yan Deginner’s hindi script “vy gs reading and writing { | learn to write, step by step undersiand the script in diferamt coments «get a headstant in learning the language be with teach yoursalfFor UK order enquiries: please contact Bookpoint Ltd, 130 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4SB. Telephone: +44 (0) 1235 827720, Fax: +44 (0) 1235 400454. Lines are open 9,00-18.00, Monday to Saturday, with a 24-hour massage answering service. You can also order through our website www.madaboutbooks.com For USA order enquiries: please contact McGraw-Hill Customer Services, P.O. Box 545, Blacklick, OH 43004-0545, USA. Telephone: 1-800-722-4726. Fax: 1-614-755-5645. For Canada order enquiries: please contact McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd, 300 Water St, Whitby, Ontario L1N 9B6, Canada. ‘Telephone: 905 430 5000. Fax: $05 430 5020. Long renowned as the authoritative source for self-guided learning ~ with more than 30 million coples sold worldwide ~ the Teach Yourself series includes over 300 titles in the fields of languages, crafts, hobbies, business, computing and education. British Library Cataloguing in in Publication Data. a catalogue entry for this thie's available from The British Library. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number. On tile First published in UK 2000 by Hodder Headline Ltd, 338 Euston Road, London, NWT 3BH, First published in US 2000 by Contemporary Books, a Divislon ‘of The McGraw Hill Companies, 1 Prudential Plaza, 130 East Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60601 USA. This edition published 2003. The ‘Teach Yourself’ name Is a registered trade mark of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. Copyright © 2000, 2003 Rupert Snett in UK: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced os transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, Including photocopy, tecording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or under licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Further details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright teensy Agency Limited, of 90 Tottenham Court Road, London in US. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Contemporary Books. Printed in Great Britain for Hodder & Stoughton Educational, a division of Hodder Headline Ltd, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 BH by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire. Impression number = 10987654321 Year 2007 2006 2005 2004 21Acknowledgements 1 am grateful to Lucy Rosenstein, Christopher Shackle and Emma Back for their comments on an earlier draft of this book. My thanks also to Amrik Kalsi, Aishvarj Kumar, Sanjukta Ghosh, Navnidhi Kaur, Urvi Mukhopadhyay, and Nilanjan Sarkar, for supplying examples of hand- written Devanagari; and to Usha and Renuka Madan for the anecdote appearing in Appendix I. The Hindi font used here is ‘Jaisalmer’, designed for the Apple Macintosh by Professor K.E. Bryant of the University of British Columbia; the Roman font with Indic diacritical marks is “Normyn’, devised by Mr K.R. Norman of the University of Cambridge. Books on Hindi by the same author Teach Yourself Hindi (with Simon Weightman), revised edition, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. Hindi and Urdu since 1800: a Common Reader (with Christopher Shackle), London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1990; also Delhi, Heritage, 1990. The Hindi Classical Tradition: a Braj Bhasa Reader, London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1991; also Delhi, Heritage, 1992.Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 CONTENTS Preface: How to use this book Introducing Devanagari The Devanagari script: its history and significance __ Transliteration Languages and scripts in India Hindi and Urdu How Devanagari works: a ‘garland of syllables’ __ Conjunct characters ___ Purity of vowels Aspirated and unaspirated consonants Retroflex and dental consonants. What you see and what you get, The Devanagari syllabary Independent vowel characters Consonants Dependent vowel signs (combined with % k) Dotted characters Consonants Velar consonants Palatal consonants Retroflex consonants Dental consonants. Labial consonants Semi-vowels etc. viit 1 1 2 2 6 9 10 10 11 12 13 15 15 15 15 16 19 20 21 22 24 25 27vi BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Sibilants ___ eT Aspirate 28 Unit 4| Vowels CC Vowel characters 30 Vowel signs 33 Nasalised vowels and candrabindu. 44 Unit 5 | Simple sentences and commands___ 47 Unit 6 | Conjunct consonants. 51 Special conjunct forms. 56 Conjuncts with Tra 58 The conjunct W jfia 61 Conjuncts of three or more consonants, 62 Using virdm instead of a conjunct_____ 63 Conjuncts using anusvar_ 64 When the inherent vowel remains silent. 67 Unit 7 | Some more writing conventions 72 Numerals 2 Punctuation Abbreviations TS Visarg. 16 Avagrah 77 The pranav 3, om 71 Writing English words in Devanagari B Unit 8 | More about Hindi words and spellings 82 Some dog-fights over conjunct forms. 82 Where does Hindi vocabulary come from? 83 Gender in Hindi 86 Appendix 1: Examples of Hindi handwriting 90 Appendix 2: Minimal pairs 94CONTENTS: vii Appendix 3: Reading practice 100 Appendix 4: Key to the exercises. 114 Appendix 5: The figures explained 117 Appendix 6: Index of terms 121 Glossary 123 Some further reading 163| PREFACE How to use this book The Hindi script - called Devanagari — is a beautifully logical writing sys- tem. Its phonetic arrangement makes it quite easy to lear, and once you know the basic four dozen (or so) characters you will be well on your way to reading the signs, posters, notices, street names, signposts and adver- tisements that are part of the everyday scene in North India. Beginner’s Hindi Script introduces Devanagari in the traditional order. The characters are introduced one by one in phonetic groups, steadily building up your ability to read and write. The book also gives you some information on the cultural orientation of the language, explaining where Hindi belongs in the history of Indian languages, and showing where its words come from. The book is intended for beginners who are starting to learn Hindi from scratch, and who need guidance in pronunciation as well as in reading and writing. But it can also be used by those who already know something of the spoken language — perhaps learned from family or from Hindi films — and who wish to add an ability to read and write. To gain the most benefit from the book, treat it as a course and work through it from beginning to end. But if you are keen to begin learning the characters without delay, you can tum straight to Unit 3 and start copying out the hand-written examples. The basic syllabary of Devanagari is set out in a matrix on page 15, which will give you enough information to help you identify and read many simple words; if you are out and about in India, you might perhaps like to keep a photocopy of this table with you to help you interpret signboards, notices and place names. However you use the book, doing the exercises (and checking your answers against the key at the back of the book) is the best way of learning the script thoroughly. You will find instructions for the exercises on page 23.PREFACE ix The illustrations are mostly taken from ‘public’ uses of Hindi in advertise- ments, shop signs and so on. Most of the vocabulary appearing in these, and in the tabulated examples, is given in the Glossary; and translations of any text appearing in these illustrations are given in Appendix 5. Signboards contain, among other things, a high proportion of English words (in Devanagari script), and this helps you to start learning the script before making inroads into the language itself. But if you would like to begin formulating simple Hindi sentences of your own, you will find some useful pointers in Unit 5. Finally, a note on computers. Although you may feel tempted to practise your Hindi on a computer, you should not do so until you have developed a good clear handwriting of your own: copying out the characters and words by hand is the best way of becoming familiar with their forms. Only when you are confident of your handwriting skills should you experiment with typing on the computer. Many Devanagari fonts are now available for use on both PC and Macintosh, and some can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet; the situation is changing so rapidly that it is not possible for precise guidance to be given here. The Devanagari in this book is set in the Macintosh-based font ‘Jaisalmer’, as noted in the acknowledgements.x BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT MYANMAR] (BURMA) Linguistic map of India. The shaded area indicates states where Hindi predominates; official languages of the other states are shown in italics.Introducing Devanagari T lintroas The Devanagari script: its history and significance Hindi is written in the script called ‘Devanagari’, apparently meaning ‘[script] of the city of the gods’ — although the original implication of this name is unknown. Devanagari is also used for the ancient languages Sanskrit and Prakrit, the modern languages Marathi and Nepali, and some regional dialects. Its shorter name ‘Nagari’ is sometimes preferred in the Hindi-speaking world; and whether or not the literal meaning of ndgari as ‘urbane, sophisticated’ (associated with the nagar, ‘city’) is really implied here, its use reflects the admiration this script deserves as a wonderfully complete and logical writing system. Fortunately for the beginner, the phonetic basis of Devanagari makes learning it an easy and enjoyable task. For all its antiquity, the script is described as bal-bodh, “comprehensible by children’ — a good omen for the would-be reader! An example of the script will show you how easy its basics are to grasp. The box below lists three common Indian food items: have a look at the transcribed characters, and then see what's on the menu — reading left to right (see foot of page). T 7 XR XT ra as ‘r’ in ‘serene’; unlike English ‘r’ in ‘far’, it is always pronounced. It does not colour the preceding vowel as in the American pronunciation of ‘firm’. + 7 ec e« dd la as the first ‘l’ in ‘label’, but more dental. It does not colour the preceding vowel as in the English pronunciation of ‘kee)’. aq@d06dqq va between a ‘v’ and a ‘w’: has less tooth—lip