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This article describes some features of transliteration from Devanagari into Roman scripts. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Devanāgarī (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one system of writing into another. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Devanāgarī (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ...

Pronunciation of the final "a"

Many words and names transliterated from Devanagari end with the letter "a", to indicate the pronunciation in the original Sanskrit. This final 'inherent a' is often no longer pronounced in some Sanskrit-derived Indian languages, including Hindi. This results in an alternative, 'modern' transliteration that omits it. Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) DevanāgarÄ« (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... The Sanskrit language ( संस्कृता वाक्) is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family and is not only a classical language, but also an official language of India. ... The article describes the languages spoken in the Republic of India. ... Hindi (हिन्दी) is a language spoken mainly in North and Central India. ... Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one system of writing into another. ...

• Sanskrit: Mahabharata, Ramayana, Shiva
• Hindi: Mahabharat, Ramayan, Shiv

Some words retain the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it:

e.g; Krishna, vajra, Maurya

Some Indian languages continue to use the original pronunciation today. Some have an intermediate pronunciation.

Wikipedia generally uses the transliteration with the appended 'a' for words that are widely known outside India, and for those words and names that are used in a scholarly context.

Retroflex consonants

Most Indian languages make a distinction between the retroflex and dental forms of the dental consonants. In IAST transliteration, the retroflex forms are ḍ, ṭ, ṇ and ṣ. In formal transliteration schemes, the standard Roman letters are used to indicate the dental form, and the retroflex form is indicated by special marks, or the use of other letters.

In most informal transliterations the distinction between retroflex and dental consonants is not indicated.

Aspirated consonants

Where the letter "h" appears after a plosive consonant in Devanagari transliteration, it always indicates aspiration, thus "ph" is pronounced as the p in "pit" (with a small puff of air released as it is said) never as the ph in "photo". On the other hand "p" is pronounced as the p in "spit" with no release of air. Similarly "th" is an aspirated "t", neither the th of "this" or the th of "thin". A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Devanāgarī (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ...

The aspiration is generally indicated in both formal and informal transliteration systems.

See also: IAST, National Library at Calcutta romanization, ITRANS IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. ... The National Library at Calcutta romanization is the most widely used in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. ... ITRANS (Indian languages TRANSliteration) is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly, but not exclusively, for Devanagari (used for the Sanskrit, Hindi, Nepali, Marathi and other languages). ...