Hindi Consonants and Vowels

Of the total 39 Hindi consonants, the first 25 are placed in 5 groups (varg) of 5 consonants each as follows:

..

Each group has two primary (unaspirated), two secondary (aspirated) and one nasal sound consonant. English consonants are pronounced without aspiration.

BharatVani keyboard and transliteration maps have been created for two entirely different purposes. BharatVani 'Keyboard Map' (see lesson 6) has been created for creating pre-formatted Hindi documents in regular word processing programs like MS Word. Bharatvani 'Transliteration Map' (see lesson #11) is designed for explaining pronunciation of Hindi words through English medium and for the ASCII text convertion in IWrite32 program.

As you would have noticed on the keyboard layout map on the previous page, BharatVani has placed most primary (unaspirated) consonants over their phonetically matching English keys. Their secondary (aspirated) forms have been placed on the respective shift (capitalized) positions. Example:

Hindi k (ka) has been placed over English k and its aspirated form K (kha) has been placed over capital K.

It is, therefore, important to remember the use of keys in their "Shift" position for aspirted letters.  It is also very important to remember that when using BharatVani font you must not add "h" to type aspirated words (using kh to type K wil incorrectly produce kh).

Also note the placement of Hindi consonants y, r, l, v, S, and P, s, h and x, q, Y  over y, r, l, v, S, and P, s, h and x, q, Y respectively.

Devanagri script has 5 pairs of short and long vowels: (A, Aa), (!, @), (#, $), (%, ^), (Ao AO) - corresponding to the 5 English vowels: a, i, u, e, o. Two additional vowels A], A: are not used in English.

VowelA is used more frequently than other vowels. A is also used to form other vowels like Aa, Ao, AO, A], A:. Vowel A is placed on capital A so that other five vowels can be formed simply by adding the corresponding matra. Vowels A], A:  and their matra are used less frequently. Matra for A] is on ]. Chandrabindu  [ (a variation of this matra) is on [. Matra for A: is on :.

Touch-typists can type the remaining three pairs of short and long vowels: (!, @), (#, $), (%, ^) - by combining Ctrl key with the three Roman vowel keys: (i, I), (u, U), (e, E). If you have difficulty pressing multiple keys you can type these vowels by pressing (!, @), (#, $) and (%, ^). On a Windows keyboard these characters are on shift and (1, 2), (3, 4) and (5, 6) respectively.

English uses 5 vowels (a, i, u, e, o) to modify sounds of different consonants but Devnagari uses symbols (matra). For this reason ‘matras’ are used more frequently than their vowels.

The sound of vowel A (a) is inherent in all Hindi letters. It will be wrong to use an extra (a) as is required for transliterating Hindi words in Roman script. Rama in Hindi will produce Rama and 'baat' in Hindi will produce 'baat'. You should also avoid capitalizing first character of a sentence or a proper noun within , a sentence. Typing 'mera nam ram hE' will produce mera nam ram hE but typing 'Mera naam Rama hai' will incorrectly produce Mera naam Rama hai.

Each of the other 11 vowels has a corresponding matra (symbol): (a), (i, I), ( u, U ), ( e, E ), ( o, O ), ( ] , : ). Again, to make life easier for Hindi touch-typists, BharatVani keyboard layout has placed short matras on the same keys as the Roman script vowel: i, u, e, o. and long matras on a, I, U, E and O (shift keys)

Some punctuation marks and mathematical symbols are common to both English and Hindi hence these are available in their usual places— -, _, =, +, \, |, {, }, ;, :, ', ", ,,<, >, /, ?.

Hindi has numerous other sounds and shapes which  skilled writers can produce easily by hand, but these are some what tricky to produce on a standard English keyboard. Subsequent lessons will show how you can type these special symbols (conjuncts and half characters) by using 'Ctrl' and 'Alt' keys in Microsoft Word.

It is important that you practice the concepts explained in this lesson. Start typing in space provided in the next page.