Introduction to Devanāgarī Script
Devanāgarī is a thousand-year-old script whose beauty and mystique have helped it capture the public fancy far from its Indian homeland. In South Asia, it is widely known as the script used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Nepali and more; in the West, even those who don't use the script have certainly spotted it on merchandise emblazoned with the oṃ symbol (ॐ), in tattoos (sometimes famously misspelled) and in other contexts.
In this class, we'll learn the basics of how to read and write the Devanāgarī script. We'll focus on how to draw well-formed letters, and how these letters express syllables and combine into words - much differently than our Roman alphabet. We'll talk about the order of the letters and how it reflects the ancient Indian science of speech sounds. We'll also touch on the history of the script, whose relatives are found across Asia, from the temples of Cambodia to the scrolls of Japan.
No knowledge of any language but English will be assumed; we'll practice with words of Indian origin that have entered the English vocabulary. While it won't be possible to fully memorize the entire script in one session, participants will learn the system behind the script, so that mastery of the individual letters is just a matter of practice.
