Hindi Varnamala

, just as the English alphabet, has vowels and consonants. Here you can familiarize yourself with the Hindi
alphabet - Hindi Varnamala.
Hindi is mostly written in a script called Nagari or Devanagari. Hindi is normally spoken using a combination of 52
sounds - 10 vowels, 40 consonants, nasalisation and a kind of aspiration. These sounds are represented in the
Devanagari script by 52 symbols: for 10 vowels, 2 modifiers and 40 consonants. You will also need to learn to
recognize a character that traditionally represented a vowel but does not any longer, and four common conjunct
consonants, which is actually a total of 57 symbols to remember to begin with.
Once you have learnt the basic characters you will then be easily able to learn the shorthand (matra) symbols for the
vowels and the conjunct characters.

Vowels
Hindi alphabet have ten vowels and two modifiers which are given below. The symbols shown below the
alphabets are known as "matra" symbols. Matra symbols are used when consonants and vowels are to be
written together.

Vowels Not In Common Use

r^

Consonants
Consonants in Hindi alphabet are shown below -

ka
cha
Ta
ta
pa
ya
shh

jnja

Dot+Consonants (Extensions)

.na

.ra