contact than in ‘vine’, but the lips are less rounded than in ‘wine’. A final -dvis pronounced as -ao: thus the name 38 d+ SS as ‘oo’ in ‘spoon’ 7m > A ost mh as ‘ri’ in ‘riddle’ (though in some western areas it is pronounced as ‘ru’ in ‘ruin’ or as the ‘ru’ in ‘rut’); the sound was classified as a vowel in Sanskrit, and it occurs in Sanskrit loanwords only , ze { 8 @ similar to the ‘e’ in ‘tent’, but longer, closer to the French ‘é"; not a diphthong — it does no¢ rhyme with ‘may’ eS 1 2 ve sd similar to the ‘a’ in ‘bank’ but with the mouth less open; in eastern parts of the Hindi-speaking area it becomes more. diphthongised, rhyming with ‘my’ ax a an a at similar to the first part of ‘o’ in ‘hotel’, but closer to the French ‘eau’; nota diphthong — does not rhyme with ‘go’ st xn a al at as ‘o’ in ‘office’ (in eastern parts of the Hindi-speaking area it becomes more diphthongised, more like ‘ow’ in ‘cow’)32 Let us now look at these vowels a HAT amar aT at am g eat idhar = et ikh zg SR umar a BT tb ci aT m gt UF ek g tr ai$ a or at ae aur BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT within whole words: immortal mango here sugarcane age boredom debt one luxury direction and The word 31% aur ‘and’ also has the meaning ‘more, other, different’. In these meanings it is pronounced with a heavy stress (TF a ek aur ‘one more’), whereas it has very little stress when meaning ‘and’. Exercise 4 Transcribe the following words, each of which begins with a vowel character: GC oa Te mT aE hey! effect dew TT HAR ATR. debt sigh aa oA fire if Tespect woman woolUNIT 4 33 And into Devanagari: dpar — umas a o aj up sultriness come! oh today ekar id atal aur alag acre Eid immovable and separate Vowel signs When a vowel immediately follows a consonant, it is not written with the independent characters just introduced, but with a sign, the matra, attached to the consonant. This sign replaces the inherent vowel. Compare the following: aT an wool at khin blood While Sa iin is written with the independent @ character S (because the vowel comes at the beginning of the syllable), @T khan is written with the sign, following the consonant 4, whose inherent ‘a’ vowel it replaces. Unlike a vowel character, a vowel sign is ‘dependent’ on the consonant: it cannot be used alone. The following section shows the forms and usage of the 10 vowel signs from 4 ato HY au. The pronunciation of these vowels has already been explained in the section on vowel characters. Reading the examples will also help you become more familiar with the consonants; you should copy each Hindi word out several times, saying it aloud as you do so. 1. ST a Written with the sign T after the consonant, as in @T ka: TA kam work art dal lentilsaTh nam sat sath hath kin nak BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT name seven with hand ear nose Here are some words with two long 4 vowels: aTet STS oer wT ant arat arart [Fr] Exercises dada raja sara khana samap grandfather market lock king whole, entire food luggage Transcribe the following menu items, which contain a mixture of long and short (a/4) vowels: Tt aes carrot salad And into Devanagari: masala Sarab spice alcohol ATS rice paratha paratha aT OTe chickpea spinach kabab matar kebab peaUNIT 4 35 2. & i Whitten with the sign f before the consonant that it follows in pronunciation, as in f% ki, this vowel sign is quite exceptional — all the others are written after, above or below the consonant. fire phir then da ravi Ravi frat pita father fafa hpi script faprat —sSikayat complaint farare kitab book fra sikh Sikh faa sitar sitar The word faate sitir is of Persian origin and means ‘three-string’, and derives from a time when the instrument was much less developed than the multi-stringed sitar of classical Indian music, The word OT€ taris the everyday word for ‘wire’ in Hindi - and by extension also means ‘telegram’ (just as ‘wire’ used to in English in the days when telegrams were in common use). A ‘wireless’ is usually called 2f8a¥ rediyo in Hindi; the more colourful synonym, Bae betar (without: wire’) is, sadly, seldom heard. 3. © 7 Written with the signt after the consonant, as in Y ki: wv bhi also AMI mindr tower oat pani water36 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT art cint sugar attat sita Sita ae bis twenty ara nila blue aret siti whistle Exercise 6 Transcribe the following words: wex faa daa fea fea ste metre without brass account heart = OK And into Devanagari: nami gimat kahani sari sikh Sikayat famous price story sari Sikh — complaint 4. 3 u Written with the sign . beneath the consonant, as in ® ku: ae kuch some BaTe kumar Kumar Te sukh happiness F tum you Et bahut very; much afer pulis police aT kul totalUNIT 4 37 Where do these roads lead? (See foot of page.) arr} = aeTeTaTe 5. % @ Written with the sign . beneath the consonant, as in & kit: wa bhiikh hunger war sikha dry ot phil flower a dhap sunshine we didh milk se dar far a jhiith lie aft bhai earth There’s an exception here: the consonant < carries its u and ii vowels to the right of the character- % ru, © rij ~ and not below. Notice how the long © rahas a curl that is absent in short © ru. aT rap form, beauty RT rupaya Tupee [Answer: Varanasi; Allahabad — spelt i/ahabad in Hindi]38 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Te gum guru ae Sut beginning Exercise 7 Transcribe the following words: wom Tra we gt Fqa 3 rN S B x bridge dust harsh interest distance pigeon And into Devanagari: sikha ruko ta ris tum mulayam dry stop! you Russia you soft 6. % yf Written with the sign , beneath the consonant, as in ¥ ky. aT Appa kindness a mg deer TT tn blade of grass ea hyday heart Note the special way in which % combines with & as G, in this last word. 7. & e Written with the sign” above the consonant, as in® ke. Far mela fair (festival) an des country eat keval only aw mez tableUNIT 4 39 ar seva service tar rekha line aq seb apple aa kel banana Where do these roads lead? (See foot of page.) qau at aaa 8. @ af Written with the sign” above the consonant, as in & kai: aar maila dirty é hai is tear thaila bag aor baitha seated, sitting ait Saili style as curail witch war bhaiya brother Ser paida bom, produced [Answer: Dehra Dun; Rishikesh}40 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT Exercise 8 Transcribe the following words: ara at aa act ae afar only farming money son table —_ well-being And into Devanagari: bekar paheli maila_ sinema tera thekedar useless riddle dirty cinema your contractor 9. aT o Written with the sign Tafter the consonant, as in aT ko. We mor peacock mK Sor noise, racket ate parosi neighbour ant log people at sO so fear rediyo radio HTT-BTAT kokd-kol@ Coca-Cola Where do these roads lead? (See foot of page.) aaaatt Ataiiz [Answer: Jaisalmer; Devikot]UNIT 4 4l 10. AY au Written with the signt after the consonant, as int kau. at nau nine at sau hundred arer paudha plant aR okedaurin — during att naukar servant aaa daulat wealth at haule softly wre maut death Hindi has many words for ‘death’, including 84 maut (from Arabic) and 44 mytyu (from Sanskrit) — and, in spoken Hindi, the English loan- word 24 deth (which takes its feminine gender from the other two). Techno ENGINEERING v4, QNapS eee | | = Alkindof SHOCKERS | vid? eI C11 P 4 io eas coed Fig 6: A WAR Saukar is a ‘shocker’ — a shock-absorber!42 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Exercise 9 Transcribe the following words: dat aah at ate trick soft tank Tun! mansion And into Devanagari: bola jau gora maulik —_karor speak! barley _—fair(pale) original crore It’s very important to understand the difference between the dependent vowels (vowel signs) and independent vowels (vowel characters). Tum back to the explanation on page 33, and then read the paired examples given below: magar agar qa 4 $3 97 94 98 bhasa ‘8s idhar but if language hope head over here slowly honesty bridge over there loot wool FIRST VOWEL IS: inherent independent dependent independent dependent independent dependent independent dependent independent dependent independentkysi fi pte aft ae pet Tare ekadh tar paisa tra ainak at sO afte att ae os mausi aurat agriculture sage stomach one or two money spectacles so dew aunt woman dependent independent dependent independent dependent independent dependent independent dependent independent It’s not only at the beginning of words that the independent forms are used. They are also used within a word, as the second of two vowels in sequence: for example, the 7 vowel in aga bis, ‘twenty-two’, must be written in its independent form (because it follows another vowel, not a consonant), area rea ae bais teis twenty-two. twenty-three several brother uncle pig needed aunt44 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Relationship terms are much more specific in Hindi than they are in English: AYat mausf ‘mother’s sister’; AYAT mausd ‘husband of mother’s sister’; 14 ninf ‘mother’s mother’; S121 dd? ‘father’s mother’; TAT ccd “father’s younger brother’; 17S; ta ‘father’s elder brother’; GAT bud “father's younger sister’ and so on. Finally, here are some words consisting of vowel characters only: amg are ara are Exercise 10 (she) came (they, masc.) came come! please come! Transcribe the following words, remembering that vowels not following a consonant must be written with the vowel character, not the vowel sign: gae gai went went! dhoo dhoie wash! wash! rulat soi crying _slept gai sang’ dhoe washed"?! banae made" gao sing! ni cotton bando make! jaega will go Talis aristocrat bathai carpenter Nasalised vowels and candrabindu Any Hindi vowel (except the Sanskrit ® 7) can be nasalised - the vowel is pronounced with a nasal quality, as if you had a cold in the nose. In writing, nasality is shown by the sign ~ which, logically enough, is calledUNIT 4 45 candrabindu, ‘moon [and] dot’; anundsik, ‘nasalisation’, is an alternative name. It sits above the middle of the character, and in our transliteration system it is marked by a tilde (-) above the vowel. Some other systems use a dotted ‘m’ (mm or m) following the vowel: thus at = a= am= am. i“aAagg* 2 laughter yes tape-measure well wells daughters-in-law am high When a syllable has a vowel sign above the top line, there’s no room for the ‘moon’, so the dot alone is used. It sits just to the right of the vowel sign. With a tong = i, it sits within the little loop above the line, as in the second of the