The Hindi Alphabet: A Beginner's Guide to Devanagari

The Hindi alphabet is Devanagari, and our chart lists 44 basic letters: 11 vowels and 33 consonants. It is an abugida, which means every consonant already carries a short “a” sound, like the u in “but”, and the other vowels are written as signs called matras attached to the consonant. Learn the vowels, then the consonants row by row, then the matras, and you can sound out real Hindi words.

This guide uses the letters, names and sounds from our free Hindi alphabet chart, and every practice word comes from our list of the 8,906 most common Hindi words.

#What kind of script is Devanagari?

Devanagari is the script of Hindi, and it is also used for Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit. Hindi is written left to right, and most letters hang from a horizontal line along the top, called the shirorekha. Our alphabet data notes that this line “is drawn last and strings the word together”: you write the letters of a word, then draw one line across all of them.

The important word for a learner is abugida. In an alphabet like English, vowels and consonants are equal: you write k and then a. In an abugida, the consonant letter already includes a vowel. The letter क on its own is read ka, not k. To say ki or ku instead, you attach a vowel sign to क. The standalone vowel letters appear at the start of a word, or right after another vowel.

Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam work the same way. Bengali is the closest relative of the five: its letters come in the same order, and our Bengali alphabet guide shows how much carries over.

Letter counts depend on what you include. Hindi school charts often add अं and अः to the vowels, the flapped ड़ and ढ़, and the four conjuncts क्ष, त्र, ज्ञ and श्र, which is how you’ll see totals such as 52. Our chart lists the vowels and consonants a beginner needs to start reading, so treat 44 as a working total rather than an official one.

#Hindi vowels

These are the vowels in their standalone form. The sounds are rough English approximations, enough to sound a word out.

Most come in short and long pairs: a and aa, i and ii, u and uu. The long one is usually the short one with an extra stroke, so learn them in pairs. Unlike in Bengali, the length is audible in Hindi and can change a word.

Watch the romanization of ऐ and औ. They are written ai and au, but in standard Hindi they are single vowels, closer to the a in “cat” and the o in “dog”, as our chart gives them. ऋ appears mainly in words from Sanskrit.

#Hindi consonants

Our chart lists 33 consonants. The first 25 fall into five rows of five, and each row follows the same pattern: a plain sound, the same sound with a puff of air, a voiced sound, the voiced sound with a puff of air, and a nasal.

The remaining 8 don’t fit a row:

Some notes for English speakers:

• The puff of air is a real difference. क (ka) and ख (kha) are two letters and can make two different words. Hold your hand in front of your mouth: you should feel air on kha and almost none on ka.
• The two t-rows are different. ट and त are both named “ta”, but one is said with the tongue curled back and the other with the tongue on the teeth. English t sits between them, which is why they are hard to hear at first.
• ङ and ञ rarely stand alone. You’ll mostly meet those sounds inside conjuncts or written with a dot (see below).
• ष is the traditional curled-back sh. Our chart describes it that way; in everyday Hindi most speakers say it much like श.

#Dots under letters: the nukta

A dot under a letter, the nukta, changes its sound. Two are native Hindi sounds: ड़ and ढ़, a quick flapped r, as in सड़क (road, #563) and लड़का (boy, #294). The others mark sounds from Persian, Arabic and English loanwords: ज़ for z as in ज़िंदगी (life, #1,778), and फ़ for f as in फ़िल्म (film, #4,560). The dot is often left out in everyday writing: our word list even includes कलम (pen) as the “nuqtaless form of क़लम”.

#How matras work

Every consonant carries a built-in a. To put any other vowel after a consonant, you attach that vowel’s sign, its matra. Here are the matras on क (ka):

The one that surprises everyone is the i matra ि: it is written before the consonant even though you say it after. कि is ki, and दिन (day) is din. The u and uu matras hang below, and with र they change shape: रु (ru), रू (ruu).

#Four more marks you’ll see in real words

• The halant (्). It removes the built-in a, showing a consonant with no vowel after it. You’ll see it mostly in conjuncts and in words from Sanskrit.
• The bindu (ं). A dot above the line, usually an n or m sound before the next consonant, or a nasal vowel: नहीं (no, #4), मैं (I, #3).
• The chandrabindu (ँ). A moon and dot that make the vowel nasal: हाँ (yes, #41), माँ (mother, #165), चाँद (moon, #2,349). When a matra already sits above the line, the plain dot is used instead, which is why मैं has a dot and not a moon.
• The ॉ sign. An English “aw” sound in loanwords, as in डॉक्टर (doctor, #549) and ऑफ़िस (office, #2,758).

#The silent a: schwa deletion

Here is the rule that makes Hindi spelling look longer than Hindi speech. Linguists call the built-in a a schwa, and Hindi often drops it. The spelling does not show it, so a careful beginner reads कमल as ka-ma-la when Hindi speakers say kamal.

