Lesson 1 - Learn Hindi Script Introduction
The script used for writing Hindi is called Devanagari or Nagari script. Deva means "God" and nagari means "city". The name is translated as "script of the city" or "heavenly script of the city". It is a abugida writing system.
Salient features of Devanagari Script are
- Written from left to right
- No capital letters
- Uses "|" as sentence separator(used in a similar way as fullstop in English)
- The consonants have inherent "a" sound. So the consonant "k" क is actually ka and not simply "k". Later on as we progress through the lessons, we will see how to write a consonant without the inherent vowel sound. It differs in Sanskrit and Hindi.
- The vowels have two forms namely the independent vowel form and when they come along with consonants, they take the vowel form shape.
- Although there are more alphabets to learn compared to English languages, since Hindi is a phonetic language, if you know the alphabets then that's it you will be able to read about anything (unlike English which has so many tricky words - (for example, my daughter who is being taught phonics in school who is 5 years old always write from as frum because by using phonics u as actually "a"). So no tricky words. Once you master the script you can read about anything in Hindi, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Konkani, Nepali, Pali, Sanksrit, Mundari etc.
- The lessons here will not teach the script in the alphabetical order. But will be based on shapes. From a basic shape and developing it to form other alphabets.
- The key to learning a new language is you should keep on practising the language. You can use the practise sheets available in the downloads section. We will be adding more practice sheets now and then. So keep an eye on our updates in facebook and also on the youtube channel.
- The videos used in the lessons are available in youtube as well. You can go to www.youtube.com/languagereef. This link also provides videos for other Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Oriya, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati, Punjabi etc.
- So you can start learning the alphabets.
Before actually starting the language lessons, a brief exercise for kids who are learning Hindi. Practise these basic shapes before attempting to learn the script. Maybe a little warm up.
So the downloads