Devanagari alphabet

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm

Devangar ( )
The Ngar or Devangar alphabet developed from eastern variants of the Gupta script called Ngar, which first emerged during the 8th century. This script was starting to resemble the modern Devangar alphabet by the 10th century, and started to replace Siddham from about 1200. The name Devangar is made up of two Sanskrit words: deva, which means god, brahman or celestial, and ngar, which means city. The name is variously translated as "script of the city", "heavenly/sacred script of the city" or "[script of the] city of the Gods or priests".

Notable Features
Type of writing system: alphasyllabary / abugida. Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines. Consonant letters carry an inherent vowel which can be altered or muted by means of diacritics or matra. Vowels can be written as independent letters, or by using a variety of diacritical marks which are written above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to. This feature is common to most of the alphabets of South and South East Asia. When consonants occur together in clusters, special conjunct letters are used. The order of the letters is based on articulatory phonetics.

Used to write:
Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Marwari, Mundari, Nepal Bhasa / Newari, Nepali, Pali, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Saraiki, Sindhi, Sylheti and many other languages.

Devangar alphabet

Other symbols

Consonants

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Devanagari alphabet

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm

Variant letters
Some letters are two forms: the Classical, Northern or Kalikata (Calcutta) form is used in the north of India; while the Modern, Southern or Mumbai (Bombay) form is used in the south India and has become the standard form.

A selection of conjunct consonants

There are about a thousand conjunct consonants, most of which combine two or three consonants. There are also some with four-consonant conjuncts and at least one well-known conjunct with five consonants.

Complete chart of conjunct consonants Download the chart (Excel, 39K)

Numerals

More information about the Devanagari Script

Links
Information about Devanagari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari http://www.ancientscripts.com/devanagari.html http://hindilanguage.info/devanagari/ Sanskrit Translation

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Devanagari alphabet

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm

An archive of Sanskrit dictionaries, readers & grammars in German, English & Russian. (circa 4000 Mb Book Scans, devanagari fonts): http://groups.google.com/group/Nagari Devanagari script tutor http://www.avashy.com/hindiscripttutor.htm Free Devanagari fonts http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Devanagari.html http://www.kiranfont.com

of names and phrases

Download free devanagari fonts & transliteration macros. History and hi-res scans of Indian typography: http://nagari.southindia.ru ALPHABETUM - a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient scripts, including classical & medieval Latin, ancient Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan, Messapic, Picene, Iberian, Celtiberian, Gothic, Runic, Old & Middle English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old Nordic, Ogham, Kharosthi, Glagolitic, Old Cyrillic, Phoenician, Avestan, Ugaritic, Linear B, Anatolian scripts, Coptic, Cypriot, Brahmi, Old Persian cuneiform: http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042 /alphabet.html

Syllabic alphabets / abugidas

Ahom, Balinese, Batak, Bengali, Brahmi, Buhid, Burmese, Chakma, Cham, Dehong Dai, Devanagari, Dhives Akuru, Ethiopic, Evla Akuru, Gondi, Grantha, Gujarati, Gupta, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Hanuno'o, Hmong, Javanese, Kaithi, Kannada, Kharosthi, Khmer, Lanna, Lao, Lepcha, Limbu, Lontara/Makasar, Malayalam, Manpuri, Modi, New Tai Lue, Oriya, Pahawh Hmong, Pallava, Phags-pa, Ranjana, Redjang, Shan, Sharda, Siddham, Sindhi, Sinhala, Sorang Sompeng, Sourashtra, Soyombo, Sundanese, Syloti Nagri, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Takri, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tocharian, Varang Kshiti

Copyright 1998-2012 Simon Ager

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