The Letter ऐ (ai)

There is only one other Devanagari letter that looks similar to ए, and that is another vowel, letter ऐ, which makes a sound like the vowel sound in the English, hen (Snell, 11).

The letter ऐ is formed exactly like the letter ए, except that it has an extra slash above its horizontal crossbar. These are the only two letters which have this basic shape, so once you are comfortable in distinguishing them, you won't have to worry that I'll be introducing any letters down the road which are similar.

The sound made by the letter ऐ (ai) is very also close to the sound made by ए (e). We can't use the English e to represent ऐ, even though the English word, hen has the same sound, because we're already using e to represent the sound made by ए (e). We will therefore use two English letters, ai, to represent the sound made by ऐ. Be careful to remember that, in the future when we transliterate a Hindi word using ai, we are not representing the sound found in English words such as wait, but rather, we just discussed, the sound found in hen.

More vowels, more vowel sounds, and more transliteration methods! It all sounds a bit confusing, I know, but I'll review all the vowels and transliteration methods soon.

The Mātrā ै (ai)

If you were to use the mātrā for the letter ए as a model for finding the mātrā for the letter ऐ, you probably wouldn't be far off. Remember that the mātrā for ए consists of just one mark: े. Since ऐ has another mark added, you would be correct to follow logic and add another mark to े, leaving you ै for the mātrā of ऐ. ै, like े, is placed above the consonant whose sound is being modified.

To get the big picture, you need to review all of the vowels together again, along with the new ones we've added:

Use of ऐ and ै with Anusvār ं

As with the letter ह, the letter ऐ is not one of the most-used letters in the Devanagari syllabary. Knowing and recognizing both of them are essential to reading Hindi, however, because some of the most-used words in the language use these two letters. In fact, some of the most-used words consist only of these two letters.

One of the most-used words in English is I. Likewise in Hindi, one of the most-used words is मैं, the word for I. This word is pronounced maĩ, and note that the tilde over the vowel ai means that the sound should be nasalized. This word is formed by first taking the letter म, which usually makes the sound ma. To this is added the mātrā ै of the vowel you just learned, which results in the sound mai. Lastly, an anusvār symbol ं is added, which nasalizes the sound, making maĩ. Thus the word मैं (English: I) is formed by one consonant, one vowel, and an anusvār.

Likewise, there are two forms of the Hindi word होना (honā; English: to be) which use ै, look very similar, and differ only in their nasalization. The first of these is है, which is pronounced hai and refers to a masculine noun (such as a boy or a man) being something. For example, The boy is tall in Hindi would use the word है to represent is. However, if you were to speak of a feminine noun being something (e.g. The girl is tall ), one would use the Hindi word हैं, pronounced haĩ (note the tilde over the vowel) to represent the English word is.

Don't make a conscious effort to memorize these Hindi words. Rather, I'm trying to make the point that many times ै is used with other consonants, sometimes with anusvār and sometimes without. Remember that in Hindi the presence or absence of candrabindu/anusvār (and, by definition, of nasalization) can mean the difference between two completely different words.