following examples: PME Ke ty Aly A. i sighara gai nahi water chestnut went (f.pl) no, not in I are46 BEGINNER‘S HINDI SCRIPT ata gharé mé _ inthe houses ae both lip aide caiitis thirty-four You’ll have noticed that the transliteration remains the same whether the moon is visible or eclipsed by a vowel sign. Many writers and typesetters dispense with the moon altogether, and use the dot alone all the time, giving @T etc. Inconsistency rules! Whereas English has prepositions (which precede the noun, as.in ‘in the houses’) Hindi has postpositions (which follow the noun, as in FY 7 gharé mé ‘in houses’). Before a postposition, a noun changes from the ‘direct’ case to the ‘oblique’ case; in this example, direct plural 4{. ghar has changed to oblique plural 4X ghard. Other postpositions are TX par ‘on’; # se ‘from, with’, 7 tak ‘up to, until’. Exercise 11 Transcribe the following words: village expensive courtyard tail smoke darkness And into Devanagari: khasi saiiph dond laag Te mezé cough fennel _—_ both clove came’? tablesUNIT 5 Simple sentences and commands This book cannot take you very far into the grammar of Hindi, but you will find it useful to know how some basic sentences are formed. Requests and commands are formed very simply. But these ‘imperative’ verbs also demonstrate an important characteristic of Hindi — its elaborate ‘honorific’ system which allows you to address someone in either an intimate, familiar or formal style. Each level has its own pronoun for the word ‘you’: INTIMATE (for small childrenetc.) J ta FAMILIAR (for friends etc.) Fw tum FORMAL (for all others) art ap Each pronoun has its own imperative verb form; but before we come to that, we must look at the infinitive form of the verb. The infinitive consists of two parts — a ‘stem’ (the base for several verb forms), and the ending -na. Here are some common verbs in the infinitive: ara boina to speak Ter pichna to ask ara bulana to-call The imperatives are formed as follows: q ti stem alone att bol aS we piich aT bula48 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT TF omum_ stem+o art bolo Ter piicho qarat buldo aT ap stem+-ie atfaz bolie qfet piichie TAT buldie These 417 ap imperative endings, and some other similar verb endings, can also be written with a { y between the two vowels: arfeat boliye, fist pichiye, TAH bulaiye. Legend has it that im the days of the Raj the British memsahibs, indifferent to real Hindi, would learn simple Hindi commands by assimilating them to English phrases: ‘There was a banker’ was to be interpreted by servants as representing @T4TST 4 "WC darvazd band kar, “Close the door’, and ‘There was a cold day’ meant ast aa = darvazd khol de, ‘Open the door’. Thankfully, those days are long gone. Let us now look at some pronouns and the verb ‘to be’. x q ma é hii am WE yah __ this, he, she, it z hai is qe vah that, he, she, it a hai is TF otam_you (familiar) a ho are aT] ap ~—-you (formal) z hai are a ye these, they é hai are q ve those, they z hai areUNIT 5 a9 4€_ yah (often pronounced ‘ye’) is used to refer to a nearby person or thing, like ‘this’ in English; 4@ vah (usually pronounced ‘vo’)is used for a remote person or thing, like ‘that’ in English. The plural forms are a ye and @ ve respectively (though in speech, vo is as common as ve). The subject of the sentence comes at the beginning, and the verb at the end. You can form many sentences with nouns, pronouns and ‘to be’: HuUgt el mai rahul bi. Jam Rahul. ag arent a & yah admi ram hai. This man is Ram, daar arava % 1 devandgari asan hai. Devanagari is easy. Cl att a? tum kaun ho? Who are you? We Te? yah kya hai? What is this? a aT e 2 ve kyd hai? What are they/those? You will have figured out the meanings of these words: areqt = admis man aTaTT asan easy att kaun who RIT kya what50 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT (This last word, FIT kya, combines ¥ and 4 in a single character: these ‘conjuncts’ are introduced in the next unit.) interrogative words (‘question words’) in Hindi mostly begin wi as they mostly begin with ‘wh’ in English: 4 kab ‘when’, et kab ‘where’, #17 Kaun ‘who’, 3217 kya ‘what’, 741 kyS ‘why’ and se on. The word ®T kya can also be used to transform a statement into a question: the sentence 4@ ATA z yah san hai means ‘this is easy’, while FUT 4 TATA & ? kya yah Asan hai? means ‘is this easy?”. aa ag arent Uae? kya yah admi ram hai? Is this man Ram? aT aaa arava & 2 ~—_kyd devandgari asain hai? Is Devanagari easy? These basic sentence patterns will make it easy for you to practise writing and speaking simple sentences, and to use the words that you are learning to read and write, Some more information about nouns, adjectives and gender is given in Unit 8.UNIT 6 Conjunct consonants This unit shows you how to read and write ‘conjunct’ characters. Just when you thought you’d learnt all the consonant characters, here are some new variations! But most conjuncts are quite straightforward. What is a conjunct? When two consonants are pronounced with no vowel between them, the two consonants are usually physically joined together to form a single unit — two characters ‘conjoined’ as one. Let’s take a common English loanword to see how it works. The phonetic basis of the word ‘school’ in Hindi is ski! - its pronunciation being very close to the English (although the / is dental, softer-sounding than in English). The Devanagari components needed to form this word are as follows: a e a o sa ka Gi I We have already seen how the ‘a’ vowel replaces the inherent ‘a’ vowel in® ka. This gives us: a a a sa ka oT But we also need to kill off the inherent vowel in & sa, otherwise the word will read sakii/. That inherent vowel can theoretically be removed by adding a little sign called virdm or halant just below the character: a sa becomes as52 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPE But viram isn’t much used in real writing; it’s mostly restricted to technical contexts such as this explanation of the script that you’re reading now. Instead, the inherent ‘a’ vowel is removed by forming a ‘conjunct’ character, in which two characters are physically joined to each other. This is a much more elegant solution. Thus @ is reduced to € and then joined to , forming &. To complete the ski syllable we just add i—¥, giving FE skal. Does this mean there’s a whole new set of characters that has to be learmed? Well, yes and no ~ but mostly no. Most conjuncts are formed quite simply by dropping the right-hand component of the first member and attaching it physically to the entire second member. It’s (almost) as simple as that, and all that’s left to do is to familiarise yourself with the individual ways in which the two component characters join each other to form the conjunct. The simple principle of ‘drop the Tight-hand component of the first member’ holds good for most characters built on a vertical line (, @, 7, 4, 4, %, F etc.), even if the individual shapes of the characters means that the dropped portion will vary a little from character to character. First of all, let’s stay with & as the first member and put it through its paces with varying second members. (In the matter of conjuncts, the semi-vowels 4, %, 4 and 4 are not distinguished from consonants. And among these, < is again a special case that will be dealt with separately later.) q+ ts & a steSan station Yer Ts are namaste greeting a+ ys 4 eat sthan place q+ ts arf smyti memory q+ Fs uret syahi ink a+ Fs at svar note, toneUNIT6 53 Exercise 12 Transcribe the following words, which contain conjunct characters (Roman letters that make up a Devanagari conjunct are here shown in bold type): fefe wea emit frate aweacen situation shape permanent pistol somehow or other And into Devanagari: svagat _—basti slet rasta snan smaran welcome slum slate Toad bathing recollection Other characters based on a vertical line will achieve their conjunct form in a very similar way — by simply dropping that vertical line. The list below gives examples of such characters as first members of a conjunct, with a varying set of second members. a+ 0 = @ eft — khyati fame T+ A= 4 URE gyarah eleven T+ B= W aoT accha good 4+ t = MH wT vale blaze [T+ FS = VS aretT anda egg T+F= aTAT ata soul G+ 7 = w@ arty dhyan attention T+ t= = feet hindi Hindi Tete a Aas saptah week q+ TF = HH Teil sabzi _vegetable Y+ Ts rT sabhyd civilised T+ w= 3TRAT = drambh _ beginning54 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT T+ts ay kalp aeon G+mts @ art vyast busy T+ R= ap i§q passionate love Qt tsk eat steSan station WE saptah is a Sanskrit loanword meaning ‘week’. A more colloquial synonym is the Persian loanword G41 hafta. Both words derive from words meaning ‘seven’ - AT sapta in Sanskrit (yielding GT sd in Hindi) and @¥7 haf in Persian. These words for ‘seven’ are in tum related to Latin ‘septemn’ eto. Some conjuncts consist of the same member repeated - a doubled consonant. In pronunciation, a doubled consonant is ‘held’ slightly, giving each of the two members its full value. (A similar holding of a doubled consonant occurs with the two ‘t’s in the English phrase ‘fat tissue’, as compared to the single ‘t’ in ‘fat issue’.) a+ FT =T 0 FFAT—obacea child H+ T= aT amma mother q+ a = a fet dii ——Dethi a q+ = Ft weet asst eighty Not all consonants share the basic shape of 4, with its convenient right- hand vertical line. In % and %, part of the character extends to the right beyond the vertical line; and as the first member of conjuncts, these characters lose nothing more than the extreme part of that right-hand extension: thus ® becomes F and} becomes F : + R+ & cis RIT aksar often wR fla fluUNITS 55 Other characters don’t have a vertical line at all. How such characters join the following member will vary according to their respective shapes, and in many cases, it’s the second member which has to do most of the changing. E+ = = ee chutti holiday Z+ ese Fagt citthi note, chit SZ + GF = ST SMA Ayorhi porch q+ T= smragtat Bhagavadgita q+y=s ag buddha Buddha g+WTs KF wa udbhav origin RE+t=s *& aes ahlad rapture These examples show how the second member may appear below or within the first member. In order to fit in such an awkward position, it sometimes has to be modified in form and reduced in size a little: notice the shape that 7 has to assume when it hangs below the belly of & in and how @ is miniaturised to fit within the middle of @. (This is a good place to remind you of the special shape of the syllable Z - not actually a conjunct, but f followed by 7.) Many speakers ease the pronunciation of an initial conjunct by prefixing a short ‘epenthetic’ vowel, usually i: Thus the Hindi forms of ‘school’ and ‘station’ may be pronounced iskiil, isfesan, This prefixed vowel is not usually written, though SZ" etc. is a possible spelling. Exercise 13 Transcribe the following words (Roman letters that make up a Devanagari conjunct are here shown in bold type): aT ava RT fra map Brahmin stone bracket why decision56 BEGINNER‘S HINDI SCRIPT And into Devanagari: bill hindi nasa tumbara adhyapak avasya cat Hindu breakfast your(s) teacher certainly pakka =. 