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The Hindi Alphabet: A Complete Beginner's Guide to Devanagari

A free guide from EkGuru · updated 2026-09-10

Hindi is written in Devanagari, and this is the part that frightens most beginners. It should not. Devanagari is far more logical than the English alphabet: every letter makes exactly one sound, and that sound never changes. Once you know a letter, you can read it anywhere, in any word, forever.

English cannot claim that. Consider though, through, tough, thought — four spellings, four unrelated sounds. Hindi has no such traps.

How the alphabet is organised

There are two groups: vowels (svar) and consonants (vyanjan). The consonants are not in a random order like A–B–C. They are arranged by where in your mouth the sound is made, starting at the throat and moving forward to the lips. Ancient linguists worked this out long before phonetics existed as a science.

The vowels — 11 to learn

Letter	Sound	As in English	Matra
अ	a	the a in about	(none)
आ	aa	the a in father	ा
इ	i	the i in sit	ि
ई	ee	the ee in see	ी
उ	u	the u in put	ु
ऊ	oo	the oo in food	ू
ऋ	ri	roughly ri in rich	ृ
ए	e	the a in gate	े
ऐ	ai	the a in cat	ै
ओ	o	the o in go	ो
औ	au	the ou in ought	ौ

Matras — the single idea that unlocks reading

A vowel has two forms. Standing alone at the start of a word it is written in full: आम (aam, mango). Attached to a consonant it shrinks to a mark called a matra.

So क is "ka". Add the आ matra and you get का — "kaa". Add the ई matra and you get की — "kee". The consonant never changes; only the mark around it does.

Every consonant carries a hidden "a" already. That is why क is "ka" and not just "k". This one fact explains most of Devanagari.

The consonants, in their proper order

Throat (kanthya): क ka · ख kha · ग ga · घ gha · ङ nga
Palate (talavya): च cha · छ chha · ज ja · झ jha · ञ nya
Roof of mouth (murdhanya): ट ṭa · ठ ṭha · ड ḍa · ढ ḍha · ण ṇa
Teeth (dantya): त ta · थ tha · द da · ध dha · न na
Lips (oshthya): प pa · फ pha · ब ba · भ bha · म ma
Others: य ya · र ra · ल la · व va · श sha · ष sha · स sa · ह ha

The one thing English speakers find hard

Look at the third and fourth rows. त and ट are both written "t" in English, but they are completely different sounds in Hindi, and mixing them up changes the word.

• त — tongue touches your teeth. Softer than an English T. Closest to the t in the Spanish tú.
• ट — tongue curls back to the roof of your mouth. Much closer to the English T in top.

Same story for द/ड and न/ण. Nobody masters these from a chart — you need to hear them, try them, and be corrected. This is the single best reason to spend your first few lessons with a real teacher rather than an app.

What order should you learn them in?

1. Week 1: the five vowels अ आ इ ई उ, and the consonants क ख ग.
2. Week 2: matras for those vowels. Start reading two-letter words.
3. Week 3: the त and प rows — these appear constantly.
4. Week 4: the remaining vowels and the ट row.
5. Week 5–6: everything else, plus conjunct letters like क्ष and ज्ञ.

Six weeks of honest daily practice, about twenty minutes a day, and you will read Hindi signs and menus. Not understand every word — but read them aloud correctly, which is where understanding starts.

A common beginner mistake

Do not try to memorise all 46 letters before you read anything. It is demoralising and it does not work. Learn five letters, then immediately read real words made from them. Recognition comes from use, not from staring at a chart.