A1 · Devanagari and the sounds of Hindi
The consonants, row by row
the consonant letters
Five rows of five, ordered from the back of the mouth to the lips, and eight more that stand outside the grid.
At a glance
- Remember
- Five rows of five, from the throat to the lips, then y r l v and sh sh s h.
- Form
- क ख ग घ ङback of the mouth
- Signal words
- क
- च
- ट
- त
- प
- य
- श
- ह
- Trap
- Wrong:गङ्गा बड़ी नदी है।Right:गंगा बड़ी नदी है।
Your turn
10 exercises on this topic. Your answers are checked in the browser; none of them leaves your device.
The form
| back of the mouth | क ख ग घ ङ |
| palate | च छ ज झ ञ |
| tongue curled back | ट ठ ड ढ ण |
| tongue on the teeth | त थ द ध न |
| lips | प फ ब भ म |
| outside the grid | य र ल व श ष स ह |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is about
Every consonant letter is a syllable with a short a: क is ka.
कल छुट्टी है।Tomorrow is a holiday.
The rows run from the back of the mouth to the lips.
मेरा घर पास है।My house is close by.
Every row has the same pattern: plain, with breath, voiced, voiced with breath, nasal.
मेरा भाई बाहर है।My brother is outside.
श and ष are both sh today; स is an English s.
आज शनिवार है।Today is Saturday.
Example sentences
चाय गरम है।The tea is hot.
मेरा घर यहाँ से दूर नहीं है।My house is not far from here.
पानी ठंडा है।The water is cold.
बस यहीं रुकती है।The bus stops right here.
झील बहुत सुंदर है।The lake is very beautiful.
हवा तेज़ है।The wind is strong.
6 more example sentences
मछली पानी में है।The fish is in the water.
थाली में चावल है।There is rice on the plate.
आज धूप अच्छी है।The sunshine is nice today.
वकील दफ़्तर में है।The lawyer is in the office.
यहाँ बैठिए।Sit here, please.
छाता कहाँ है?Where is the umbrella?
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
The grid lists ङ and ञ, and learners reach for them to write a nasal. Modern Hindi does not: a nasal before a consonant is the dot above the line, the anusvara. गंगा, पंजाब, हिंदी — never with a half nasal letter.
The full explanation
Read it all · about 1 min
Devanagari orders its consonants by where they are made in the mouth, which makes the letters far easier to learn than an alphabet in random order. There are five rows: the back of the mouth (क ख ग घ ङ), the palate (च छ ज झ ञ), the tongue curled back (ट ठ ड ढ ण), the teeth (त थ द ध न) and the lips (प फ ब भ म).
Each row follows the same pattern from left to right: a plain sound, the same with a puff of breath, a voiced sound, the voiced one with breath, and the nasal of that place. So प is p, फ p with breath, ब b, भ b with breath and म m. Once you know one row, you know the shape of all five.
After the grid come eight letters: य र ल व (y, r, l, v) and श ष स ह (sh, sh, s, h). श and ष sound the same in modern Hindi; ष is found only in words from Sanskrit. व lies between English v and w, nearer w after another consonant.
Every consonant letter is read with a short a unless a vowel sign says otherwise: कis kaघरghar The nasals ङ and ञ almost never stand on their own in Hindi; a nasal before a consonant is written with a dot above the line instead, as the topic on nasals shows.
A closer look
An order you can hear
Say k, ch, ṭ, t, p one after the other and you can feel the point of contact move forward in your mouth. That is the order of the grid, and it is also the order of a Hindi dictionary: words starting with क come first, words starting with म come at the end of the grid, and the eight remaining letters follow.
The vowels come before all the consonants in a dictionary, in the order अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ.
The letter व
English has two sounds where Hindi has one. Most speakers say व with the lower lip lightly touching the upper teeth, softer than English v. After a consonant, as in स्वाद (taste) or द्वार (gate), it moves towards w. Neither pronunciation is wrong, and nobody will misunderstand you.
Worth knowing (2)
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ण in words from Sanskrit
The retroflex nasal ण appears mostly in words taken from Sanskrit, such as कारण (reason) and गणित (mathematics). Many speakers say it like न; spell it as the word has it.
इसका कारण क्या है?What is the reason for this?
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The letter य after a vowel
य is a consonant, y, but the spelling standard of this site writes the endings -ए and -ई without it: गए, नई, लिए, not गये, नयी, लिये.
वे कल दिल्ली गए।They went to Delhi yesterday.
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