देवनागरी लिपि: Difference between revisions

The transliteration used in this article follows the popular [[IAST]] conventions. The [[ITRANS]] [http://www.aczoom.com/itrans/#itransencoding] is a lossless transliteration scheme of Devanāgarī into [[ASCII]] that is widely used on [[Usenet]]. In ITRANS, the word ''Devanāgarī'' is written as "devanaagarii".

 

<!-- [[Image:Rigveda MS2097.jpg|thumb|340px|[[Rigveda]] manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century)]] -->

Devanāgarī emerged around [[1200]] AD out of the [[Siddham]] script, gradually replacing the earlier, closely related [[Sharada script]] (which remained in parallel use in [[Kashmir]]). Both are immediate descendants of the [[Gupta script]], ultimately deriving from the [[Brahmi|Brāhmī]] script attested from the [[3rd century BC]]; Nāgarī appeared in approx. the [[8th century]] as an eastern variant of the [[Gupta script]], contemporary to [[Sharada]], its western variant. The descendants of Brahmi form the [[Brahmic family]], including the alphabets employed for many other South and South-East Asian languages.

 

{{alphabet}}

[[Sanskrit]] ''nāgarī'' is the feminine of ''nāgara'' "urban(e)", an adjectival [[vrddhi]] derivative from ''nagara'' "city"; the feminine form is used because of its original application to qualify the feminine noun ''lipi'' "script" ("urban(e) script", i.e. the script of the cultured). There were several varieties in use, one of which was distinguished by affixing ''[[Deva (Hinduism)|deva]]'' "deity" to form a [[tatpurusha]] compound meaning the "urban(e) [script] of the deities (= gods)", i.e. "divine urban(e) [script]". However, the widespread use of "Devanāgarī" is a relatively recent phenomenon; well into the twentieth century, and even today, simply "Nāgari" was also in use for this same script. The rapid spread of the usage of "Devanāgarī" seems also to be connected with the almost exclusive use of this script in colonial times to publish works in Sanskrit, even though traditionally nearly all indigenous scripts have actually been employed for this language. This has led to the establishment of such a close connection between the script and Sanskrit that it is, erroneously, widely regarded as "the Sanskrit script" today.

Interpreted by [[popular etymology]] to refer to a "City of the Gods", the name in certain [[Yoga|Yogic]] traditions{{fact}}<!-- which ones?--> was taken to refer to the body of the individual. The philosophy behind this is that when one [[meditation|meditates]] on the specific [[sound]]s of the Devanagari alphabet, the written forms appear spontaneously in the mind.

 

Devanāgarī has 12 ''svara'' (pure sounds, or [[vowel]]s) and 34 ''vyanjana'' (ornamented sounds, [[consonant]]s). An ''[[akshara]]'' is formed by the combination of zero or one ''vyanjana'' and one or more ''svar'', and represents a phonetic unit of the ''[[shabda]]'' (utterance). The ''akshara'' is written by applying standard diacritical modifiers to the ''vyanjana'' corresponding to the ''svara''. An ''akshara'' is usually more basic and predictable than the [[syllable]] in English. For example, the English 'cat' (considered to have just one syllable) is written as two ''aksharas'', the 'k-a' and the 'ta'.

 

Certain Sanskrit texts and ''mantras'' are typically written with additional diacritical marks above and below the ''akshara'' to denote pitch and tempo, to ensure completely accurate reproduction of the sound.

 

All the vowels in Devanāgarī are attached to the top or bottom of the consonant or to an &lt;aa&gt; vowel sign attached to the right of the consonant, with the exception of the &lt;i&gt; vowel sign, which is attached on the left. In the Devanāgarī vowel table below, the "Letter" column contains the symbol used when a vowel occurs without a consonant, the "Vowel sign with &lt;p&gt;" column contains the symbol used when a vowel is attached to a consonant, shown with the &lt;p&gt; letter as an example, the "Unicode name" column contains the name given in the [[Unicode]] specification for the vowel, and the "IPA" column contains the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] character(s) corresponding to the Hindi pronunciation of the Devanāgarī character.

