The Letter ai

There is only one other Devanagari letter that looks similar to , and that is another vowel, letter , which makes a sound like the vowel sound in the English, "hen" (Snell, 11).

The letter is formed exactly like the letter , except that it has an extra slash above its horizontal crossbar. These are the only two letters which have this basic shape, so once you are comfortable in distinquishing them, you won't have to worry that I'll be introducing any letters down the road which are similar.

The sound made by the letter is very also close to the sound made by . We can't use the English "e" to represent , even though the English word, "hen" has the same sound, because we're already using "e" to represent the sound made by . We will therefore use two English letters, "ai," to represent the sound made by . Be careful to remember that, in the future when we transliterate a Hindi word using "ai," we are not representing the sound found in English words such as, "wait," but rather, we just discussed, the sound found in "hen."

More vowels, more vowel sounds, and more transliteration methods! It all sounds a bit confusing, I know, but I'll review all the vowels and transliteration methods soon.

ai maatraa If you were to use the maatraa for the letter as a model for finding the maatraa for the letter , you probably wouldn't be far off. Remember that the maatraa for consists of just one mark: . Since has another mark added, you would be correct to follow logic and add another mark to , leaving you for the maatraa of . , like , is placed above the consonant whose sound is being modified.

To get the big picture, you need to review all of the vowels together again, along with the new ones we've added:

Maatraa	Transliteration	English Example
None	a	attend
	aa	part
	o	hotel
	au	horrible
	e	cable
	ai	hen

Usage of and with Candrabindu

As with the letter , the letter is not one of the most-used letters in the Devanagari syllabary. Knowing and recognizing both of them are essential to reading Hindi, however, because some of the most-used words in the language use these two letters. In fact, some of the most-used words consist only of these two letters.

One of the most-used words in English is, "I." Likewise in Hindi, one of the most-used words is mAI , the word for, "I." This word is pronounced, "mAI," and note that the capital "AI" means that the sound should be nasalized. This word is formed by first taking the letter , which usually makes the sound, "ma." To this is added the maatraa of the vowel you just learned, , which results in the sound, "mai." Lastly, the second form of the candrabindu symbol is added, which nasalizes the sound, making, "mAI." Thus, the word mAI (English: I) is formed by one consonant, one vowel, and one candrabindu.

Likewise, there are two forms of the Hindi word (English: to be) which use , look very similar, and differ only in their nasalization. The first of these is hai , which is pronounced, "hai" and refers to a masculine noun (such as a boy or a man) "being" something. For example, "The boy is tall" in Hindi would use the word hai to represent, "is." However, if you were to speak of a feminine noun "being" something (e.g. "The girl is tall"), one would use the Hindi word hAI , pronounced, "hAI," to represent the English word, "is."

Don't make a conscious effort to memorize these Hindi words. Rather, I'm trying to make the point that many times is used with other consonants, sometimes with candrabindu and sometimes without. Remember that in Hindi the presence or absence of candrabindu (and, by definition, of nasalization) can mean the difference between two completely different words.