4.1 Discussion

The retroflex मूर्धन्य mūrdhanya sounds are highly characteristic of South Asian languages, even those from different language families, however most varieties of English do not have them, and they may sound unfamiliar to English speakers. “Retroflex” means that in order to articulate the sound, the tip of the tongue curves up and back to the roof of the mouth. In most standard varieties of English, the sounds t and d are produced on the alveolar ridge, which can be felt behind the top teeth. This lies between the retroflex and dental series of consonants. The following diagram illustrates the differences in location of these three sets of sounds. Note that while English only distinguishes between voiceless t and voiced d, Devanāgarī continues its pattern of voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiced unaspirated, and voiced aspirated stops followed by a nasal sound.

Image 5: Devanāgarī consonant groupings by place of articulation

Alt text: a line drawing showing a diagram of the human mouth and throat in cross section, indicating the relative locations in the mouth of dental, alveolar, and retroflex sounds.

Keep in mind that Hindi speakers typically hear English t and d as retroflex, so English words in Hindi use these letters to represent those sounds.

Hindi also has two retroflex taps, ड़ and ढ़. These are written using the same basic character shape as ड and ढ but with a dot beneath. Note that this is also the same basic “s” shape as the velar nasal ङ ṅ, which has a dot to its right side. ङ is fairly uncommon, so students should mostly focus on the difference between ड/ड़ and ढ/ढ़. The dotted variants are pronounced in the same place, but are made with just a quick tap of the tongue. To English ears, this sound can resemble the rd sound in words like border, but perhaps a bit faster.

Finally, here we introduce the final two vowels: ओ o and औ au. As with ऐ ai, although the transliteration of the औ au sound is two letters, standard Hindi pronounces this sound as a single vowel, similar to the sound in saw or caught. However, again like ऐ ai, some varieties of Hindi as well as closely related languages pronounce this sound more as two vowels, as the sound in cow or pouch, so students can be prepared to encounter some variation among speakers.

You may encounter another variation of ओ o: ऑ ô (IPA ɑ). While not part of the traditional varṇmālā, it is used when rendering English words in Devanāgarī to represent the vowel in words like doctor, college, office, etc. Because there are so many English words borrowed into Hindi, its use is relatively common.