What is Romanaagarii script?

Romanaagarii script is based on English (Roman) script, Devanagari script and ASCII of computers.

Roman script: English language is written in Roman script and has the following letters:
Small letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z
Capital letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
One more symbol [‘] called apostrophe, is used in writing English text. In addition, various symbols for numbers, punctuation, arithmetic etc. are used.
Romanaagarii follows the alphabetic principles of Roman script. However, to make it simple, only the small letters are used.

Devanagari script: Devanagari (also called Naagarii) has several merits. Separate study of vowels in Devanagari is correct and scientific. The names of letters in Devanagari are in accordance with their sounds, and one symbol represents only one sound. It has enough symbols for all sounds and its reading is comparatively easy.

However, Devanagari has some weaknesses and improvements are necessary. Its vowels have several base symbols that create confusion. To write Devanagari, one has to learn over 200 symbols. Devanagari has more than one symbol for some sounds which should be avoided. Its vowel symbols are different from vowel letters and they are placed before, after, above and under a letter. In Devanagari, the letters change their shape when writing and make the script somewhat pictorial and non-alphabetic. There are several rules for writing the half letters in Devanagari, which make the script complicated. It also has the complex rules for combining half letters with other letters. It is also not easy to type Devanagari script and use it in the computers.

Devanagari has, however, undergone changes. The currently commonly used Hindi (Devanagari) phonemes (Akshar) are 54 in number and represent symbols for most sounds of Hindi and Urdu languages.

ASCII of Computers: ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), is a character encoding based on the English writing system. All the symbols used for writing English are represented in 95 characters of ASCII in the computers as given below:

These characters, except the capital letters, are also used for Romanaagarii.
We can write Roman characters (small) like Devanaagari as follows:

a  e  i  o  u

b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x y z

These letters do not cover all the sounds of Hindi and Urdu languages. We will, therefore, use more than one letter (grapheme) for writing all the phonemes of Hindi. Long vowel will be written by repeating the short vowel. For expressing the aspirated sounds, [h] is added to some letters such as bh, ch, dh etc. This is common in English language. For other sounds still not covered, the diacritical mark [‘] would be used.

Romanaagarii symbols for the table of 54 basic Hindi phonemes (Akshar maalaa) would be as follows:
 

a aa i ii u uu e ee o oo m’ h’
ka kha ga gha m’a
ca cha ja jha m’a
t’a t’ha d’a d’ha n’a
ta tha da dha na
pa pha ba bha ma
ya ra la va sha s’a sa ha
’a k’a k’ha g’a r’a r’ha za fa v’a

A close view of Romanaagarii script which combines the advantages of Devanagari and Roman scripts would confirm its scientific character and practical utility. We may summarize the scientific and practical qualities Romanaagarii script as follows:

1)     It is purely alphabetic. There are distinct alphabets for vowels as well as consonants and they are written differently according to the sounds represented by them.

2)     In Romanaagarii there is unique symbol for every sound and no sound has more than one symbol.

3)     Each symbol in Romanaagarii represents one sound only.

4)     There are no more than one symbol for any sound in Romanaagarii.

5)     The vowels follow consonants uniformly in the sequence in which they are pronounced.

6)     All symbols have different shapes and there is no confusion in their visual perception.

7)     It is practicable for typing and printing on machines.

8)     All Romanaagarii characters are incorporated in ascii code of the computers and can be easily processed.

9)     Romanaagarii Script is the most convenient and practicable script for modern communication technology via internet. This script can be programmed like any text in other Roman script.

        Romanaagarii script has been developed by combining the merits of Roman and Devanagari scripts. The form of letters and the sequence of writing vowels after consonants is similar to English. The relationship between the letters and sounds represented by them, however, does not follow the irregular English phonetic system. Learning Romanaagarii script would, therefore, be different from learning English. The sequence of vowels and consonants follows the Devanagari pattern.

To learn Romanaagarii Script, one has to learn the following:‑

1. Learn 5 letters for short vowels.

2. Learn 19 symbols for single letter consonants.

3. Learn long vowels and compound consonants by joining aspirated [h] and diacritical [‘] symbols to single consonants.

4. Learn to make phonemes by combining vowels after the consonants; and

5. Learn to make words by combining phonemes.

It may be mentioned that Romanaagarii is the source of all SARAL scripts. SARAL scripts can simplify the learning of alphabetic writing systems. All SARAL scripts can be transliterated by just changing the fonts. One of them, namely SARAL Roman, appears exactly as the Romanaagarii script. Now we have the possibility of communicating in all languages of India on Internet by using the Romanaagarii and SARAL scripts.