Devanagari

Devanagari is an important writing system used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a special kind of writing called an abugida, which means each symbol stands for a sound. It is based on an ancient script called the Brāhmī. By the year 1000 CE, Devanagari had taken its modern shape. It is now one of the official scripts of both India and Nepal.

This script is used for many languages, with Hindi being the most well-known. It has 48 main characters, including 14 vowels and 34 consonants. Unlike the alphabet we use, Devanagari does not have different shapes for uppercase and lowercase letters. It is written from left to right and has a special horizontal line running along the top of many letters.

The shapes of the letters are often rounded and fit inside square outlines. Many other scripts from the Indic scripts, like Bengali-Assamese and Gurmukhi, share similarities with Devanagari but have some different angles and structures. This script is also related to older scripts found in ancient manuscripts of South India and some scripts in Southeast Asia.

Etymology

The word Devanāgarī has two parts: deva and nāgarī. Nāgarī comes from nagara, a Sanskrit word meaning "town" or "city". It means "urban" or "urbane".

Nāgarī was used to describe a North Indian script as early as the 11th century. The form Devanāgarī appeared later, by the 18th century. The name of the Nandināgarī script also uses the nāgarī name with a prefix added. The exact meaning of the prefix deva—meaning "heavenly" or "god"—is still not fully understood.

History

Further information: Sanskrit epigraphy

Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family of scripts used in India, Nepal, Tibet, and Southeast Asia. It started from an old script called Brāhmī. Over time, it changed and became the Nagari script. This script helped create Devanagari and another script called Nandināgarī. Today, Devanagari is used to write many languages such as Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi, Central Indo-Aryan languages, Konkani, Boro, and several languages from Nepal.

Very old writings in Gujarat show early forms of this script from long ago. By around the year 1000, Devanagari looked much like it does today. People in places like Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh also used similar writings long ago. The script grew and spread, being used in many temples and important places across South Asia.

East Asia

Long ago, a man named Thonmi Sambhota went from Tibet to Nepal to help make a writing system for the Tibetan language. He used ideas from the Nagari script to create the Tibetan script. Other writings related to Nagari also traveled to places like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Japan between the 7th and 10th centuries.

In some parts of Java, an old writing called the Kawi script looks a lot like Devanagari. Old writings using this style can be found in temples in Java, showing how these scripts traveled far from India.

Letters

The letter order of Devanagari is based on how sounds are made. This order is called the varṇamālā, meaning "garland of letters". Devanagari was first used for the language Sanskrit and later for other languages with small changes.

The name "Devanagari" means "script of the divine city" or "script of the city of God".

Vowels in Devanagari have special marks added to them:

1. Two special marks are the anusvāra ं ṃ and the visarga ः ḥ. The anusvāra can show different sounds. The visarga shows a sound at the end of a word.
2. Another mark is the candrabindu/anunāsika ँ अँ. In languages like Hindi, it shows a nasal sound.
3. The virāma or halanta diacritic ् shows when a consonant does not have a vowel sound after it.
4. The avagraha (ऽ अऽ) is a punctuation mark used in Sanskrit. In Hindi, it shows a long vowel.
5. The sound ऋ ṛ is not often used in modern languages.
6. Three special syllabic consonants, ॠ ṝ, ऌ ḷ, and ॡ ḹ, are used mostly in Sanskrit.
7. ḹ is a special letter in Sanskrit to keep letter pairs balanced.
8. There are special forms of रु ru, रू rū, and हृ hṛ.
9. Marathi has two extra vowels, ॲ and ऑ, used in some words. These are sometimes used in Hindi too.
10. Kashmiri Devanagari uses special letters for its vowels (see Kashmiri language#Devanagari).

Consonants

The table below shows the consonant letters with their sounds. To the right of each letter, it shows the Latin script and the phonetic value.

• There is ळ ḷa, a special sound in languages such as Marathi, Konkani, Garhwali, and Rajasthani.
• New shapes are rarely created. When new sounds appear, they are shown using special marks and ligatures.
  • The most common mark is the subscript dot (nuqtā) ़. Hindi uses it for sounds from Persian, Arabic, and English.
  • Devanagari used to write Mahl dialect of Dhivehi uses nukta on some letters (see Maldivian writing systems#Devanagari script for Mahl).
  • Sindhi's and Saraiki's sounds are shown with a line attached below.
  • Aspirated sonorants may be shown as combinations with ह ha.
  • Marwari uses ॸ for a special sound.
  • When used to write Avestan, Devanagari uses letters like ॹ /ʒ/.

