee competitions in India, you don't need to, memorisation is inefficient process.
Ma + ss + chu + say + tt + s=Massachusetts
मे + स्स + चु + से + ट + स =Massachusetts
मेस्सचुसेटस =Massachusetts
M=म Ma=मे
S=स SS=स्स
C=च Chu=चु
S=स say=से
T=ट T=ट
S=स S=स
The task can seem daunting but if you familiarize yourself with the Vowels and Alphabets below, I can show you how to convert few English words.
You may click on each Indian letter to hear their sounds.
Sometimes you have to click twice, for some reason the first time around the sound is unclear.
If the volume is low you may have to connect speakers to your computer to enhance the volume. I am working to improve the sound quality mean while.
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I1 |
I2 |
I3 |
I4 |
I5 |
I6 |
I7 |
I8 |
I9 |
I10 |
I11 |
I12 |
I13 |
I14 |
I15 |
I16 |
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KA |
KHA |
GA |
GHA |
CA |
CHA |
JA |
JHA |
TTA |
TTHA |
DDA |
DDHA |
NNA |
TA |
THA |
DA |
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क
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ख
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ग
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घ
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च
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छ
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ज
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झ
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ट
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ठ
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ड
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ढ
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ण
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त
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थ
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द
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I17 |
I18 |
I19 |
I20 |
I21 |
I22 |
I23 |
I24 |
I25 |
I26 |
I27 |
I28 |
I29 |
I30 |
I31 |
I32 |
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DHA |
NA |
PA |
PHA |
BA |
BHA |
MA |
YA |
RA |
LA |
LLA |
VA |
SHA |
SSA |
SA |
HA |
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ध
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न
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प
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फ
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ब
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भ
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म
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य
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र
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ल
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ळ
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व
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श
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ष
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स
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ह
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You may click on each Indian letter to hear it's sound.
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A1 |
A2 |
A3 |
A4 |
A5 |
A6 |
A7 |
A8 |
A9 |
A10 |
A11 |
A12 |
A13 |
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- |
A |
Aa |
I |
Ii |
U |
Uu |
E |
Ay |
O |
Ou |
Um |
Aha |
Oo |
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Vowel Notations |
अ
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आ
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इ
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ई
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उ
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ऊ
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ए
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ऐ
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ओ
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औ
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अं
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अः
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ऑ
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Vowel Equivalent |
- |
ा |
ि |
ी |
ु |
ू |
े |
ै |
ो |
ौ |
ं |
ः |
ॉ |
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Vowel Notation Explaination:
अ
as A in America.
आ
as A in Almond.
इ
as I in Indigo.
ई
as E in Emu.
उ
as U in Uma.
ऊ
as Uu in Uma how could you!!! It's the long U.
ए
as A in A B C. The sound of A not the phonetical sound.
ऐ
as Aye in Aye ya ya.
ओ
as O in Omen.
औ
as Ou in Ouch.
अं
as Um in Umbrella.
अः
as Aha.
ऑः
as long deep Oo. Like the Oo sound in Dawg (Hip Hop version of Dog :-) ).
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Vowel Equivalent Explaination:
When vowels are combined with Alphabets to
produce different sounds the vowel equivalents are used.
English word 'Me' is a product of letter 'M' and vowel 'e'. The
same happens in Hindi or Marathi. Alphabet म (M) is joined to ई
(e) to produce मि (Me). You would think it should be मई, but no
that's not how it is. I don't know why , but there is a small
difference.
When a vowel is to be joined to a alphabet the symbol changes,
so the symbol for ई (e) becomes,
ि (e). Hence Me is मि
One very important thing needs to be noted here, the dotted circles in Vowel equivalent's above are not part of the Vowel Equivalents symbols in the actual language, there are merely there cause the Unicode Techies put it there.
What I mean by Unicode techie's is the group of people who are part of the Unicode consortium, which standardizes codes for letters.
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Mixing Alphabets with Vowel:
Let try using letter 'K' in Devnagri (क) in 13
different ways. If you refer the table below you will see in
B1-A1 (Column-Row), there is primary letter क. The letter क is
pronounced in 13 different ways in the row by adding stuff to
it. |
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Devnagri Alphabets
and Vowel combinations
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Use phonics to pronounce Column A1 English
letters.
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You may click on each Indian letter to hear it's
sound. |
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English to Devnagri
Script(Hindi/Marathi)
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You may click on each Indian letter to hear it's
sound. |
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For some reason, some of the joined alphabets are not being correctly reproduced in Firefox and Netscape. IE seems to be doing a better job. The Indian equivalent for 'Sweet' is correctly represented in IE, in Firefox the character representation is incorrect.
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