2yada qismat —_hatya nast haldi firm more fate murder ruined —_ turmeric faikfari aksar landan = atma giraftar satya factory often London _ soul arrest truth Special conjunct forms There are just a few more points to be made on this rather time-consuming business of conjuncts. In most of the examples we’ve seen so far it’s been possible to recognise the individual components of a conjunct, even if they’re considerably modified in their conjoined forms. But there are a few conjuncts which are not just the sum of their component parts but, rather, a new form that is quite stylised and/or may look quite unlike its two components. These have to be learnt specially. Conjuncts including < ra are a special case and will be dealt with later. R+ Ay + oy + q wn aT a 7 q ada a aUNIT 6 57 2B Yo + + + 4 2 a 4 4 I ul u aa gu a4 4 ‘a aAaAyn Ae aN A ag PY UN A + a 9 4H 4 il + Here are some words illustrating these conjuncts: aha a Sakti power afar arf Sakti power Fa aR aksar character, syllable aU gar kutta dog wer wat bhadda clumsy wa Wa padma lotus58 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT fra fra vidya knowledge fost Ra dvij Brahmin wat wa Svet white a ya Svet white WS, AE qT TE nast destroyed wale wee ahmad Ahmad ates STS, ahlad rapture fre Rae cihn sign qa ag sahya bearable The word 48% aksar means ‘a character, syllable’. Its literal meaning ‘imperishable, irreducable’ reflects the fact that it is the syllable (and not the ‘letter’, as in the Roman script) that forms the basic building block of the Devanagari writing system. iE Fig 7: ‘Be aware’ of special conjuncts like T tta also! Conjuncts with = ra As we have already seen when looking at the forms ® ru and © ri, the character T ra is the joker in Devanagari’s pack. In conjuncts it has two different forms, depending on whether it is the first or the second member.UNIT 6 59 When ® is the first member of a conjunct it is written as a little hook, as in rma, above the second member. Be very clear about the sequence here — this © is pronounced before the other member of the conjunct: go+ = a pet farz duty T+ T= ¢ ander kartavya duty Ut =F at dharm religion t+ a = 4 oeddt parvati Parvati This flying form of © is called reph. When the second member of the conjunet bears one of the vowel signs T, ft)”, ¥, ¥ the reph is written at the extreme right of the resulting syllable: t+ We af wat Sarma Sharma (sumame) G+ fa = FE are arthik financial t+ at = af fart vidyarthi student t+ AW = af ate dharmomé in religions t+ qs F wHa< — dharmetar secular When @ is the second member of a conjunct it is written as a little angled line tucked into the lower part of the first member, as & mra, as far to the left as possible. Be clear about the sequence here too: this T is pronounced after the other member of the conjunct. T+ T= 7 at gram gram T+ Cs F BAR dards poor T+ts+7F oF prem love g+t=7F wert = brahman Brahmin H+ Fs we bhrast corrupt B+rt=B oat hrasva short60 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT Ta the meaning'* ‘gram’. ihe nit of Weight), the Wword-IT7 eins ob course a loanword fon English. But Wt is also a Sanskrit word meaning “village, is the:souree of the usual Hindi viord for “village’, -itta fv By a natural process of phonetic erosion, the conjunct 3 been reduved over tithe t077, and the consonant 7 has been reduced to semi-vowel 4, with a memory of the nasal: quality-of 4 seen in nasalisation of the long vowel; see page 86 for more on these processes, Several such conjuncts have special forms: H+ TC = BH FRAT riket cricket G+ FC = | aR trak truck e+ es & gTeat ss draivar driver GT+t + a fA mina friend He Ce T OT St Mr Are you certain about the all-important difference of sequence explained above? Here are some contrasted pairs: at karm action ea kram sequence wt Sarm shame ae Sram toil are gard guard TW gram village; gram The word ST karyakram + ‘programme’ contains two < conjuncts 4 the first conjunct @) has = as the first component, and the second (i) has T as the second component. T2447 is a Sanskrit compound of 14, kary& ‘action, work’, and 1 kram ‘sequence, order’.Fig 8: Shri Cement Limited has a brilliant logo that can be read in at least two ways — as MY Sri in Hindi, as ‘SCL in English, and perhaps as ‘sri’ in English too! The conjunct 4 jria The conjunct # jfia appears in some Sanskrit loanwords, mostly related to the Sanskrit verb root ji-, ‘to know’; the Sanskrit root is cognate with English ‘know’ and with Greek ‘gnosis’ etc. In Hindi, this conjunct is usually pronounced gy: thus jan is pronounced gyan. q+A=7% wet Jéan (pr. *gyan’) knowledge aa ajitey (pr. ‘agyey’) unknowable fara visesajfid (pr. ‘vigesagya’) specialist aaa Aqtajfia (pr. ‘kytagya’) grateful afar avijaa (pr. ‘avigya') ignorant ara ajnia (pr. “agya’) command62 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Conjuncts of three or more consonants Occasionally you may come across conjuncts having more than two components; many of these are in Sanskrit words, although English loanwords too often call for quite complex conjunct-clusters. They follow exactly the same principles as already explained, with ‘medial’ members behaving like ‘first’ members: R+ f+ Us cd tata aiktres actress H+ UT + F = PA FRAT kampyiitar computer R+A+ T+ Ta RT wee ekspres express q+ + Tez c sae Jyotsna moonlight T+ T+ Ta = Re indi Indra J+ Fe Cs | UZ rastrd nation G+ T+ F = a at stri woman Fig 9: T@% purus means ‘man’ and @A¥ stri means ‘woman’: leam these words at your convenience!UNIT 6 63 Using viram instead of a conjunct When conjuncts get too complex, the sign virdm (see p. 51) can come to the rescue, For example, because hanging a u vowel under the already complex conjunct -& dbha is a tall order, (giving -& as in TGA adbbut, ‘wondrous’), the simpler viram-based form {¥ (giving Aq) is often preferred. Similarly, the font used for printing this book cannot ‘stack’ a repeated S one above the other to form a double-decker conjunct as one might in handwriting (¥), and must be content with a SS, as in AEST adda ‘stand (for buses etc.)’. Fig 10: This tailor’s signboard uses Wea jents, “Gents” Exercise 14 The following words have been written using virdm, as if using a type- writer. Rewrite them using proper conjuncts: holiday Buddha district child eighteen —_ mattress64 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT faqs faqaerif giv wet R fuga mind student _ island bearable lotus sign Conjuncts using anusvar This section is about a short cut that simplifies the writing of conjuncts involving a nasal consonant, of which there are five. If you look back to the matrix on page 15, you will see that each of the five horizontally arranged consonant categories includes its own nasal consonant. Theoretically, a consonant cannot form a conjunct with any nasal other than the one in its own category: thus dental ¢ can only conjoin dental *T (as in fest, ‘Hindi’), and retroflex = can only conjoin retroflex (as in ‘UTST, ‘store’). The principle behind this restriction is that when the tongue is positioned for one sound, such as a dental, it cannot by definition pronounce any other, such as a retroflex. Here’s the full set of five nasal consonants, with examples; remember that the first two nasal consonants, = wand > #, occur in conjuncts only ~ they never stand alone, e+ 0 = F oF aig — timb A+ a=F wat afjan lampblack yrs = AST anda egg q+ = = = FR andar inside q + 7 = FAT kambal blanket The short cut to achieve the same result is to use a superscript dot called anusvar as an alternative to the nasal consonant in the conjunct. Anusvar automatically assumes the same phonetic value as the consonant that follows it: for example, before a dental consonant it stands for the dental = (half 4), and before a retroflex it stands for the retroflex (half 1), and so on. Two different ways of transtiterating anusvar are shown below: the first is to maintain the specific nasal consonants used in the examples above, the second is to substitute ‘m’. The former system gives a better quide to pronunciation and has been used throughout this book.UNIT6 65 aT ang/amg limb art aiijan/amjan Jampblack ast andavamda cag ae andar/amdar inside wat kambal/kambal blanket These forms with anusvar are simpler to write than the full conjuncts, and so are usually preferred; in fact, you’ll hardly ever see words written with FF and & these days. "The name ‘Hindi’ can be written fgret or fet, The word itself means “the language of Hind’, ‘Hind’ being the Persian name for North India. ‘Wind? derives from the name of tho river fot ‘Sindhu’. Thus the: 'Persian-derived words ‘Hindi’ and’ ‘Hindu’ describe ‘the cultures “beyond” the Sindhu’; and this river name is known in English as “Indus’, “ftom which the word“India’ derives. : Anusvar is not normally used in doubled consonants (“gemninates’): thus ann, ammi are written with full conjunct forms, as 34 (Ha), SFAT. One or two Sanskrit words used in Hindi end in anusvar. The only common example is {4 evam (a formal word for ‘and’), which is sometimes written as T44 and is pronounced evam. Before < ra, % Ja and @ sa, anusvar approximates to a dental n (ert usually pronounced sanskyt). Before 4 va, it is pronounced as m @ar samvat). Before & ha, it is pronounced as a velar 1? fae pronounced sinh, approximating to sing). Here’s a note to shock the purists: although ‘mixed’ conjuncts suchas “© (combining a dental with a retroflex) are theoretically impossible, they are much beloved by’ signwriters-and the like, and are seen: very commonly in the real world.66 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT Fig 11: 8414 = gym baind ‘Shyam Band’: the spelling for this wedding band marries a dental 7 to a retroflex % — a banned