Vowel diacritics

The table below shows the letter क (ka) with common vowel marks and diacritics. Vowels can combine with consonants in their diacritic form. For example, the vowel ऊ (ū) combines with the consonant छ् (ch) to form छू (chū).

The combinations of all Sanskrit consonants and vowels are shown in the bārākhaḍī table.

Old forms

The following letter variants are also used, especially in older texts and in specific regions:

Conjunct consonants

Successive consonants without a vowel in between may join as a conjunct consonant or ligature. When Devanāgarī is used for languages other than Sanskrit, conjuncts are mostly used with Sanskrit words and loanwords. Native words usually use the basic consonant.

Accent marks

Main article: Vedic accent § Notation

The pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit is written with different symbols.

Punctuation

The end of a sentence or half-verse may be marked with the "।" symbol (called a daṇḍa). The end of a full verse may be marked with a double-daṇḍa, a "॥" symbol. A comma is used to show a pause in speech. Punctuation marks from Western languages have also been used in Devanāgarī since the 1900s.

Fonts

Different computer fonts are used for Devanāgarī. Some common ones include Akshar, Annapurna, Arial, and others. The shape of Devanāgarī fonts can change depending on their use. Some fonts are better for reading, while others are used for special purposes. The Google Fonts project offers many typefaces for Devanāgarī in different styles.

Numerals

See also: Devanagari numerals, Indian numerals, Brāhmī numerals, and Hindu–Arabic numeral system

Transliteration

There are different ways to write Devanāgarī letters using the Roman script or transliteration.

Hunterian system

Main article: Hunterian transliteration

The Hunterian system is the national system of romanisation used in India.

ISO 15919

Main article: ISO 15919

The ISO 15919 standard from 2001 gives rules for writing Devanāgarī using the Latin alphabet. It uses special marks above and below letters.

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is used in books and digital texts for Sanskrit. It was agreed upon in Athens in 1912.

Harvard-Kyoto

Harvard-Kyoto is simpler than IAST. It was made to make typing Sanskrit texts easier.

ITRANS

ITRANS is a way to write Devanāgarī using only regular Roman letters. It is often used online. The word devanāgarī is written as "devanaagarii" or "devanAgarI".

Velthuis

Main article: Velthuis

The Velthuis system, made in 1996, does not need capital letters.

ALA-LC Romanisation

ALA-LC romanisation is used in libraries in North America.

WX

Main article: WX notation

WX is a system used by computers to process Indian languages. Each letter has one Roman mapping.

Encodings

ISCII

ISCII is a special way to store letters and symbols on computers using numbers. The first half of these numbers are the same as ASCII, used for basic English letters. The second half are numbers just for ISCII.

It was made to write Devanāgarī and many other Indic scripts, plus some Latin letters with extra marks.

Unicode

Unicode is the main system now used to store letters and symbols on computers. It has special number ranges just for Devanāgarī: Devanagari (U+0900–U+097F), Devanagari Extended (U+A8E0–U+A8FF), Devanagari Extended-A (U+11B00–11B5F), and Vedic Extensions (U+1CD0–U+1CFF).

Devanāgari keyboard layouts

For a list of Devanāgarī input tools and fonts, please see Help:Multilingual support (Indic)).

InScript layout

InScript is the standard keyboard layout for Devanāgarī set by the Government of India. It comes built-in on all modern major operating systems. Microsoft Windows supports the InScript layout, which helps users type in Devanāgarī characters. InScript is also found on some touchscreen mobile phones.

Typewriter

This layout was used on old typewriters before computers became common. Some typing tools still offer this layout for older users.

Phonetic

These tools work by letting users type using the Latin alphabet, and they automatically change it to Devanāgarī. Popular tools include Akruti, Baraha IME and Google IME.

The Mac OS X operating system has two keyboard layouts for Devanāgarī: one is like the INSCRIPT/KDE Linux layout, and the other is a phonetic layout called "Devanāgarī QWERTY".

Any Unicode fonts input system works well for Wikipedia and other projects in Indic languages such as Hindi, Bhojpuri, Marathi, and Nepali. While some people use InScript, most use either Google phonetic transliteration or the input tool Universal Language Selector on Wikipedia. Wikipedia projects for Indic languages use the Universal Language Selector (ULS), offering both phonetic keyboards and the InScript keyboard.

The Ubuntu Linux operating system supports many keyboard layouts for Devanāgarī, such as Harvard-Kyoto, WX notation, Bolanagari, and phonetic layouts.