Anusvara
The anusvara or anusvar ( Sanskrit : अनुस्वार anusvāra "after-sound"; Hindi : anusvār ) is a sign in the Indian scriptures that either indicates the nasalization of the preceding vowel or is pronounced as a nasal consonant . The anusvara is not an independent letter, but a diacritical mark , which can only appear in combination with another letter. The IAST - transliteration is m , sometimes also the transliteration is m ' .
use
In Sanskrit , the anusvara denotes the nasalization of the preceding vowel. This nasalization takes place inside the word before half-vowels and fricatives ( y, r, l, v, ś, ṣ, s and h ). So the word संसार saṃsāra "birth cycle" is to be spoken as / sãsāra /. According to a Sandhi rule, a final m in Sanskrit before a word that begins with a consonant changes to anusvara. In this case, it is pronounced / m / (e.g. एवं evaṃ as / evam /).
Inside the word before a plosive sound , the anusvara is pronounced as a homorganer (formed at the same place of articulation ) nasal; d. H. one speaks before a bilabial stop sound like p the bilabial nasal m , before a dental stop sound like t the dental nasal n etc. In Sanskrit this is usually only the case with compounds whose first term ends in m (e.g. परंतप paraṃ- tapa "enemy killer" as / parantapa /). In modern languages such as Hindi , a homorganem nasal and plosive ligature can be replaced by the spelling with anusvara. The spellings हिन्दी hindī and हिंदी hiṃdī exist for the name of the Hindi language ; the pronunciation in both cases is / hindī /. Similarly, the name of the city of Mumbai can be written मुम्बई mumbaī or मुंबई muṃbaī . Since the anusvara is easier to write than the graphically complex ligatures, this notation is preferred in modern languages; in Sanskrit prints, however, the ligatures are mostly written out.
Before r , l and s , the anusvara is pronounced in Hindi as / n / (e.g. संस्कृत saṃskṛt "Sanskrit" as / sanskṛt /), before v as / m / (e.g. संवत saṃvat as / samvat /) and before h as / ṅ / (e.g. सिंह siṃh "lion" as / siṅh /). In Hindi it should be noted that the sign Chandrabindu , which indicates a nasalization of the preceding vowel, is in certain cases graphically identical to the Anusvara.
In South Indian languages such as Malayalam , the ending -am , which is common in these languages, is consistently written with Anusvara, e.g. B. മരം maraṃ / maram / "tree".
Realization of the Anusvara in the Indian scriptures
The anusvara is realized in the various Indian scripts either as a point above the consonant sign or as a circle to the right of it. The following table shows the anusvara character, the example syllable kaṃ and the Unicode code point of the anusvara character for the individual Indian scripts .
| font | character | example | Unicode |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bengali | ং | কং | U + 0982 (2434) |
| Devanagari | ं | कं | U + 0902 (2306) |
| Gujarati | ં | કં | U + 0A82 (2690) |
| Gurmukhi | ਂ | ਕਂ | U + 0A02 (2562) |
| Kannada | ಂ | ಕಂ | U + 0C82 (3202) |
| Malayalam | ം | കം | U + 0D02 (3330) |
| Oriya | ଂ | କଂ | U + 0B02 (2818) |
| Sinhala | ං | කං | U + 0D82 (3458) |
| Telugu | ం | కం | U + 0C15 (3093) |