Of the three stages in learning a language —speaking, reading and writing—that of speaking is easily reached. An effort has, therefore, been made as far as possible to give pronunciation of Hindi words in English, so that the reader may be able to pronounce them, with the help of pronunciation in English, even if he cannot read directly from Hindi. The Hindi alphabets consist of sixteen vowels and thirty-six consonants. We shall deal with vowels first.

   The following are the sixteen vowels. We have given alongside the equivalent English letter or letters, which we have used in this book to indicate the pro­ nunciation. The Hindi vowels marked with two aste­ risks are never used and so they maybe safely omitted from study. Those marked with one asterisk are rarely used.