|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Devanāgarī (देवनागरी) is an abugida script used to write, either along with other scripts, or exclusively, several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Marwari, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Nepal Bhasa from Nepal and sometimes Kashmiri and Romani. It is written and read from left to right.
The transliteration used in this article follows the popular IAST conventions.
OriginsDevanāgarī emerged around CE 1200 out of the Siddham script, gradually replacing the earlier, closely related Sharada script (which remained in parallel use in Kashmir). Both are immediate descendants of the Gupta script, ultimately deriving from the Brāhmī script attested from the 3rd century BCE; Nāgarī appeared in approx. the 8th century as an eastern variant of the Gupta script, contemporary to Sharada, its western variant. The descendants of Brahmi form the Brahmic family, including the alphabets employed for many other South and South-East Asian languages. Etymology
Sanskrit nāgarī is the feminine of nāgara "urban(e)", an adjectival vrddhi derivative from nagara "city"; the feminine form is used because of its original application to qualify the feminine noun lipi "script" ("urban(e) script", i.e. the script of the cultured). There were several varieties in use, one of which was distinguished by affixing deva "deity" to form a tatpurusha compound meaning the "urban(e) [script] of the deities (= gods)", i.e. "divine urban(e) [script]". However, the widespread use of "Devanāgarī" is a relatively recent phenomenon; well into the twentieth century, and even today, simply Nāgarī was also in use for this same script. The rapid spread of the usage of Devanāgarī seems also to be connected with the almost exclusive use of this script in colonial times to publish works in Sanskrit, even though traditionally nearly all indigenous scripts have actually been employed for this language. This has led to the establishment of such a close connection between the script and Sanskrit that it is, erroneously, widely regarded as "the Sanskrit script" today.
PrinciplesThe Devanāgarī writing system can be called an abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel (a), that can be changed with the different vowel signs. Devanāgarī is written from left to right. In Sanskrit, words were written together without spaces, so that the top bar is unbroken, although there were some exceptions to this rule. The break of the top line primarily marks breath groups. In modern languages, word breaks are used. Devanāgarī has 12 svara (pure sounds, or vowels) and 34 vyañjana (ornamented sounds, consonants). An akṣara is formed by the combination of one ( or none )vyañjana and one or more svara, and represents a phonetic unit of the śabda (utterance). The akṣara is written by applying standard diacritical modifiers to the vyañjana corresponding to the svara. An akṣara is usually more basic and predictable than the syllable in English. For example, the English 'cat' (considered to have just one syllable in English) is written as two akṣaras, the 'ka' and the 'ta'. The svara and vyañjana are ordered and grouped logically for studying or reciting. Thus the pure sounds, 'a', 'i', 'u' and their lengthened versions ('ā', 'ī', 'ū') are followed by the combined ('e', 'ai', 'o', 'au'), nasal ('ṃ') and aspirated ('ḥ') forms. The vyañjana themselves are grouped into 6 groups (rows) of 5 (columns). The first five rows progress as velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and labial, corresponding to utilizing or touching the tongue to progressively outer parts of the mouth when making the sound. Additional vyañjana are technically sonorants, sibilants, or widely used conjunct forms. For each row or group, the columns logically progress to softer sounds, paired with aspirated forms, ending in the nasal form for that group. Most consonants can be joined to one or two other consonants so that the inherent vowel is suppressed. The resulting conjunct form is called a ligature. Many ligatures appear simply as two individual consonants joined together, and so are a form of ligature. Some ligatures are more elaborately formed and not as easily recognized as containing the individual consonants. When reading Sanskrit written in Devanāgarī, the pronunciation is completely unambiguous. Similarly, any word in Sanskrit is considered to be written only in one manner (discounting modern typesetting variations in depicting conjunct forms). However, for modern languages, certain conventions have been made (e.g. truncating the vowel form of the last consonant while speaking, even as it continues to be written in full form). There are also some modern conventions for writing English words in Devanāgarī. Certain Sanskrit texts and mantras are typically written with additional diacritical marks above and below the akṣara to denote pitch and tempo, to ensure completely accurate reproduction of the sound. Symbols of DevanāgarīAll the vowels in Devanāgarī are attached to the top or bottom of the consonant or to an <aa> vowel sign attached to the right of the consonant, with the exception of the <i> vowel sign, which is attached on the left. In the Devanāgarī vowel table below, the "Letter" column contains the symbol used when a vowel occurs without a consonant, the "Vowel sign with <p>" column contains the symbol used when a vowel is attached to a consonant, shown with the <p> letter as an example, the "Unicode name" column contains the name given in the Unicode specification for the vowel, and the "IPA" column contains the International Phonetic Alphabet character(s) corresponding to the Hindi pronunciation of the Devanāgarī character. VowelsThe vowels of the Devanāgarī script with their word-initial Devanāgarī symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant प् (/p/), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and of /p/+vowel) in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), equivalent in International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) and Indian languages transliteration (ITRANS) and (approximate) equivalents in Standard English are listed below:
Additional points:
ConsonantsThe table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish/Italian. The parentheses give the corresponding transliteration (of the consonant alone) in IAST scheme—the most popular one. Each consonant shown below is by default followed by the neutral vowel schwa (/ə/), and is given in the table in this form.