Two tendencies cover most everyday words:

• At the end of a word, the built-in a is dropped. नाम (name) is naam, घर (house) is ghar, हम (we) is ham, कमल (lotus) is kamal.
• In the middle of a longer word, it is often dropped too. The usual pattern: when a consonant has a vowel before it and another consonant with its own vowel after it, that consonant’s built-in a drops. कमरा (room) is kamraa, not kamaraa; रखना (to keep) is rakhnaa, not rakhanaa; लड़का (boy) is larkaa.

Treat these as tendencies, not laws. There are exceptions, especially in longer words and words from Sanskrit, and the only reliable way to learn them is to hear the words. समझ (understanding) is samajh: the last a goes, the middle one stays.

#Conjuncts

When two consonants meet with no vowel between them, Devanagari joins them into a conjunct. Most are easy to read once you know the trick:

• Half letters. A letter with a vertical stroke on the right usually loses that stroke and leans onto the next one: क्या (what, #14) is क + या; प्यार (love, #123) is प + यार; दोस्त (friend, #202) ends in स + त; नमस्ते (#447) has the same स्त.
• Doubled letters. बच्चा (child, #433) is bachchaa; अच्छा (good, #69) is achchhaa.
• र in two disguises. Before a consonant, र becomes a small hook on top of the next letter: दर्द (pain, #538), धर्म (religion, #2,801). After a consonant, it becomes a small slanted stroke: प्रेम (love, #1,043), पत्र (letter, #937).
• Four special shapes. Some conjuncts don’t look like their parts and are often taught as letters: क्ष (ksh) in क्षमा (forgiveness, #354), त्र (tr), ज्ञ in ज्ञान (knowledge, #1,142), said gyaan in Hindi, and श्र (shr) in श्री (#220).

#Hindi and Bengali compared

Hindi’s Devanagari and the Bengali script share an ancestor and much of their design: both are abugidas, both hang from a top line, and both list their consonants in the same five rows. The differences are in the shapes and some of the sounds.

Many everyday words are nearly the same in both: नाम and নাম (name), दिन and দিন (day), रात and রাত (night), घर and ঘর (house), भाषा and ভাষা (language). Our Bengali alphabet guide walks through the Bengali side.

Further south, the same abugida idea runs through the Dravidian scripts: our Malayalam alphabet guide, and the charts for the Tamil alphabet and the Telugu alphabet.

#Read your first Hindi words

Put the pieces together. Each of these is on our most common Hindi words list, with its rank.

Start with हम and घर: no matras, just two letters and a silent final a. Then काम, रात and नाम add one matra each. In दिन the matra comes before the letter, and कमरा is your first silent a in the middle of a word.

#A learning plan for the Hindi alphabet

The chart with every letter is at /tools/alphabet/hindi. After it comes vocabulary: the 8,906 most common Hindi words, each with its English meaning. When you can read a few hundred, the Hindi vocabulary test samples words from every part of the list and estimates how many you know.

#Practice reading and speaking with native speakers

A chart gives you the shapes. The sounds, above all the puff of air, the curled-back letters and the silent a, come from hearing a person and being corrected. On LangX, Hindi is one of the 182 languages you can pick, and matching runs both ways: you see people who speak Hindi and are learning a language you speak.

9:41

Lucía M. Online

Today

Hold any message to correct it — corrections are the most useful thing you can send.

¿Cómo fue tu fin de semana? Cuéntame en inglés si quieres. How was your weekend? Tell me in English if you like. 09:12

Fui a la playa con mi hermana. Hacía mucho calor y yo no llevé agua. 09:14 · Read

Correction from Lucía Hacía mucho calor y yo no llevé agua. Hacía mucho calor y no llevé agua. The «yo» isn't wrong, it just sounds emphatic — like you specifically forgot. 09:15

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More alphabet guides: Bengali, Malayalam, Russian, Bulgarian, Greek and Korean.

#FAQ

#How many letters are in the Hindi alphabet?

Our chart lists 44 basic letters: 11 vowels and 33 consonants. Hindi school charts often reach 52 by adding अं and अः, the flapped ड़ and ढ़, and the conjuncts क्ष, त्र, ज्ञ and श्र.

#Is the Hindi alphabet the same as Devanagari?

Hindi is written in Devanagari, which is also used for Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit. People say “the Hindi alphabet” for the Devanagari letters as used for Hindi, including the dotted letters for sounds like z and f.

#What are matras in Hindi?

Matras are the vowel signs attached to a consonant. Every consonant already includes a short a; the matra replaces it with another vowel. The i matra is written before the consonant, the others after, above or below it.

#Why is Hindi pronounced differently from how it’s spelled?

Mostly because of schwa deletion: the built-in a is dropped at the end of words and often in the middle. कमरा (room) looks like ka-ma-raa on paper but is said kamraa.

#How long does it take to learn the Hindi alphabet?

It depends on how much you practice. Learning it in the order above, vowels first, then consonant rows, then matras, is faster than memorizing 44 unrelated shapes, and reading real words early makes the letters stick.