combination! How does anusvar differ from candrabindu/anunasik? Anusvar stands for a real nasal consonant, so that in pronouncing words like fect, HIF one is actually uttering the full value of ‘n’ and ‘m’ respectively, Anunasik, on the other hand, represents a nasalised vowel, so that a word such as at ends without any ‘n’ or ‘m’ consonant but has a nasal tone in the vowel itself. Actually, the difference between the two often becomes quite minor in practice — especially when candrabindu drops its moon and becomes identical in form to anusvar! Exercise 15 Rewrite, replacing anusvar with nasal consonants: feet uae aT aT wiht Hindi Mumbai cold limb entertainment Rewrite, replacing nasal consonants with anusvar: wet we wT fT ay circle breaking tall hindu association a AGT co fat aver monkey Lanka colour anxiety bellFig 12: 34 ava Arse and HVAT AAT WET — two adjacent shops (bhandar) selling homespun cotton goods (khadi). The first spelling incorrectly conjoins 7 to 3; the second uses anusvar, an alternative to the full conjunct form FS (ATSTR). When the inherent vowel remains silent We’ve already seen that the inherent vowel a is not usually pronounced at the end of a word. But sometimes the inherent vowel also remains silent within a word. It is difficult to make a watertight rule here, but the following three formulae will account for most instances. The inherent vowel usually remains silent in the following circumstances: 1. At the end of a word (except monosyllables such as 7 na ‘not’). As we saw earlier, the main exception is that the inherent vowel is pronounced (lightly, as ‘&”) after any conjuncts that are difficult to pronounce without a following vowel: fF mitra, BT krsnd. 2. In the second character of a word whose third character includes a vowel sign. Thus in the word {az diisra, ‘second, other’, in which &T ra is written with the vowel signT 4, the inherent vowel of & sa is silent,68 BEGINNER'S HIND! SCRIPT aear larki (not ‘“Iaraki’) girl art camsi (not ‘camari’) skin aaa tarkib (not ‘tarakib’) means, plan TATT Sarkar (not ‘sarakar’) government UMUTAT = rjdhdni (not ‘rijadhdni’) —_—_ capital Exception— When the second or third character is a conjunct: Feta aspatal (not ‘asptal’) hospital area namaste (not ‘namste’) greeting Waa samasya (not ‘samsya’) problem 3. In the second character of a word of four or more characters. Watt asian (not ‘masalan’) for example WHAT afsar (not ‘afasar’) officer WATT janvar (not ‘janavar’) animal WaT Jakhnail (not ‘lakhanaii’) Lucknow Saray kalkatta (not ‘kalakatta’) Calcutta In some people’s pronunciation, a few words do retain a medial inherent vowel when one would expect them to drop it; most such exceptions must be learned individually. The inherent vowel is very short (or ‘light’). farafat vikasit developed a rae ke bavajiid inspite of Waar Janata people, the public Words including a prefix may be ‘weighed’ as two separate words. Thus WMATA ldjavab, ‘peerless’, is pronounced according to its construction asUNIT 6 69 @T-AATT, ‘without-answer’, not as ‘AS-4Ta”; and ATTAE napasand, sunliked’, is pronounced as 4T-TA, ‘not- liked’, not as “ATTA, A small number of words borrowed from beyond the Indo-Aryan family of languages (and hence not having an established Devanagari spelling) may be written with or without a conjunct: geet eat kursi chair URaT/ at parda curtain, purdah SAT / SHAT umda good TET / WET gardan neck The word AFA janmd, ‘birth’, is often pronounced janam, despite the conjunct; similarly SA_umrd is often pronounced umar (and is sometimes written SAT umar). Why not use a conjunct wherever the inherent vowel is silent? Because, although normally silent, the vowel is still theoretically present; and in contexts such as songs and traditional verse, it may be pronounced. Finally, here’s a list of the hundred most commonly occurring conjuncts. 1 8 + F = FF 1 8 + FT = 28 + @ = MW np Fe Ts 3°08 + FT = WR 3B To + TC = 4 8 + F = 47 + T= F 5 RR + F = F i T + © = F 6 R + T = oe T + 7 = WH 7 RR + FT = 7% + FT = 8 RF + TM = w YF + TC = F 9 8 + TF = 9 J+ Hs BT 10 8 +9 +H = OH 20 4 + S&S = FWBEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT 70 Bo 4c Ge Gr 48 oe te EEUNIT 6 71 mG + Tz 9 YF +T+@% = Bt + 8 = HF 9 FT + T= p+ Te WAM T+ Ts 3s f+ FT = 2 + 9 = & sot + FT = A 3 Ff + T= 2 FT + FT = WA MW T+ CS T 3 J + fF = FS 9 F + T = |F 8 YT +f 4+T = | 6 F§ + Ts a 6 YT + FT = 7 8 + Te OD 6 FT + F = SH 8 F + % = B 87 fF + F = 9 F + FT = 8 fF + T = AW 0 F + FT = Exercise 16 Identify these geographical names: meaet | ATTA Te orfreart warfare TTR Tea art Transcribe the following into Devanagari (Roman letters that make up a Devanagari conjunct are here shown in bold type). The last four are not place names, as you will discover in the key. ill yamunotti kalkatta nathdvara ujjain haridvar vendiban durgapur mumbai maharagra bhubanegévar ambala uttar dalgin piirva pascim7 son Some, more writing conventions Numerals The Devanagari numerals are fighting a losing battle against their ‘Arabic’ cousins borrowed from English, which have official sanction in Hindi usage; this is ironic considering that the Arabic numerals themselves derive from India, But it is still essential to be able to recognise the Devanagari numerals. The numerals 1, 5, 8 and 9 have alternative forms, shown here in handwriting only: 0 ° ° ar Siinyd 1 g 2 4 Uh ek 2 2 & at do 3 a a tin 4 g v ak car 5 4S 4 yy ote pac 6 & 4 Be chah 7 8 ae sat 8 ¢ Bb aS ath 9 5 e¢& nau 10 fo zo wa dasUNIT7 73 The numeral 2 can show that a word is to be repeated, e.g. for emphasis: wat pata = 7st ast ated bari bari dkhe great big eyes Many urban addresses in India feature section number followed by house number in the formula ‘1/5’. This formula is more likely to be written in Arabic numerals than in Devanagari numerals nowadays, but you still won’t find your destination without knowing the spoken Hindi for this usage, which uses the participle az bate from SCAT batnd ‘to be divided’: yo (or 1/s)=0% a2 fF —ek bate pic one over five The usual Devanagari equivalent to the use of ‘a, b, c’ in labelling a sequence of items (such as paragraphs) is *, 4, 4, ka, kha, ga. To know the ‘aBc’ or basic principles of a subject is to know its ‘%, @, 7’. This indicates that the Devanagari syllabary is often conceived of as beginning with the main consonant sequence (see p. 16) rather than the vowels. Punctuation Most punctuation in modern Hindi has been adopted from Western languages. The only punctuation sign native to Devanagari is the vertical line (1), used as the full stop or period. It is called 3 dandi, ‘staff’, or a&¥ OVE Khari pai, ‘upright line’. In traditional poetry, it is doubled (II) at a verse ending. These days, the Roman full stop is often used in print in place of the ae We. The colon is used rather sparingly: this may be because of potential confusion with the Devanagari sign called visarg (sce p. 76). Inverted commas (either single or double) are used to indicate speech, but as with most aspects of Hindi punctuation, the conventions for their use are much less standardised than they are in English. The convention of writing individual words separately comes from Western languages; in traditional Indian manuscripts, words were written continuously without a break.74 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Use of the little sequence of dots to indicate a statement or question left ‘in suspension’ shows an interesting dilemma between the differential conventions of Hindi and English writing: it is sometimes written at the level of the top line (following Devanagari logic), but may be followed by a full stop at the base of the characters (following Roman logic): ahr aaa z “", sitd gayab hai.... Sita is missing... . The hyphen may be used to help elucidate the noun compounds that are so common in Hindi (e.g. aa-aat bas-seva, ‘bus service’), but practice varies. A hyphen is more likely to be used if it helps to remove any ambiguity: in the compound W-74S bhi-khand, ‘region of the earth’, the hyphen removes the danger of any visual or mental association with bhiikh, ‘hunger’, whereas in the compound Wh bhikamp, ‘earthquake’, no hyphen is needed (4 bhik not being a common word). Signwriters are fond of playing with script conventions, often mixing Devanagari and English within phrases and even within words. Examples noticed recently in Uttar Pradesh include: © A truck’s diesel cap labelled ‘D 47”, playing on the sense of 4 as ‘water’. (Remember that “T often replaces 9 in both pronunciation and writing.) © Asign reading S41 2H (for TT 2TH ‘Darpan Tailors’) with the @ reversed as P — literally reflecting the meaning of the word “darpan’, ‘mirror’. © A TST or roadside cafe named after its proprietor as ‘afsa @ (ie. fsa sth - sf being an expression of respect suffixed to names . ® An autorickshaw slogan reading RT ode ae Id — to be read, rather unphonetically, as ar aT as, ‘Your [and] my company’ i.e. “You and me together’. © A boutique with the mixed name 4€KRITI, perhaps indicating the composite ‘culture’ (WE fe) of the goods on sale.UNIT7 75 Abbreviations In English, the individual letter is the basic script unit, and is therefore the basis of abbreviations. In Hindi, however, the syHable is the basic unit, so the abbreviation of a word constitutes the whole of the first syllable, complete with any vowel and/or nasal sign. The abbreviation is followed by ‘o’, a small circle (or sometimes by a full stop): STo = Braet d@aktar Doctor (Dr) Go = ofa pandit Pandit (Pt) Bo = BATATT rupaya/ye rupee/s (Re, Rs) wo = waite svargiya the late, deceased There are two conventions to choose between when writing personal initials: the system just described, and a phonetic transliteration of the pronounced values of the initials in English. So someone called fart are wat trilocan nath garma, Trilochan Nath Sharma’, might write his initials plus surname in either of the two following ways: fio To WAT tri, na. Sarma Fo Wo WAT fi. en. Sarma fk @tangdtyret PS ge eet the ' 5 erates wo & ae ecteany Paver 8 Re ward dong geet: ‘pever se es a umn ree eek vd me sngy eg arg 5 eel sage are a eB Tones Bre H aed ae A ee GH SEERA re en fs er WAR ae vara ore eR wT we Ser aT eA ara ae; ~ agg or ah ire BB aac OF St za Fig 13: This newspaper article, which is headed Atargtt Ra, vidipi suraksa, is concemed with security (RAM) for “VIPs"; MATE could altematively have been written Mo HTGo TT76 