Devanagari Lesson 3 Review

In this lesson you learned how vowel letters can change the sound of words. You learned two vowels, along with several new consonants.

Vowels

• Devanagari vowel sounds can start a word or come elsewhere in the word.
• Most Devanagari vowel letters have two forms:
  • One form represents vowel sounds that begin a word.
  • A second form, called the vowel's mātrā when they represent sounds that occur elsewhere in a word.
• A mātrā changes the inherent a sound of a consonant to another vowel sound.
• Many Devanagari vowel mātrās are formed by removing the अ part of the vowel character.
• आ makes the ā sound at the beginning of a word, while its mātrā, ा, makes the ā sound elsewhere in the word.
• अ makes the a sound at the beginning of a word; it has no mātrā as such, although each consonant acts as if it is followed by the mātrā of अ if not followed by another vowel.

Consonants

• प makes the pa sound.
• स makes the sa sound.

Now read a short dialogue (with the same characters from Snell). The dialogue is the same as in the previous lesson, except that our new letters have been added. Don't be confused if your browser adds a dotted circle to the mātrā ा (a) to indicate where a Hindi consonant would be attached. In actual Hindi text, the dotted circle will not be present.

• राम: HELLO, Uमा. ☑ Answer
• Uमा: HELLO, राम. HOW आर यOU? ☑ Answer
• राम: I Aम FINE, Uमा. WHाT आर यOU DOING? ☑ Answer
• Uमा: I Aम मAकING अ रESUमÉ. ☑ Answer

Note that some English speakers pronounce the English word a as in a resumé as if it rhymed with hay. In the above sentence we use अ (a) to represent this word, assuming that the pronunciation is the same as the first sound in above.