Practicing the Letter क (ka)
Are you ready to read in Devanagari? Let's start! Yes, you've only learned one letter, so you can't really read Hindi, the language, yet. That doesn't stop you from reading Devanagari, the script, though. Let's try the following English sentence, with some of the letters mysteriously replaced with Devanagari letters. Click ☑ Answer
to see the complete sentence in English. I'm sure you'll do quite well!
- कARATE OFTEN INVOLVES कIकING. ☑ Answer
- THE कRAZY कAT कAUGHT THE SकARED MOUSE. ☑ Answer
- कOMPUTERS कEEP HELPING कOMMUNIकATION. ☑ Answer
- कAN I कARRY THE कAR कEYS? ☑ Answer
Just glancing at these sentences probably make you want say the letter T
for क because you are used to a vertical bar under a horizontal bar indicating T
. You tend to ignore the other markings. Take a good look at the letter, and remember that many Devanagari letters have a horizontal and a vertical bar; concentrate on all the markings of क.
Looking back to the practice examples, you should notice two things. First, I sometimes used क to stand for the English k
as in karate
, but I sometimes used क to stand for the English c
as in cat
. You should know by now that, since Devanagari is phonetic, what's important is the sound the letter makes. You would not use क to stand for the c
in race
, for example.
Secondly, I cheated a bit on the examples: Since Devanagari is a syllabary, क really makes a ka
sound, not just k
. The क in कRAZY
is not technically correct, because the resulting word would be something like carazy
, which, no doubt, is the way some people pronounce the word, but that's not exactly standard English. Just keep this in mind, because this discrepancy between the ka
and the k
sound will come in helpful in the future.