In this lesson we’ll begin to go through the pronunciation of the अनुस्वार anusvaar, ं , and the चंद्राबिन्दु candraabindu, ँ . This can be quite confusing for beginners to master, and I admit that I struggled a bit to get used to it! These symbols are used to represent a nasal sound, but the exact sound it makes depends on it’s placement in a word. You may have noticed these symbols if youve been paying attention to the devanagari, for example in यहाँ yahaan, meaning here. 

Firstly we need to cover a few new letters. Each of the first 5 set of consonants has a nasal letter which is pronounced in a similar way to how the letters in that set are. I’d recommend using Hindi Script Tutor to hear the pronunciation because just reading a description of the sound is admittedly often insufficient.  

For the Gutturals ( क, ख, ग and घ ) we have; ङ ṅa. 

This is pronounced like the n in the english word uncle, you should make the sound from the back of your throat just like with the guttural consonants. Notice how this is similar to ड da, just with a dot in the top right!

For the palatals (च, छ, ज and झ) we have; ञ ña.

This is pronounced like the n in the word unjust, and should be pronounced with the tongue touching the roof of the mouth. 

These first two nasal letters are almost never seen in Hindi, this is because they are nearly always replaced by the anusvar symbol. 

For the retroflex consonants (ट, ठ, ड and ढ) we have; ण ṇa

This is pronounced like the n in end, and you should slightly roll your tounge as you say it. Unlike the previous two nasal letters, it is quite common to see this, especially in words derived from sanskrit. 

For the dentals (त, थ, द and ध) we have; न na

We’ve seen this letter in detail in the word नमस्ते namaste. It should be pronounced like the n in nap, or noon. This letter is very common and is seen in many words, in fact as we saw last lesson it is the final letter in every single verb!

For the labials (प, फ, ब and भ) we have; म ma.

This letter was covered in the labials lesson, Consonants part 5. It’s pronounced like the english m, like in man or mean. This letter is also common and seen regularly in Hindi texts. 

That’s the nasal letters covered. We’ll cover the rules of the pronunciation of the anusvar and chandrabindu when we return to this topic next time! Again, I feel like breaking lessons into small easy chunks makes it a lot easier for you readers to understand the content. I really don’t want to throw too much at once at you and confuse you!