10.1 Discussion

In Part 9, we discussed the use of हलंत halant to suppress the inherent vowel of a consonant, allowing it to attach directly to the consonant that follows. The examples given were:

However, although हलंत halant is a completely acceptable way to render these words, there are also a variety of ways, largely dependent on the character’s shape, to combine consonants with each other by removing the inherent vowel. These are referred to as conjunct consonants, and most follow these strategies for combining with each other:

Strategy 1: Consonants with a vertical line combine horizontally by removing the right side of the first consonant and attaching it to the second like so:

Strategy 2: If there is no vertical line, the consonants stack on top of each other.

However, some conjunct consonants have their own fixed forms. There are many of these, but most are quite rare.[1] Here are some of the forms you are most likely to encounter (click to hear):

Among these there is one which has a slight quirk of pronunciation: ज्ञAlthough it is a combination of जandञ, because of historical phonological processes it is pronounced as a combination of ग and यya, or ग्य, gya.

Finally, the character र ra is a special case because it takes one of two unique forms depending on whether it comes before or after the consonant it combines with: रकार rakār and रेफ reph.

Rakār is used when र ra immediately follows another consonant. In most cases, rakār takes the form of a small diagonal line that attaches to the bottom of a consonant, sort of like a kickstand. It should not be confused with हलंत halant because rakār slants the opposite direction and occurs above the line the letters sit on while हलंत halant hangs below the line. On consonants with a curved bottom rather than a right-hand vertical line, it looks like a small inverted v. Click on these examples with rakār to hear the pronunciation:

Reph on the other hand looks like a small curve that sits at the top of the letter it precedes. The bottom of the curve attaches to the letter at the same place as the upper mātrās; sometimes the mātrā and the reph will touch each other. You can see these formations in the following examples (click to hear):