The Letter म (ma)

We'll look at one more letter in this lesson: the letter, म, which makes the sound ma. Again, this is not what you would call your parents when saying ma and pa. Rather, this is the ma sound as in majority.

This letter really has no simlarities to any English letters. That doesn't really matter, however, because म ()ma) is not similar to very many other Devanagari letters, either.

The sound that म (ma) makes is quite similar to the sound that the English letter m makes.

Once you have learned this letter, you probably won't confuse it with any other letters. You should expect that horizontal bar, by now. Also, the vertical line coming down on the right is just like the line used in य (ya). The shape of the other lines is quite different. While the shape of the left side of य (ya) is flowing and smoother, the left side of म (ma) comes down straight from the horizontal line, makes a loop, and then cuts sharply back to the vertical line. Thus, म (ma) is has sharp corners and right angles, and is thus more firm than य (ya).

You should now say aloud each of the four letters we've learned in this lesson:

क ka क ka क ka क ka

य ya य ya य ya य ya

र ra र ra र ra र ra

म ma म ma म ma म ma

Great! You're covering these very quickly. Isn't this easy?