The Letter र (ra)

We now come to the letter र, which makes the sound ra, which rhymes with क (ka) and य (ya).

This should look familiar. We of course have that solid horizontal line from which the letter hangs, but other than that र (ra) looks just like a capital English, R. You'll have no trouble at all remembering this letter.

This is the first letter you've seen that doesn't have the vertical line descending from the horizontal line, but don't worry about that. You've seen the letter, R most of your life. Look at the similarities: R and र. To write र (ra), you would simply draw the horizontal bar, then draw the English letter R without the vertical bar!

The Devanagari letter र (ra) does not make exactly the same sound as the English, r. Instead, it is shorter; your tongue taps the top of your mouth and almost trills the ra sound, similar to a Scottish pronunciation of the English, r. Try saying, hurt and then heard; the Hindi sound is still shorter, but you can try to use the rd sound when saying rdead and wrdite and rdun The tapping sound always present, in contrast to the English word, more, which has no tapping sound at all (Snell, 10).

Now say all the letters you've learned so far:

क: ka. ka. ka.

य: ya. ya. ya.

र: ra. ra. ra.