Practicing the Letter h

Here are a few Hindi words that contain the letter , "ha." The letter , "ha," is not the most-used letter in the Devanagari syllabary, but it is important. Since it is used in the verb , "honaa," meaning, "to be," you will find it throughout Hindi texts.

In the word, , notice that no inherent, "a" sound comes between the letters , "ha," and , "na." This is because the word has three syllables and ends in a vowel letter, as we covered in the rules of unpronounced vowels.

The same condition occurs in . In this word, you also see the conjuct , "nn," which you have read before. You'll notice however, that we go ahead and transliterate an "a" sound between , "ha," and , "nn," because , "nn," already lost the "a" sound when it was made into a consonant by combining two off the letter , "n." There cannot be three consonants in a row without any vowels.

Be careful with the word aa nasal . The last letter has the candrabindu symbol, which means that the letter , "aa" should be nasalized.

Lastly, in case you've forgotten, that strange letter in is actually a conjunct, consisting of the letters , "ta," and , "ma." You've seen the word , (English: soul) before; therefore means, "saint" (literally, "great soul"). You might have seen this word when reading of Mahatma Gandhi, the title given to Mohandas Gandhi. Although we have transliterated it differently here than you may have seen it, you now know the correct Hindi spelling and pronunciation.