Sanskrit : Support
Vowels
Support Vowels
The two support vowels are known as "ubhayakshara" and are mostly appended
to syllables. They are not used independantly like other vowels.
They add specific sounds to the syllables they are appended to. These two
support vowels are represented using the vowel अ.
The first is known as the "anuswara" and the second "visarga". The anuswara
adds a sound similar to the sound of 'm' in "sum" to the syllable. The visarga
adds a sound similar to "ha" to the syllable. The "ha" will change depending
upon the vowel ending the syllable. The visarga more or less extends the
vowel in the syllable with h+the same vowel as in the syllable.
Example: if the syllable ends in vowel इ then the visarga would add a sound
like "hi".
There may be differences in the manner in which these two are introduced
in conventional Sanskrit primers. When reading Sanskrit, it will be necessary
to render the visarga in a way that will distinguish it from the syllables
ha, hi, hu, etc. This may be accomplished by shortening the vowel in the
visarga.
One is tempted to ask, "Well how can Sanskrit be a phonetic language then,
if the sound for the letter is context-dependant?". We shall answer this
in a later section dealing with phonetics.
Continue to generic
form of a consonant.
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Unicode conversion
from original
site (IIT Madras) completed by Walter Stanish. Hosted at pratyeka.