Understanding Nāgarī (Indic) Writing System
Devanagari (aka Nagari) script accommodates not only consonants and vowels but also nuanced phonetic elements, making it exceptionally versatile. It is written from left to right. An abugida is a writing system where each consonant carries an inherent vowel sound. In Devanagari, each consonant has an inherent short vowel called 'schwa.' Therefore, Devanagari is classified as an abugida. Vowels in Devanagari are often depicted as symbols hovering above, below, or beside consonants. The Devanagari script is used in large parts of North India and in some regions of the world.To understand how Nāgarī writing system works, we will modify the Latin script. Let us call this new script 'nL'.
In nL, we will use most of the uppercase letters as 'base' characters and call them 'Akshar/s'. We will use some of the lowercase letters as marks and call them 'Matras'. We will use 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u' to represent [dependent] vowels and 'h' to represent aspirated consonant/s. Another lowercase letter that we will use as a Matra is 'r'.
Now we will see some examples with these matras applied over akshars!
| To write | 'Computer' | 'Mark' | 'Tree' |
| we will write | CoMPuTer | MarK | Tree |
But not every Matra is applied above an Akshar as shown in the previous example!
There are Matras that are always applied below Akshars, and there are [also] inline Matras that remain in the text flow.
| To write | 'Computer' | 'Mark' | 'Tree' |
| we will write | CoMPuTeR | MarK | Tree |
I/we will elaborate on this in future.
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