Devanagari is Phonetic

First of all, let's go over the difference between Devanagari (or simply, Nagari) and the English alphabet. Perhaps the most drastic, from a phonetic (that is, relating to sounds) point of view, is that Devanagari is a phonetic script. Remember, don't be turned off by terms; we're just naming and categorizing a few things to make things easier to understand.

So what do I mean by, phonetic? Let's look at a few examples, first. Think of the English words, can, lucid , and optician . What do all three words have in common? They all contain the letter c. What you should immediately notice is that, in each of the given words, the sound produced by the letter c is different. This is because the English alphabet is not phonetic. Unless you were familiar with patterns of English letters to begin with, there would be no way for you to tell how to pronounce the letter c in a word! It could sound like k, s, or sh!

Now that we have determined what isn't phonetic, let's determine what is. Remember that phonetic relates to sounds, like the words telephone and phonograph. The interesting thing about Hindi letters is that each of them have a certain sound that they always make (OK, there are probably exceptions, but you can ignore them for now until I find out what they are). No more confusion! If you know Devanagari you should be able to determine roughly what a certain Hindi word sounds like, even if you've never heard the word before .

You should have learned something else just now: although the Hindi script is very different than the English alphabet in many ways, it is not necessarily more difficult. During these lessons, you will often come across some concepts which are either unfamiliar or quite different than what you're used to. Keep an open mind and realize that in many cases (the fact that Devanagari is phonetic, for example) the difference actually makes things easier than what you're used to.