The consonants, row by row

Devanagari orders its consonants by where they are made in the mouth, which makes the letters far easier to learn than an alphabet in random order. There are five rows: the back of the mouth (क ख ग घ ङ), the palate (च छ ज झ ञ), the tongue curled back (ट ठ ड ढ ण), the teeth (त थ द ध न) and the lips (प फ ब भ म).

Each row follows the same pattern from left to right: a plain sound, the same with a puff of breath, a voiced sound, the voiced one with breath, and the nasal of that place. So प is p, फ p with breath, ब b, भ b with breath and म m. Once you know one row, you know the shape of all five.

After the grid come eight letters: य र ल व (y, r, l, v) and श ष स ह (sh, sh, s, h). श and ष sound the same in modern Hindi; ष is found only in words from Sanskrit. व lies between English v and w, nearer w after another consonant.

Every consonant letter is read with a short a unless a vowel sign says otherwise: कis kaघरghar The nasals ङ and ञ almost never stand on their own in Hindi; a nasal before a consonant is written with a dot above the line instead, as the topic on nasals shows.