Anusvara
Encyclopedia : A : AN : ANU : Anusvara
| Diacritical marks |
|---|
accent
caron / háček ( ˇ ) cedilla ( ¸ ) circumflex ( ˆ ) diaeresis / umlaut ( ¨ ) dot ( · )
macron ( ˉ ) ogonek ( ˛ ) ring / kroužek ( ˚ ) rough breathing / spiritus asper ( ʽ ) smooth breathing / spiritus lenis ( ʼ ) |
| Marks sometimes used as diacritics |
|
apostrophe ( ’ ) bar ( colon ( : ) comma ( , ) hyphen ( ˗ ) tilde ( ˜ ) titlo ( ҃ ) |
Anusvara (anusvāra) is the term for nasalization in Sanskrit grammar. In Sanskrit, nasalization of the preceding vowel is an allophone of nasal consonants in pausa. In the Devanagari script, the phone is expressed by a diacritic dot above the preceding letter, called bindu ("dot"). It is used in other languages using Indic scripts, too.
The exact nature of nasalization depends on the consonant sound which follows it (or if it is at the end of a word, by the "m" sound). In Sanskrit often the anusvaara is replaced by the corresponding nasal consonant.
In the Devanagari script, anusvaara is represented with a dot above the letter (मं). In IAST, it is written below the character ( ṃ ). Some transcriptions render notation of phonetic variants used in some Vedic shakhas with variant transcription (ṁ). See also anunaasika, chandrabindu.
In the Burmese alphabet, the anusvara is represented as a dot underneath a nasalised final to indicate a creaky tone (with a shortened vowel).
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.