Learn Devanagari

About Devanagari

Devanagari is an Abugida used to write various Indic languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, and Nepali. Devanagari characters can be transliterated into the Latin alphabet using diacritics in a system called IAST.

How to Read IAST

The diacritic marks used in IAST are the above-dot ( ^· ), the below-dot ( _. ), the caron ( ^ ), the tilde ( ^~ ), the acute ( ´ ), and the macron ( ‾ ).

• A vowel with a macron above should be read as long. For example "ā" should be read as "ah" /ɑː/.
• When a consonant has an dot beneath it, this means it is retroflex. It should be pronounced with the tongue bent back agianst the alveolar ridge.
• The "ṅ" with the dot above is velar. It should be pronounced /ŋ/ like "ng" in English "sing."
• The "ñ" with a tilde above is palatal. It should be pronounced /ɲ/, roughly the "ny" in English "nyan cat."
• The "ś" with an acute above is another palatal. It should be pronounced /ʃ/, like "sh" in English "shine."
• "ê" and "ô" are pronounced /æ/ and /ɒ/, respectively.
• "th" is not pronounced as in English "thorn", but as an aspirated "t" sound /t̪ʰ/.