Practicing the Letter p

You're doing so well learning the Devanagari letters that it's time to put them to practical use. In this practice session, you'll be reading actual Hindi words, written in Devanagari.

Don't worry that you don't know Hindi; since Devanagari is phonetic, you should be able to examine the words below and know what each of them sounds like, even if you do not know what they mean. For extra fun, I'm throwing in some Hindi words that do not contain the letter , "pa." The words below only contain letter which have already been introduced, however.

Notice that has no visible vowel between the letters, so you pronounce the inherent, "a" sound that all consonants have. , on the other hand, has the vowel , "aa" (which is the maatraa of , "aa") directly after the consonant, which changes the consonant sound from, "a," to, "aa."

Don't try to memorize the definitions of these Hindi words. The important thing now is that you recognize the letters, know what sounds they make, and understand how they work together to make words.