At the end of the traditional table of alphabets, four consonantal clusters are also added: क्ष /kʃə/ (kṣ) (in Hindi), त्र /t̪ɾə/ (tr), ज्ञ /gjə/ (jñ) (in Hindi; pronounced as /ɟɲə/ + nasalization in Sanskrit), and श्र /ɕcə/ (śc). Other than these, sounds borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic are written with a dot (bindu or nukta) beneath the nearest approximate letter. They are not included in the traditional listing. Many native Hindi speakers, especially those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak proper Khariboli or Urdu, confuse these sounds (except /ɽ/ and /ɽʱ/) and pronounce them as the nearest equivalents in Sanskritized Hindi (listed in column 5). These are:
Additional points:
Another consonant is ळ which is not used in Hindi. It is retroflex, and used in Vedic Sanskrit, Marathi, and Marwari. LigaturesImage:JanaSanskritSans ddhrya.png The ddhrya-ligature of JanaSanskritSans. Consonant clusters of two or more phonemes are realized by combining the aksharas into ligatures. Typically, the preceding akshara loses its vertical stroke and is put in direct contact with the succeeding one. In cases of aksharas that do not have vertical strokes in their independent form, the following aksharas are usually placed underneath the preceding one. In some cases, the ligatures take forms not readily recognizable as composed of the individual aksharas (e.g. <jñ>). Consonant clusters involving <r> are treated as a special case: preceding <r-> is realized as a right-facing hook above the following akshara, and following <-r> appears as a slanted stroke attached to the vertical stroke of the preceding akshara. Similarly for a cluster /XYZa/, both X and Y would be "halved". There are many variants for this consonant cluster writing in Devanāgarī script. The most common system is shown below for the traditional table. Here the second vowel is taken to be n, followed by a /ə/. You will only be able to see the ligatures if your system has a Unicode font installed that includes the required ligature glyphs (e.g. one of the TDIL fonts, see "external links" below).
list of "compound consonants" from Monier-Williams' 1846 Elementary Grammar Diacritics
Accent marksThe pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit is written with various symbols depending on shakha. In the Rigveda, anudatta is written with a bar below the line (॒), svarita with a stroke above the line (॑) while udatta is unmarked. Numerals
TransliterationThere are several methods of transliteration from Devanāgarī into Roman scripts. The most widely used transliteration method is IAST. However, there are other transliteration options. The following are the major transliteration methods for Devanāgarī: IASTThe International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is the academic standard for the romanization of Sanskrit. IAST is the de-facto standard used in printed publications, like books and magazines, and with the wider availability of Unicode fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts. It is based on a standard established by the Congress of Orientalists at Athens in 1912. The National Library at Kolkata romanization, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST. Harvard-KyotoCompared to IAST, Harvard-Kyoto looks much simpler. It does not contain all the diacritic marks that IAST contains. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. However, Harvard-Kyoto may look simpler, but IAST is more pleasing to eyes. Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters that can be difficult to read in the middle of words. ITRANSITRANS [1] is a lossless transliteration scheme of Devanāgarī into ASCII that is widely used on Usenet. It is an extension of the Harvard-Kyoto scheme. In ITRANS, the word Devanāgarī is written as "devanaagarii". ITRANS is associated with an application of the same name that enables typesetting in Indic scripts. The user inputs in roman letters and the ITRANS pre-processor displays the roman letters into Devanāgarī (or other Indic languages). The latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30 released in July, 2001. EncodingsISCIIISCII is a fixed-length 8-bit encoding. The lower 128 codepoints are plain ASCII, the upper 128 codepoints are ISCII-specific. It has been designed for representing not only Devanāgarī, but also various other Indic scripts as well as a Latin-based script with diacritic marks used for transliteration of the Indic scripts. ISCII has largely been obsoleted by Unicode, which has however attempted to preserve the ISCII layout for its Indic language blocks. Devanāgarī in UnicodeThe Unicode range for Devanāgarī is U+0900 .. U+097F. Grey blocks indicate characters that are undefined.
Devanāgarī Keyboard LayoutsDevanāgarī and Devanāgarī-QWERTY keyboard layouts for Mac OS XThe Mac OS X operating system supports convenient editing for the Devanāgarī script by insertion of appropriate Unicode characters with two different keyboard layouts available for use. To input Devanāgarī text, one goes to System Preferences → International → Input Menu and enables the keyboard layout that is to be used. One then views the keyboard layout at the Indian Language Kit Manual at Apple Docs.
INSCRIPTImage:Devanagari INSCRIPT.png INSCRIPT Keyboard Layout (Windows, Solaris, Java) TypewriterImage:Hindi typewriter.jpg Standard typewriter keyboard layout used in India PhoneticImage:Bolnagri map.png Bolnagri phonetic keyboard layout for Linux See home page See alsoSoftware
Sites |
Searched sites for "Devanāgarī" |
|
No sites found. |
Sorry, no matching site records were found. |
Want your site listed here?
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Submit
your site |
 |
|
Relevant quality search results and fast easy navigation throughout the
different sections of the site, make Americola.com |
