5.1 Discussion
As you might expect, dental series (दन्त्य dantya) consonants are pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the back of the teeth. While retroflex sounds are a little less common cross-linguistically, dental t and d exist in many other languages. American English speakers may be familiar with them from Romance languages such as Spanish, or may not even realize they are slightly different from English alveolar t and d. Although English does not have dental stops t and d, it has two dental fricatives, both written th. This means that Hindi speakers represent English th as dental consonants: द for the voiced th in words like the, and थ for the voiceless th in words like thank. Devanāgarī continues its regular pattern of voicing, aspiration, and nasal with the dental series.
| Devanāgarī akṣar | Click to hear | Stroke Order | Transliteration | IPA Symbol (links to Wikipedia) | Sounds like (English) | Notes |
| त | t | t̪ | English t but pronounced with the tip of the tongue at the back of the teeth | voiceless, unaspirated, similar to Spanish t, some call this “soft” | ||
| थ | th | t̪ʰ | same as above, followed by a puff of breath | voiceless, aspirated, when writing English words in Devanāgarī this is used to represent th as in think | ||
| द | d | d̪ | English d but pronounced with the tip of the tongue at the back of the teeth | voiced, unaspirated, when writing English words in Devanāgarī this is used to represent the th in that | ||
| ध | dh | d̪ʱ | same as above, followed by a puff of breath | voiced, aspirated | ||
| न | n | n | n in night or can | far more common than ङ, ञ, or ण |
Finally, this section introduces the character ऋ, which is traditionally grouped with the vowels even though it sounds like the consonant r combined with the short vowel i. Its place in the varṇmālā and treatment like a vowel has to do with the historical phonology of Sanskrit. Learners of Hindi will encounter this letter in only a few words, generally direct Sanskrit borrowings.
| Svar | Click here | Stroke Order | Transliteration | IPA Symbol (links to Wikipedia) | Sounds like (English) | Mātrā | Example with क |
| ऋ | Stroke order of ऋ | r̥ | ɾi | ri as in brick | ृ | कृ |
