Indian Script : DEVANAGARI

Devanagari is one of the scripts used in India. Today it is officially used for writing Hindi, Sanskrit and Marathi. If you are planning to visit India, this is the script you will most probably see everywhere - on boards, billboards, panels, signs etc. In this article you can learn more about devanagari and how to write/read it.

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Devanagari is an old Indian script. It derived from even older script brahmi (used on king Ashoka's edicts who converted to Buddhism after a heavy bloody battle) which derived from Aramaic script. This means we can trace back the origins of devanagari all the way in to early centuries BC. The earliest texts written with devanagari were composed in 8th century. The name, devanagari, consists of two Sanskrit words - deva (God, deity) and nagari (nagar=city; nagari (F)=of the city, town) which together form one meaning - (the script = lipi) of god's city (F). It is written from left to right and there is no difference between upper- and lowercase letters

Devanagari is a phonetic and syllabic script. That means it is written mostly as you read it and every consonant will come with a vowel, in this case a short vowel a. Therefore it is not quite correct to call devanagari as an alphabet. Some authors of Hindi grammar books say that devanagari is the most scientific script. The reason for that is the order in which letters (or syllables) are put. Letters are distributed according to their place and way of articulation. The order they are put in is called as varnmala - garland of letters. If you try to speak the letters you will notice many regularities on your own as well.

Vowels are written in two ways. the way of writing depends if they follow a consonant or not. Consonants are always written in the same way except when they are in clusters. Here you can briefly see the rules of writing devanagari. Handwritten devanagari is a bit different, however, not much different. The line above the letters is one of the most characteristic features of this Indian script. 

Devanagari - vowels and consonants

Devanagari - vowels

Although it might seem difficult to learn devanagari because there are so many letters, it is actually no different than any other script. You can start out with writing down your own name - later you can frame it and put it as a decoration (Make Your Home More Indian). Once you get it right, you will be able to write it and read it just as fast as you are reading this article right now. And after all, it is quite cool once you come to India knowing you can read the menu in devanagari in a restaurant or boards with the name of the cities!