3.1 Discussion
The next series of consonants we will discuss are the palatals (तालव्य tālavya); as you might guess they are articulated at the palate, the roof of the mouth. In linguistic terms, these consonants are what is known as affricates or affricated stops, but they follow the same rules as the other consonant series. The following chart describes their pronunciation and how they are written:
| Devanāgarī akṣar | Click to hear | Stroke Order | Transliteration | IPA Symbol (links to Wikipedia) | Sounds like (English) | Notes |
| च | Stroke order of च | c | t͡ʃ | ch in pitcher | voiceless, unaspirated | |
| छ | Stroke order of छ | ch | t͡ʃʰ | ch in chat; more of a puff of air than the sound above | voiceless, aspirated | |
| ज | Stroke order of ज | j | d͡ʒ | j in jam | voiced, unaspirated | |
| झ | Stroke order of झ | jh | d͡ʒʱ | j as above plus a puff of air | voiced, aspirated; try saying the middle sound in “judge him” several times, then isolate the middle part | |
| ञ | Stroke order of ञ | ñ | ɲ | somewhat like the Spanish ñ | rarely used |
Again it is critical to pay attention to the difference in aspiration between च ca and छ cha, which can be challenging to learners not used to making the distinction. Additionally, there are two points to keep in mind regarding झ jha. First, note that the shape again uses that basic “s” stroke with a small tail hanging down, as in the letter इ i, so learners should be careful not to confuse these. Also, झ jha has a variant shape which is less common in modern Hindi but may be encountered in older texts and is still used in other languages, for example Nepali. It looks like this:
Image: The older version of झ jha
Alt text: A black Devanāgarī character on a white background.
Source: Author created
Along with the new set of letters, in this part we also introduce two new sets of vowels and their matras:
| Vowel | Click to hear | Stroke Order | Transliteration | IPA Symbol (links to Wikipedia) | Sounds like (English) | Mātrā | Example with क |
| उ
|
Stroke order of उ | u | ʊ | short u as in put | ु | कु | |
| ऊ | ū | uː | long u as in park | ू | कू
|
||
| ए | e | eː | short i as in bit | े | के | ||
| ऐ | ai | ɛː | Somewhere between the a in hat and the e in meh | ै | कै |
Another aspect of pronunciation to keep in mind is that many varieties of English tend to put a hint of a “y” or “w” sound at the end of some of these vowels (turning them in to diphthongs). That is, our e is more like ey, our word suit has more of an “uw” quality to it than in Hindi, which has a simple long u sound. Some nonstandard varieties of Hindi, as well as closely related languages such as Marathi, do pronounce ऐ ai as a diphthong (two vowel sounds together). In these languages ऐ ai makes a sound closer to the i in English “hi” (IPA: aɪ) However, although it is transliterated using two English vowels, note that ऐ ai is not pronounced as a combination of the short vowels अ a and इ i.