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT With its increasing use of abbreviations for the names of organisations, protocols and the like, India is awash with acronyms these days; and Hindi has taken them up enthusiastically, especially in newspapers. Acronyms are usually written without punctuation, and are pronounced as written: aael = AaURe CET Nav Bharat Times wat = Sgt TATA Tet = Bahujan Samaj Party ane wedi stat o1éf Bharatiya Janta Party Fig 14: What is the registration number of this bus, manufactured by the industrial giant Tata? The first two characters indicate the state in which the bus is registered. (See foot of page.) Visarg The sign visarg resembles a widely spaced colon and is written without a headstroke, as in $:74 duhkh, ‘sorrow’; as the transliteration with a dotted A shows, it is an aspiration equivalent to that of § h (but unvoiced, and not representing a distinct syllable). In Sanskrit it is pronounced as a lightly breathed echo of the preceding vowel: aifea: S&ntib, ‘peace’, pronounced as S4ntihi, It mostly occurs in Sanskrit loanwords and is not very common in Hindi. [Answer: UP 07/F 8278 (3.9. = SAX FEM Uttar Pradesh.]UNIT 7 77 aTa: prayah generally So chah six ad: atah therefore Avagrah The sign avagrah has the shape S, It’s essentially a Sanskrit sign, having to do with vowel elisions that don’t happen in Hindi. In Hindi its main function is to show that a vowel is sustained in a cry or a shout: BTESSS! ari! In transcribing the words of a song, avagrah shows that the preceding vowel is sustained over successive beats: aA aa s AS HET Jane kya-a tii ne-e kahi Who knows wha-a-a-t you-ou-ou said “aTSSS” Fig 15:50 SS —a child’s cal! to its mother. Rather more technically, avagrah can mark a long sytlable in prosody. Here it is contrasted with the vertical line (dand4), which is used to mark short beats. Thus the word atfest cadini, ‘moonlight’, would be scanned as S 1S, equivalent to ~~~ in Western prosody. The pranav 4, om The sacred syllable ‘om’ (or ‘aum’), called the ‘pranav’ (‘auspicious sound’), has the special] symbol 9. It is often written as an invocation or a sign of auspicious well-being, for example at the beginning of a letter or other document, or on doorways, shrines etc.78 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Writing English words in Devanagari Hindi uses an ever-growing number of loans from non-Indian languages, mostly English, Many a Hindi-learner, setting off to India with a proudly acquired knowledge of the Hindi script, will find his or her efforts rewarded by encounters with signboards such as the following: wat Sfsat carindiya Air India aia ws aera wrede fafies vhilar end kampani praivet limited Wheeler & Company Private Limited Fig 16: What ‘free’ facilities are on offer here, and what is the name of the company? When transliterating English words into Hindi (for example, when writing your name in Devanagari), you should ignore the English spelling and transcribe the phonetic value of the word as pronounced by 2 Hindi-speaker. A Hindi-speaker will hear English ‘d’ and ‘t’ as closer to the retroflex than to the dental — hence the spelling faf#s, Jimited, above. And Devanagari vowels will also match the pronounced values of the English — hence the spelling TAX, ear, in ‘Air India’. The superscript sign ~, a dotless moon, is sometimes used above a long 37 a (3iT) for the English vowel in a Hindi-speaker’s pronunciation of words such as ‘ball’, ‘law’, and the first syllable of ‘chocolate’. (Do not confuse it with candrabindu: IT is not the same as Sf.) This is a script {Answer: Registration, road tax, comprehensive insurance, accessories; Amar Autos]UNIT 7 79 convention only: in most Hindi-speakers’ pronunciation 4T¢ ‘ball’ does not have the ‘aw’ sound that it has in English, but sounds like the vowel in the word ‘calm’. The sign has no standard Roman transliteration, but is here transliterated as 4: att bal ball atest méadarn modem are sari sorry Fig 17: What kind of shop is this? Many English words are quite awkward to write in Devanagari, particularly because of their frequent consonant clusters and dipththongs: eat instraksan __ instruction wares akauntent —_ accountant Exercise 17 Transcribe the following into the original English: da wt are wa age aa, argh aM ae CF Uezy gH; OR ¢ tit Ot Ss de Tia, Ue firs ome are te TT [Answer: Modem Jewellers.]80 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT The verse in the exercise above shows some typical features of English in Devanagari: the use of retroflex consonants for the English ‘t’, ‘d’; the different ‘o” sounds of ‘not’ and ‘for’ both being assimilated to 2 (the optional HT 4 form has not been used here); the use of consecutive vowels to represent diphthongs such as that in ‘life’ (AT /aif); the use of F d and & th for voiced and unvoiced ‘th’ (in ‘the’ and ‘things’ respectively). Fig 18: 3° SIA, on the right, means ‘eye testing’; 4 (on the left ) and TAH (on the right) both mean ‘and’. The rest of the text here is mostly in English. What are the names of the two businesses advertised, and what services do they offer? Among other problems in writing English in Devanagari, there is no adequate way of showing the soft j sound in the word ‘vision’, which has to be written either as fagra vijhan or as FAH vizan. (Many speakers weaken the consonant almost to a ‘y’ sound, saying ‘viyan, leyar’ for ‘vision, leisure’.) [Answer: (left) Imperial Barber Shop — Ladies and Gents Beauty Parlour, Bridal Make-up and Beautician Course; (right) Mahavar Opticals -computerised eye testing and contact lens clinic .]UNIT7 81 While words borrowed from English will have retroflex consonants, loanwords from (or influenced by) Portuguese, with its softer consonants, have dentals: S177 botal, ‘bottle’, represents Portuguese ‘botelha’. If the Portuguese traders had been jess successful in the ventures on the western seaboard of India in the early colonial period, India would probably have an ‘English’ bottle, spelled with a retroflex ¢ fa! Portuguese influence is also seen in the month names. A complete list of the twelve months gives good reading practice — but the sequence has been muddled up for you here, just in case things get too easy. fei we oat art ware aret wat alt ada As with many other English loanwords in Hindi, the gender of the month names depends on their endings: those that end in -i (like rat janvari) are feminine, the rest are masculine. There’s more information on gender coming up on page 86.8 More More cbout Hindi words and spellings Some dog-fights over conjunct forms The way in which conjunct consonants are printed, typed and written varies a great deal depending on habit and the available technologies, and we have already seen how some conjuncts (such as $va, written 77 or J, or nna, written 4 or ST) have more than one form, The limited keyboard of a conventional typewriter cannot produce the full range of conjunct forms; for example, typewriters that cannot produce 7 (ta) have to make do with TT — hardly satisfactory for general use, as it can all too easily be confused with 4. Unfortunately, some attempted - ‘standardisation’ of forms occurred in the decades before computers removed all such limitations of keyboard layout; so there is official backing for such awkward forms as our example “T, allowing such spellings as caT and HathcaT rather than insisting on the much more elegant PUT and HTHUT. The standardising authorities have also condemned such clear and elegant conjunct forms as & for dya (preferring F4) and & for ddha (preferring G8); and they even recommend that an /-sign in a syllable such as ddhi should fall between the two components of the conjunct, giving Gf instead of the well-established fe ! The resulting FATATAT buddhimani (‘wisdom’) is a strange and inelegant form of afanrt, but fortunately, Hindi’s wiser public ignores such official recommendations and sticks to the old forms that have served so well for centuries.UNIT oO Exercise 18 Identify these geographical names: ae THT fargrx erat eerereaTe aftaag we ART arele Ta ST aaret rat weRT atet areroret aaa tsi RTT. Fig 20: Where is bus 402 coming from (on the teft) and going to (on the right)? Where does Hindi vocabulary come from? The basic stock of Hindi vocabulary comes from various sources. The most important categories are: 1. Tatsama words: loanwords from Sanskrit, complete with the original Sanskrit spellings. (The term ‘tatsama’ means “same as that’, where ‘that’ refers to Sanskrit.) Examples are fapfad vikasit, ‘developed’ (whose -it participle ending, equivalent to the *-ed’ of the English participle, is found in many such words), utara rajdhani, ‘capital city’, and BIT kya, ‘kindness, grace’. Many Sanskrit words have changed their meanings and contexts of use in the modern Hindi [Answer: Aukhla Gav (Okhla village); Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque). Many place names are rather unstable in their spellings: STIAT is more common than AVIA)BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT. setting. For example, the original sense of araraarery akasvani is ‘voice from heaven, oracle’, but it now names the Indian radio service; as a term for ‘radio’ generally it cannot, however, compete with the loanword 2f&2 rediyo, which is well-established in Hindi. Tadbhava words: words that have evolved organically from Sanskrit and Prakrit, i.e. medieval and modern derivatives of ancient words. (The term ‘tadbhava’ means ‘of the nature of that’.) Having been subject to erosion over centuries of use, tadbhava are usually reduced versions of their originals: thus Hindi €Tq sdt, ‘seven’, derives from Sanskrit W1 sapta, typically compensating for the reduced conjunct with a lengthened vowel. A less obvious example is Hindi am dhai;*two and a half, whose Sanskrit original qd ardhatrtiya, ‘half [less than] three’, has been heavily eroded over time, Words that have a simple shape in their tatsama forms hardly change, if at all: ATH nam, ‘name’, is both tatsama and tadbhava — i.e. both Sanskrit and Hindi — because even the heavy use of centuries cannot simplify an already simple word. Tatsama and tadbhava versions of the same word may co-exist in Hindi, sometimes with a difference in meaning: tatsama at karma means ‘karma, action whose fruits are enjoyed in later lives’, whereas its tadbhava derivative #14 kam is the everyday word for ‘work’; and