Lesson 2- building blocks of the hindi alphabets- Swar and Vyanjan-part 1

Swar

To understand the basics of hindi it is important to understand how are the alphabets formed. The hindi alphabets (varnamala) are broadly classified as swar and vyanjan.

Let's first look at what is swar? what are the different types of swar? and what is their role in hindi alphabets.

A letter is known as 'Varn' (वर्ण) and the alphabet chart is known as 'varnamala' (वर्णमाला). Vowels are called 'Swar' (स्वर) & Consonants are called 'Vyanjan' (व्यंजन). In this lesson we will just focus on swar.
There are 11 vowels/swar in Hindi. And they are: 

अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ अं अः
ah aah e ee u uu ri a i o ou/au am aha

According to the time taken to pronounce, these vowels are classified as three types:
1)hrasva (ह्रस्व) – These are short vowels and take the shortest time to pronounce. अ, इ, उ, ऋ are the four short vowels in Hindi.
2)deergh (दीर्घ) – These vowels take longer time during pronunciation. आ, ई, ऊ, ए, ऐ, ओ, औ are the seven long vowels.
3)plut (प्लुत) – these are longer vowels and take much longer time in pronouncing them.

Based on the source of the sound of the vowel, they are again classified into anunasik (अनुनासिक) and niranunasik (निरनुनसिक) swar.

The below picture gives the different swars and words formed from them. To understand the sound of each swar please refer to sound given above or refer the table in lesson 1. I highly recommend having a printout of the alphabet- sound table with you at all times for reference.