Devanagari

Sanskrit Manuscript Rigvedá in devanagari (starts of the centuryXIX).

Devanagari or Devanāgarī is a Brahmic Abugida script used to write the Nepali language and several languages of India, including Sanskrit, Bhili, Bhoshpuri, Bihari, Kashmiri, Hindi (India's official language), Konkani, Marathi and Sindhi.

Etymology

The Spanish word devanagari, pronounced grave, comes from the Sanskrit devanāgarī (pronounced acute]: /devanagari/), which means 'of the divine city', being devá: 'god' or 'divine', and nāgarī: 'urban, from the city', a feminine vridhi adjective deriving from nágara: 'city'. Possibly it refers to the fact that it was created in some city that called itself 'divine'.

Both words, devá and nágari form a compound term (tatpurusha), which could be translated as 'divine urban script', which probably identified Devanagari within a larger group of nágari ('urban') scripts.^{[citation needed]}

The Nágari script may have been an early form of Devanagari, appearing before the 13th century as an Eastern variant of the Gupta script, and contemporary with its Western variant Sharada.^{[citation required]} The Sanskrit name Devánagari could be understood, then, as 'divine (or excellent) form of the Nágari script'.^{[citation required]}

Writing and pronunciation

• devanāgarīin the AITS system (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration).
• in the devanagari script of the Sanskrit.
• Pronunciation: /devánagari/ in ancient Sanskrit.

In the Spanish language, the Royal Spanish Academy recommends the written English use of the term: devanagari (which in Spanish is pronounced as a flat word: [devanagári] and is consequently written «devanagari»), although in the etymology that he proposes he accepts the probable Sanskrit acute or slurred use: devanâgarí (a free version of the term AITS devanāgarī).

In Sanskrit, tatpurusha compounds are generally stressed according to the stress of the first word. For example: devá + nágari = devánagari. The only tatpurusha that is doubly stressed is Bríhaspáti (from bríhas and páti).

Origins

The Devanagari script arose around AD 1020 from the Siddham script, gradually replacing the Sharada script, which remained a parallel usage in Kashmir. Both are immediate descendants of the Gupta script, which arose from the Brahmi script, which probably arose in the 3rd century BCE. C. The descendants of Brahmi form the Brahmic family, including the national alphabets of many other languages of India.

Principles

Devanagari is an alphabet of the type called abugida, in which each consonant has an inherent vowel [a] that can be changed with different vowel signs. Most consonants can be attached to another or others, thereby suppressing the inherent vowel. The resulting shape is known as a slur.

Devanagari is written from left to right. In Sanskrit the words were written together, without spaces, so that the top bar was continuous, although there were certain exceptions to this rule. The break of the upper line marks breathing pauses. In modern languages, separation between words is used. Devanagari is not case sensitive.

Devanagari has 12 svara (pure, or vowel sounds) and 34 vyanjana (ornate, consonant sounds). An akshara (syllable) is formed by the combination of one or none vyanjana and one or more svara, and represents the phonetic unit of shabda (word). To write an akshara, standard diacritic modifiers representing the svara are applied to the vyanjana.

The svara and vyanjana are logically arranged and grouped for study or recitation. Thus, the pure sounds, 'a', 'i', 'u' and their lengthened versions ('aa', 'ii', 'uu') are followed by the combined forms ('ae', &# 39;ai', 'o', 'ou'), nasals ('.m') and aspirates ('.h'). The vyanjana themselves are grouped into six groups (rows) of five members (columns). The first five rows progress in the velar, palatal, retroflex, dental, and labial senses, in correspondence with the use of the tongue toward more and more external parts when making the sound. The remaining vyanjana are technically voiced, sibilant, or widely used as conjoint forms. For each row or group, the columns progress logically to softer sounds, paired with the aspirated forms, and ending with the nasal form for that group.

The pronunciation of Sanskrit written in Devanagari has some ambiguity. However, each Sanskrit word is considered to be written in only one way (not counting the modern typographical variants used to represent joint forms). Certain conventions have been accepted in modern languages; for example, the truncation of the vowel form of the last consonant when speaking, even though it continues to be written in the full form. There are also some modern conventions about how to write foreign words in Devanagari.

Some Sanskrit texts and mantras are typically written with additional diacritical marks above and below the akshara to denote pitch and tempo of sound, to ensure that the reproduction of this is accurate.

Devanagari Symbols

All vowels in Devanagari are attached above or below the consonant, or to a vowel sign AA added to the right of the consonant, with the exception of the vowel sign I, which is added to the left. The following table of vowels shows in the "Letter" the symbol used when the vowel is used without a consonant; the column "Sign of the vowel with [p]" contains the symbol used when a vowel is attached to a consonant, shown in the case with the letter "p" as an example; the column "Unicode Name" contains the name given to the vowel in the Unicode specification; and the IPA column contains the International Phonetic Alphabet character(s) corresponding to the Hindi pronunciation of the Devanagari character.

When no vowel is written, pronounce an "a" later. To specifically denote the absence of a vowel, a virama (also called halant) must be used.

The letter ळ is not used in Hindi. Instead, in Marathi the entire alphabet is used.

Numbers in Devanagari are written as follows:

Ligatures

Consonant conjunctions of two or more phonemes are made by combining the aksharas by ligatures. Typically, the preceding akshara loses its vertical line and directly contacts the successor.

In the case of aksharas that in their independent form lack vertical strokes, successor aksharas are usually placed below the preceding one. In some cases, the ligatures take forms not easily recognizable as being composed of the individual aksharas (for example, jñ).

Consonant clusters containing r are treated as a special case: the preceding r- is made as a right-pointing hook over the following akshara, and the Successor -r appears as a slanted stroke added to the vertical stroke of the preceding akshara.

Old Forms

There are archaic versions of some letters that are rarely used today.

Variants

Standard	Variable form

Devanagari in Unicode

The Unicode character range for Devanagari is between U+0900 and U+097F. Dark gray blocks indicate undefined characters.

Devanagari keyboard layouts

Devanagari-QWERTY keyboard for Mac OS X

The Mac OS X operating system supports typing in Devanagari by entering Unicode characters with two different key layouts.

REGISTRATION

For use on the GNU/Linux operating system. They can also be entered manually using Unicode codes. To do this, press the combination: Ctrl+⇧+U (←Unicode shortcut) + the required alphanumeric code.

Software

• Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging: Macintosh (new).
• Graphite: open source (SIL).
• Itranslator2003: Freeware: Windows.
• Pango: open source (GNOME).
• Uniscribe: Windows.
• WorldScript: Macintosh (old).