Hindi Alphabet
The written Hindi Alphabet is called Devanagari, or देवनागरी. Devanagari is also used to write other languages, like Sanskrit, Nepali, Marathi and so on. Each alphabet is slightly modified just like how the latin alphabet is used for other languages such as French and Spanish have their own modifications – like the letter é in French and ñ in Spanish.
Hindi is actually must easier to read than English. Really!!!Why? Because all the letters in the Hindi Alphabet sound the same unlike the English Alphabet which has 42 sounds alone.
Devanagari (Hindi Alphabet) is very distinctive because of the horizontal line that is almost above all the letters just like the letters hanging off a washing line. There are also no capital letters and a transliteration is used to help read the Hindi words. For example the Hindi word: प्यार , means ‘love’ in Hindi. A transliteration tells us how to pronounce this word by writing it in English letters, so for this word we’d write pyaar, which is how is roughly pronunced. The transliteration will always be in italics, but don’t always rely on it.
Hindi first started to be used in writing during the 4th century AD. It was originally written with the Brahmi script but since the 11th century AD it has been written with the Devanāgarī alphabet. The first printed book in Hindi was John Gilchrist’s Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language which was published in 1796.
Information about the Devanagari alphabet for Hindi
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari
http://www.learning-hindi.com/post/1021543673/intro-3-devanagari-the-hindi-alphabet
http://www.avashy.com/hindiscripttutor.htm
Learn to write the Hindi Alphabet
The Hindi Alphabet is very similar to Urdu which is the main language of Pakistan. It is written with the Arabic script and many linguists consider Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu to be different formal registers both derived from the Khari Boli dialect, which is also known as Hindustani. The other difference between Hindi and Urdu is that Hindi contains more vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains more vocabulary from Persian. At an informal spoken level there are few significant differences between Urdu and Hindi and they could be considered varieties a single language.
Devangari Script
Free Devanagari fonts
http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Devanagari.html
http://www.kiranfont.com
Devanagari script tutor
http://www.avashy.com/hindiscripttutor.htm