 

The vowels of the Devanāgarī script with their word-initial Devanāgarī symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant प् (/p/), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and of /p/+vowel) in [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] (IPA), equivalent in [[International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration]] (IAST) and [[Indian languages transliteration]] (ITRANS) and (approximate) equivalents in Standard English are listed below:

{|class="wikitable"

* Unicode transliteration scheme differs for some characters from [[IAST]] scheme. The differences are: ā→aa, ī→ii, ū→uu, {{Unicode|ṛ}}→rr, {{Unicode|ḹ}}→ll.

 

The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish/Italian. The parentheses give the corresponding transliteration (of the consonant alone) in [[IAST]] scheme—the most popular one. Each consonant shown below is by default followed by the neutral vowel [[schwa]] ({{IPA|/ə/}}), and is given in the table in this form.

 

|-

!

![[Nasal consonant|Nasal]]

|-align="center"

|[[Velar]]

|-align="center"

|[[Palatal]]

|-align="center"

|[[Retroflex]]

|-align="center"

|Apico-[[Dental consonant|Dental]]

|-align="center"

|[[Labial consonant|Labial]]

|-

|}

![[Palatal]]

![[Retroflex]]

|-align="center"

|[[Approximant]]

|-align="center"

|-

|}

*The retroflex sibilant {{IPA|/ʂ/}} is pronounced like {{IPA|/ʃ/}}, but with the tongue curled upwards towards the roof of the mouth. In Mādhyandini branch of Yajurveda, this phoneme is allowed to be pronounced at certain places as {{IPA|/ kʰ/}}. In Hindi, this is pronounced as the English ''sh'' in '''sh'''ip.

*The Sanskrit {{IPA|/ɦ/}} is a voiced allophone of the normal h. In Hindi, it is pronounced as in '''h'''ome.

 

==== [[Ligature (typography)|Ligatures]] ====

|-

|-align="center"

|-align="center"

|-align="center"

|-align="center"

|-align="center"

|-align="center"

|-align="center"

|-

|}

 

 

*अं (called ''[[anusvāra]]''), pronounced as {{IPA|/ⁿ/}} ([[IAST]]: {{Unicode|ṃ}}) is used for nasalizing the vowel in the syllable, the word-final allophone of /m/ and /n/. The diacritic {{Unicode|ँ}} (called ''chandrabindu''/''anunāsika'') is used in certain shakhas instead of the ''anusvāra'' in certain phonetic contexts.

*If a lonely consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a ''halanta/[[virāma]]'' diacritic below (प्).

 

 

{{main|Vedic accent}}

 

{{Seealso|Indian numerals|Brahmi numerals|Hindu-Arabic numeral system}}

 

[[ISCII]] is a [[fixed-length encoding|fixed-length]] 8-bit encoding. The lower 128 codepoints are plain [[ASCII]], the upper 128 codepoints are ISCII-specific.

 

 

ISCII has largely been obsoleted by [[Unicode]], which has however attempted to preserve the ISCII layout for its Indic language blocks.

|-

| style="font-size: small;" | U+097x

|-

|}

 

 

The [[Mac OS X]] operating system supports convenient editing for the Devanāgarī script by insertion of appropriate Unicode characters with two different [[keyboard layout]]s available for use. To input Devanāgarī text, one goes to System Preferences → International → Input Menu and enables the keyboard layout that is to be used. One then views the keyboard layout at the [http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50037 Indian Language Kit Manual] at Apple Docs.

 

|+ for example, the Devanāgarī-qwerty layout is:

|-

|}

 

 

 

 

See [http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php/BolNagri|bolnagri home page]

 

* [[Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging]] - Macintosh

* [[Graphite (Renderer)|Graphite]] - open source ([[SIL International|SIL]])

* [http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305897 On history of Indian writing]

 

 

* [http://www.chhahari.com/unicode Chhahari Syllabic Unicode Editor]

* [http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/06/free-software-tools-and-fonts-cd.html Request for a free hindi Fonts and Devanāgarī Tools CD from the Government of India]

* [http://devanaagarii.net/ Devanāgarī : all about using Devanāgarī on computers]

* [http://www.ncst.ernet.in/projects/indix/ IndiX, Indian language support for Linux], a site by the Indian [[National Centre for Software Technology]]

[[hu:Dévanágari írás]]

[[id:Aksara Dewanagari]]

[[it:Devanagari]]

[[ja:デーヴァナーガリー]]