tatsama &t ksetr§ means ‘field’ in an abstract sense (‘field of knowledge’ etc.), whereas its tadbhava derivative Wa khet is a field you can plough. In these two examples we see again the reduction of the final conjunct. Neologisms: new words formed from Sanskrit roots. Just as European languages developed and modernised by forming new vocabulary from Latin and Greek roots, Hindi has formed many words from the inexhaustible stocks of Sanskrit. But whereas the European languagesUNIT 8 gradually developed new vocabularies to cope with new technologies and concepts as they came into being over several centuries, Indian languages were thrown in at the deep end when these technologies and concepts were brought to India ready-made by the colonial powers. So Indian languages have first had to translate, and then compete with, English loanwords such as ‘radio’ and ‘train’. Unsurprisingly, the new Indian coinings have had a tough time in taking the place of their well-established English synonyms: we have already seen how tfeat rediyo has become a Hindi word. Similarly the word aa tren, ‘train’, runs everywhere, whereas the infamous coining ae-rafrat Joh-path-gamini, ‘iton-path-traveller’, never made it out of the station. Many neologisms are calques — literal word-by-word translations, usually from the English; thus aeatt dirdarsan, ‘television’, the name of the government TV channel in India, is composed of the two Sanskrit elements && dar, ‘distant’ (for Greek-derived ‘tele’) and azalt dargan ‘vision’ (for Latin-derived ‘vision’) — but most people are happy just to say }-at tevi‘TV"! Loanwords from Persian, and through Persian from Arabic and Turkish. These have formed a vital part of the Hindi language for centuries (although in recent times there has been a move to replace them with Sanskritic words as part of a general ‘Hinduisation’ of Indian culture, forcing a more literal division between the complementary sister-languages of Hindi and Urdu); the natural state of Hindi is that of a mixed language, accommodating words from many different sources, and this mixture gives it strength and subtlety. Common Hindi words from Perso-Arabic sources are ST] bad, ‘afterwards’, FT kursi, ‘chair’, WHT makdn, ‘house’ and Aaa tabla, ‘tabla’ (all Arabic in origin); and f# ki, ‘that’ (as a conjunction), ATT4< janvar, ‘animal’, sal sabzi, ‘vegetable’, ATH bazar, ‘market’, FAITE sitar, ‘sitar’, and ACHE sarkar, ‘government’ (all Persian).-_“ Ne SN 5. Loanwords from English and Portuguese. We have seen many of these earlier in the book. English words are flooding, not to say drowning, the Hindi language, with FIX kar, fq kican and STTSA bathriim in danger of ousting their equivalents HTET gari, wareat tasoighar, TATA gusalkhana. These days one frequently hears such sentences as 741 WTES-WE FT Wed UMS F 7 ky Said-strit mé yii-tarn elaud hai? ‘Is a U-turn allowed in a side-street?’. By contrast, Portuguese influence is a historical one only — i.e. it is no longer contributing new words to Hindi; but it accounts for many everyday items such as ®ART kamra ‘room’, ATART almari ‘cupboard’, FEM istri ‘an iron’, and facet mistrié ‘mechanic, skilled worker’. Fig 21: Can you find eight different English loanwords in this shop sign? Gender in Hindi Every Hindi noun has a gender — either masculine or feminine. Some adjectives (and verbs) reflect these genders. The characteristic masculine ending is -a, contrasted with feminine -i, thus WIT AST lamba larka, [Answer: You can book a coffee machine at Shiv Traders, pho[ne] 211134; birthday cakes and all birthday provisions available at reasonable rates.]UNIS ‘tall boy’, 44 ASAT lambi larki, ‘tall girl’. Adjectives that do not end in -4/-ihave no way of showing agreement: Sfrare SAT hosiyar larka, ‘clever boy’, alfararz wear, hosiyar larki, ‘clever girl’. In the example of 4S4T larka / SFT larki, grammatical gender obviously follows sexual gender; but there is no such clearcut principle for inanimate nouns such as 4X ghar, ‘house’, which happens to be masculine, or aw mez, ‘table’, which happens to be feminine; so when you learn a new noun it’s a good idea to learn its gender also. Sometimes, the gender of a noun can be inferred from its form: the ‘-a/ -? masculine/feminine pattem of AS*T / asat is very common, with examples like #77 kamra, ‘room’, fS=4T dibba, ‘box’, and ®TST kapra, ‘cloth’ all being masculine, and fase bijli, ‘elecricity’, (AAT rosni, ‘light’ and 4a batti, ‘lamp, light’ all feminine. Place-names follow suit: those ending -a are masculine (AMIRI agra, HAHA kalkatta), those ending -fare feminine (fae diffi, ATETTAY varanasi). And all rivers are feminine, like the word at nadi, ‘river’, itself. ‘Stress in Varanasi: while most Weetemers pronounce the place name aT with a stress on the thind syllable (“Vatandsi’), ‘this is actually the one and only short syllable in the entire word, and therefore bears less stress than its neighbours. Stress is generally riuch more even in Hindi than it is in English; and getting it right ii “essential. to. good pronunciation. (The name S712a -bandras, incidentally, isan old- established. derivative of ART; and a third name for this ancient city is STeT kas, “the luminous’, or, more romantically, ‘City of Light’,): There are many exceptions to this ‘-a / -7 mule or tendency: ort pani, ‘water’ and 4Teat admi, ‘man’ both end in -i but are masculine, while STAN aa, ‘hope’ and ATST bhasa, ‘language’ both end in -a but are feminine. These last two belong to a large group of loanwords from Sanskrit, where -a is a feminine ending: many girls’ names, such as SST ‘Usha’ and 20f#T ‘Renuka’ end in -d, and these are all Sanskritic. And all languages are feminine, like the word HTT bhasa ,‘language’, itself.88 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Hindi borrows several Sanskrit abstract nouns ending in -t@, which means ‘ness’, ete: THAT gambhirta, ‘seriousness’, THAT madhurta, ‘sweet- ness’,ATAXAT saksartd, ‘literacy’, and aera sundarta, ‘beauty’. Being Sanskrit nouns ending in -4, these are all feminine. Hindi verb stems used as abstract nouns are feminine: WH samayh, ‘understanding’, aa pahiic, ‘reach’, ae daur ‘running, race’ and ier khijh, ‘imitation’ are from the verbs WAST samajhna, ‘to understand, aera pahiicna, ‘to reach’, asat daurna ‘to run’ and dierat khijhna, ‘to be irritated’ respectively. English ‘-ing’ words are often borrowed in Hindi, and these too are feminine: afer Siting, ‘(film-)shooting’, aifea Miting, ‘meeting’ and grat draing, ‘drawing’ are common examples. Other toanwords from English may take the gender of a Hindi synonym or other associated word: thus TZ Karis feminine, like "TST gari; and faax biyar ‘beer’) too is feminine, like 9&1 Sarab ‘alcoholic drink, booze’. One of the reasons why it’s so important to know a noun’s gender is that gender determines the way in which the noun is made plural. Here are the basic principles: SINGULAR PLURAL Most masculine nouns that = 4UT room *A rooms end in -d change to -e ASAT boy ase boys Other masculine nouns aTeat man area} men don’t change UX house UX houses Feminine nouns that att light afaat lights end in -ichange to -iya wear sirl astarat girls Other feminine nouns a5 table ae tables add -€ TERT picture TEAR picturesUNIT 8 Notice that AT@4Y ddmi can mean both ‘man’ and ‘men’. The number may become apparent in an -d adjective, which changes to -e in the plural: Wet STAY mota admi, “fat man’, Wt ATEAT mote admi, “fat men’. Only masculine -a adjectives change like this, all others stay the same. Look at the following examples and notice which nouns and which adjectives change in the plural: MASCULINE =—- ST FART big room ae Hat big rooms 4ST FHT big house az THA big houses Alea TUT red stone Te IAT red stones FEMININE Bret FMI little daughter Bret afeat tittle daughters ai ata big eye at ate big eyes ATH AS clean table arm A clean tables Fig 22: Where and when was this newspaper published? And which two countries feature in the headline of this ‘Global Diary’ section? (Answer: New Delhi, 25 January 2000 (#141 mangalvar is ‘Tuesday’); the countries referred to are Chechnya and Afghanistan, the latter name being written without the two dots that a full spelling would require — ARTA.)APPENDIXES APPENDIX 1 Examples of Hindi handwriting oF far ad OAT aA 4 Gor, Wah, ore avat do ST ska 71 alfe ) arse areetree; Tet ere FH aH STATA aa are TT HH aad aid & kajal aptikals — yah najar ke casme japani main dvara jac karke banaye jate hai. ‘Kajal Opticals — ‘Here eye-glasses are made after [optical] testing with Japanese equipment’. Fig. 4. 3 [ea] ad fartex Ue fen ataraet (xfs) at velar ait firfer [firde] sats fatad ares Cres...fadae - ares a, feara — 26 Hea, AT 5,30 ATA [AT], CATA — wa. ST. ST, aifsetfcan atactrae [atrcfrpa) art, wet era, fees. fore — 100,50.25. fene saeee & - Oo. Ey. it, arfsetican arsrez, APT TF 2411107 | indi [indu] art thiyetar end philm sosayati (raji.) ki prastuti Sri giri$ [iris] karnad likhit nitak tuglak...nirdegak — yasin khan. dindk 26 pharvari, samay 5.30 say [sayam], sthan — el. ti. ji. ditoriyam kapamiks [kaparnikas] marg, mandi haus, dilli. tikat — 100.50.25 tikat uplabdh hai — el. ti. ji. aditoriyam kauntar, sampark siitrd 2411107. “Presented by the Indu Art Theatre and Film Society (reg.), the play Tuglak written by Mr Girish Karnad. Director Yasin Khan. Date: 26 February, time 5.30 p.m., venue L.T.G. Auditorium, Copernicus Marg, Mandi House, Delhi. Tickets - [Rs.] 100, 50, 25. Tickets are available at L.T.G. Auditorium counter, contact 2411107.”118 BEGINNER'S RINDI SCRIPT Fig. 6. Techno ENGINEERING Works Siferee witart fefeefert All kind of sHockers MAX H Wes HAT / AK o ATH o UH UH UA o as Techno Engineering Works speslist Saukar rifiling All kind of shockers Saukar ki garanted ripeyar / supar - cetak - el em el - moped. ‘Techno Engineering Works specialist shocker refilling. All kinds of shockers / Super, Chetak, LML, moped.’ Fig 7. @ait & avast kutt6 se savdhan. ‘Beware of dogs’. Fig.8. oft dae atfas ahh Sri siment salid Sakti. ‘Shri Cement: solid strength.’ Fig. 10. ars tad / aehr ws Grea / tars sora Aas adans faarg % far sigar telars /ledij end jents / Se[khavati] gra[min] baink ke pas navalgath sarvdSresth silai ke lie. “Sigar Tailors — Ladies and Gents — Near the Shekhavati Rural Bank, Navalgarh. For superior tailoring.’ Fig. 13. tare gear / afefafire aafteat at aafera qe & are H atfea ag ate earra aha g | ain dette aeafaat + arasthas 7 a ag etter fear & fe GAT Tas Ea area ares farce at Gterfaay ar aaa tact ST ETE 1S wege frat a ter aT fe Go are aT ge TTT FT UH aS cromtfam the A Teds A ET TTT CH THAT IE AT FH qe waiterat ar art wat et ara & ge aT aT A a AaTsHTAFPENDIA 3 W9 viaipi suraksa ativiSist vyaktiy6 ki vyaktigat suraksa ke bare mé ghosit nai niti svagat yogyd hai. anek kendriy grhmantriy6 ne sarvajanik rip se yah svikar kiya hai ki hamdari vidipi suraks2 vyavastha anek kism ki paresaniy6 ka sabab banta ja rahi hai. yah imahsiis kiya ja raha tha ki kuch svarthi log is vyavastha ko ek bare rajnaitik raiket mé tabdil kar rahe the. iska ck nuksan yah tha ki suraksa@ ejensiyé ka dhyan apne mill kary6 se hat jata tha aur ve netao tatha... “VIP Security. The new policy concerning the personal security of VIPs announced [recently] is to be welcomed. [NB: a visist person is a VIP or ‘very important person’; but as this designation has been eroded by over-use, the new category of ativisist or VVIP ‘very very important person’ has come into use.] Many central Home Ministers have accepted publicly that our VVIP security system has been becoming a matter for many kinds of concern. It was felt that some selfish people were changing this system into a major political ‘racket’. One harmful outcome of this was that the attention of security agencies was diverted from their main functions and... Fig. 16 (Lower part of text.). %, 4000/- #T FeTaae / Feat afore arr Stir ware TH sree. sherpa fama / HAC ATETA / 203, atch [wife] are, aot fata Ts, wreexr, fart, HI... tu. 4000/- ki mahabacat / jaldi kijie yojna simit samay tak uplabdh/ adhikrt vikret&/amar atos / 603, kanti [kanti] nagar, svarn sinema rod, Sahdara, dilli. phon:... ‘Mega-saving of Rs. 4000...Hurry, scheme available for a limited period. Authorised dealer: Amar Motors, 603 Kanti Nagar, Svarna Cinema Road, Shahdara, Delhi. Phone...” Fig 18. Seti haa area ate / atest a sree wt Tee ATR Tet arrest aay a aqfefarrs sre sit saan J 1 impiriyal barbar $4p —_ledij va jaints byiti parlar hamare yaha braidal mek-ap va byatisiyan kors bhi uplabdh hai. “Imperial Barber Shop. Ladies’ and Gents’ Beauty Parlour. Bridal make-up and beautician course also available here.3120 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT Fig. 21. fara See..at. 211134..00H at watts gH at oTAT A. aes emo ahs HT aT OTT Sha Ue ox fire B. Siv tredars...pho. 211134...kaphi ki masin buk ki jati hai. barthde kek va barthde ka sabhi sAman ucit ret par milt3 hai. “Shiv Traders...phone 211134...Coffee machine is [available to be] booked. Birthday cakes and all birthday materials are available at reasonable rates.”ATESNUIA O T2i APPENDIX 6 Index of terms akgar — a character or syllable, especially of the Devanagari script. alveolar — a sound produced by the front of the tongue in contact with the alveolar ridge, that part of the mouth just behind the upper teeth. aspirate — a sound pronounced with audible breath. conjunct — a Devanagari character comprising two consonants with no intervening vowel. dental — a sound made by the tip and rim of the tongue against the teeth. diphthong — a syllable containing two distinct and successive vowels, as in English ‘mice’, ‘go’, ‘house’, and in Hindi gai, gae. flap — an ‘r’ sound produced by rapid light contact between the tongue and the roof of the mouth. fricative — a consonant sound produced by friction when the breath is forced through a restricted opening. geminate — a doubled consonant. halant — a consonant whose inherent vowel has been suppressed (as by the addition of viram). inherent vowel — the vowel a as inherent part of an unmodified consonant, e.g. the ain Wma. -kir — a suffix for naming letters, e.g. ma-kdr, ‘the character 4”, j-kar, ‘the character 3”. labial — a sound produced by the fips. tra — a vowel sign written after a consonant. neologism — a newly-coined word (in the Hindi context, usually one based on a Sanskrit root). palatal — a sound pronounced by contact between the middle of the tongue and the hard palate. retroflex — a sound produced when the tongue is curled back against the hard palate.122 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT semi-vowel — a consonant which has some of the phonetic quality of a vowel: ‘y’, ‘v’. sibilant — a fricative hissing sound, such as ‘s’, ‘sh’. sonant: see ‘voicing’. virdim — the subscript sign which suppresses the inherent vowel. velar ~ a sound produced by the back of the tongue in contact with the soft palate. voicing — the production of a sound with the vibration of the vocal chords; ‘b’ is voiced, ‘p’ is voiceless. Voiced sounds are also called ‘sonants’, and unvoiced sounds ‘surds’.| GLOSSARY This glossary lists all the Hindi words that have been used in the main sections of the book, together with selected words from the illustrations. Personal names and English words are not generally included. The dictionary order of Devanagari follows the syllabary matrix, which is repeated below for easy reference. Zu Fi Rr aA ca B® cha wT ja @ jha (AA) pa pha aq ba Ww bha a oma a ya tra aia ava Téa Usa a sa Sha124 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT ‘The main points to bear in mind are: short vowels precede long vowels (e.g. 1 mu precedes 1 mii) © unaspirated consonants precede aspirated consonants (e.g. ka precedes @ kha) © syllables with candrabindu or anusvar precede those without (e.g. &t haprecedes BT ha, and TFS pandit precedes THAT pakna) © —non-conjunct forms precede conjunct forms (e.g. at fin precedes 2 trak) @ dotted forms of consonants are not distinguished from their non- dotted equivalents in terms of sequence Ha a= ang limb HAA" afjan kohl, tampblack at anda egg HX andar inside SRT" adherd darkness HaTaT= ambala Ambala awa" aktubar October HX” aksar syllable, alphabet character HAT aksar often, usually Wt agar if ATE" agast August WVaTA™ agraval Agrawal (a merchant caste and surname) SST accha good HA ajfiey (pronounced ‘agyey’) unknowableGLOSSARY 125 HEA ata! immoveable, firm aes atthais eighteen Hd: atah therefore arfirs adhik much, many, very, more SRATTH™ adhyapak teacher Ha" ann grain, food ait aprail April SAHATPARATA* afganistin Afghanistan HAL" afsar officer HAC amar immortal, eternal AAMT amma mother HT alag separate, different, apart, aloof SATE! almari cupboard, almirah WaT avasya certainly afaa avijid ignorant, unaware HE ast eight, octo- WAC" asar effect, influence, impression HET A" aspatal hospital FRAT assi eighty aa ata" akh eye att fgan courtyard arrears akasvani ‘heaven-voice’, oracle; India’s government radio network126 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT aT! ag fire STRT™ agra Agra art aj today STAT! aja command, order/permission to leave ae ata flour WIS ath eight SICA! atma soul area" admi man; person TeX" ddar respect, honour, esteem STAT ana to come ST ap you(formal), ATT apka your aT'= am mango ST am ordinary, common S@RM° drambh commencement avis arthik financial STE ardrd moist ATR 464 hope STATA asan easy STg! ah sigh ST@le" ahlad rapture ai tara jicav pulling, drawing tire icitep measuring tapeGLOSSARY 127 kX indaur Indore %& indri Indra ux idhar here, over here; recently QATRIGTE" ilahabad Allahabad @I" i$q romantic love BEAL" str? clothes iron ti fa" ikh sugarcane $e" id Eid name of two Muslim festivals Sar iman honesty su SA ujjain Ujjain sat” uyisd Orissa SIX" uttar north, northern FAC TAM" uttar prades Uttar Pradesh Sga~ udbhav origin, coming into being Sux udhar there, over there ST un them STAI uplabdh available SAAT, TAT umdd good FR, TH" umar, umrd age Aa umas sultriness128 BEGINNER'S HINDI SCRIPT aU SAT ficd high, tall, great SA! Gin wool SAX Gpar up, above, upstairs HA" Gb boredom, tedium BT IT" pn debt wT" psi sage BTA ssike¢ Rishikesh Ge Wax afer ear indiyd Air India Uh ek one;a USS! ekar acre Waa ekadh one or two, a couple (of) waeta’ ekspres express wt evam and 2 ai t af hey, oh tatar aiktres actress UA ainak spectacles tae ais luxury, voluptuous enjoymentGLOSSARY 129 at o ait 0 Oh 3H! or direction aa os dew at au aVaITaTe* aurangabéd Aurangabad Ae aur and; more aia" aurat_ woman % ka, ¥ ga aac" kambal blanket we kai several, many #4= kac (archaic) hair CAT katna tobe cut 1" kan particle I> kap cup @TsT" kapra cloth; garment aT kab when? ITA" kabab kebab A kam little, less HA" kamal lotus SATA" kamal miracle SAT kama todo130 BEGINNER’S HINDI SCRIPT @RTAT" kardci Karachi FE" karor crore, 100 lakhs, ten million adeq= kantavyd duty art" karma karma, action (especially as determining future births) Het kal yesterday; tomorrow STH" kalkatta Calcutta Bey" galam pen qT" kalpd aeon wet kahd where? wert kahani story HT, FT, ka, ki, Ke possessive postposition (works like the English apostrophe ‘s’- 274 HT 81 ram ki bet? Ram’s daughter) STAT" kajal Kohl, lampblack#TI" kan ear atte kapi copy book, exercise book art kaff quite, very; enough, sufficient TH" kam work, task, matter in hand IR kar car -I< -kar suffix making a character name, e.g. 41K kakdr, ‘the character * ka’ ard karyakram programme Taq kal time, Time ‘Teil’ kasi Varanasi, Banaras ff ki that (conjunction)GLOSSARY 131 FRITH" kitéb book fret! gismat fate arr qimat price, value alae kil nail wate kui well HS kuch some, somewhat Hua kuttd dog HAT” kumar bachelor, prince weal" kursi chair Ha" kul total, whole amount set" kil bank of river, pond da Aptajiid (pronounced ‘kytagya’) grateful aT’ Aqpa kindness, grace afe° kpsi agriculture OT" kgend Krishna a ART ke dauran during, % TAYE ke bavajiid in spite of % FAC ke lie for att" keral Kerala aT kel banana aA keval only AAT" koks-kol# Coca-Cola wleT= kota Kota TS! kothi large house, bungalow, mansion132 BEGINNER'S HINDI! SCRIPT TAT komal soft, delicate IX! kor (archaic) edge, tip HTT kostak bracket YT kaun who?%<" kaur mouthful of food aT kya what; (also converts a following statement into a question — 4 UZ yah ram hai This is Ram > FT AF WH 8? kya yah ram hai? [s this Ram?) wat ky6é why AH" kram sequence, order frac kriket cricket aan ksetrd region, area, field @ kha, @ kha wa khag (archaic) bird We, FC-AAE" khat, khat-khat knocking sound WAST khard standing, upright; 7ST OTS! khari pai the sign ‘I’ (= full stop); at set khari boli the dialect on which Hindi and Urdu are based; the modern standard dialect of Hindi d= khat letter ‘aX! Khabar news, information watat’ khast cough waTel’ khadi hand-spun cloth WTAT'= khana food aT’ khan to eat