Writing Hindi

target: hi — Hindi, हिन्दी, in the Devanagari script, written left to right.

1. How its text is found#

Hindi needs no mark: Devanagari is found in the prose on its own. Words parted by single spaces stay one run; the danda । and double danda ॥, the Devanagari digits, and the zero-width non-joiner and joiner that shape a conjunct belong to it. A Latin letter, a western digit or Latin punctuation — a ?, a !, a comma — ends it.

---target: hi---Devanagari needs no mark: नमस्ते *namaste*, and धन्यवाद = *thank you*.जैसी करनी वैसी भरनी।आज सोमवार है और मौसम बहुत अच्छा है। क्या आप मेरे साथ चाय पिएँगे?[आप कैसे हैं?]{tl} means *how are you?*, and [शुभ रात्रि]{hi} *good night*.

• A paragraph of nothing but Devanagari, spaces and dandas is a display line, set larger.
• A paragraph with no Latin letter is a Hindi paragraph.
• Mark a phrase […]{tl} — or […]{hi} — to keep a ?, a comma or a western digit inside it: without the mark they cut it in pieces.

2. Faces#

Hindi is set in Noto Serif Devanagari, which comes with the toolbox, on the screen and on paper; Noto Sans Devanagari stands behind it. It has no second face (font= is ignored) and cannot be set vertically. Its text is set 1.20 times the size of the prose. The Devanagari faces have no Latin letters, so on paper a Latin word inside a marked stretch is set in the face of the text round it.

---target: hi---[बुरा जो देखन मैं चला, बुरा न मिलिया कोय।⏎जो दिल खोजा आपना, मुझसा बुरा न कोय॥]{tl bg=sand}

3. Vocabulary entries#

Three parts after the headword: transliteration, origin, meaning.

---target: hi---## किताब | kitāb | from Arabic through Persian | = *book*

4. Transliteration#

The transliteration of what is said, not of the letters one by one:

• vowels a ā i ī u ū e ai o au;
• consonants by row: k kh g gh ṅ · c ch j jh ñ · ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ · t th d dh n · p ph b bh m · y r l v · ś s h; the nukta letters q x ġ z f and ṛ ṛh;
• ष is ś, like श; ऋ is ri;
• the nukta written where the page has it and not where it has not: ज़रूर zarūr, जरूर jarūr;
• nasals: before a stop the nasal of that row is written out (हिंदी hindī), elsewhere, and for every candrabindu, ṁ on the vowel (हूँ hūṁ, नहीं nahīṁ);
• the schwa that is written and not said is left out: कमल kamal, समझना samajhnā; long vowels always marked, doubled consonants written double;
• few hyphens: the postpositions are separate words; hyphenate only -jī, echo pairs (cāy-vāy) and a solid Sanskrit compound (राष्ट्रपति rāśṭra-pati).

---target: hi---[समझना]{translit:samajhnā} = *to understand*, [हूँ]{translit:hūṁ} = *am*,[हिंदी]{teal translit:hindī}.

Hindi has no reading: kana: means nothing in a Hindi document.