Lesson 11
..............................................................Lesson 12 .....Home
Half Letters
Recall the sentence Neel cooks the chicken

The second word is written here as if pronounced with the full accent on each letter . So it really reads "KOOKUS". To make it as phonetic as possible the second K is written as a half K .
Can you read this ?

Yes its Neel cooks , note the second k has been halved.
Nearly all Hindi letters can be written as half letters and the letter is then pronounced with a short clip .
The following images contain sounds for most of the letters . See if you can match each letter to its sound
K , KH , j , soft t , Ksh , Gya, P , N , hard G , Dh , Ch , Chh, B , M , F , Ye , L , Bh . Sh , S , He
...........
.
The answers going across the top letters of each picure are
K , Kh , hard G , chesty dh , F , M . Bh , F again , , M again , Bh again

The middle letters in each are
Ch , Chh , J , Soft T , Ye , L , V

and the bottom letters are
Ksh , Gya , B , N, P , Sh, S , H , Ksh again , Gya again , N . There is a chesty Sh which looks like the N above but has a diagonal line .
The following completes the half letters . See if you can guess the sound.

They are the common N , soft Th , soft T and Ye
For a real tough test see if you can read this word , its what you have been learning all along.

Yes its Hindi ! Note the half N .
For an easy end to this lesson guess what these numbers are in Hindi . They are being used less and less being replaced by our common numbers 1 , 2 , 3 etc.

Next lesson we look at a few more vowel sounds , the letter R and its forms , and after that the complete alphabet.
Lesson 12 ...Home