Devanagari/Lesson 1

For Table of contents and other quick links, see Devanagari/Quick jump

As it was told, we have 12 vowels and 34 consonants to learn. Traditional way is to mug-up the list, starting with all the vowels and then ending with consonants. Since it requires a teacher to constantly tell how to speak each character, and since we don't have a teacher here, we will start with the basics.

Important note

There is one very important part to note before we proceed. All the characters in Devanagari have a horizontal line on their top! All the characters!!

Just for comparison, we will show you some characters:

क ख ग घ ङ च छ ज झ ञ

Notice how every character has a horizontal line on top of it. It is very important to drive this point home, since it will be required later!!

Your first character

So here is your first consonant:

क

This symbol represent the sound of K.

Note the emphasis on sound. क is NOT "K". In English "C" is also used sometimes for this same sound. For example: Coal, Kill, Crack, Wikibook and so on.

The pronunciation of क is C as in come.

Exercise

1. Mark the occurrence of sound of K in the following sentence and replace them with equivalent letter of Devanagari:

Jesus Christ. Kate. Christopher. Come. Cart. Crack. Kart-racing.

Answer to this exercise

Jesus कrist. कate. कristopher. कome. कart. कraक. कart-racing.

Lesson to be learned

1. All of the characters in Devanagari have a horizontal line on top.
2. What is क.

Now let us proceed to your first vowel, because consonants have no life of their own :)

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Go to Lesson 2

References

Devanagari/Quick jump

NOTE: Most of the time the first reaction to this symbol is: it is hard to draw! In Devanagari, most of the characters are curvy. Although a pattern can be found on closer look, it is left for the reader - of course after all the characters are have been introduced.