Half-Letters in Nepali - and the "inherent vowel" problem
Nepali is written using the Devanagari script, like Hindi. This script uses an “alphabet” that is different from the English alphabet. As you can see in this image, the “consonants” come packaged with a vowel on the end - “a”. So क, which is the basic K sound, is not “K”, but “ka” (pronounced “kuh”). The same is true for the other letters. Unless combined with another vowel (क ka +ओ o = को ko), the basic form of the consonant is going to be the consonant sound + “a”. But… not always. Yes, as with most languages, NOTHING can be as simple as it should be! Many words in Nepali omit this “a” vowel sound at the end of some consonants, and to a new learner, it can be so frustrating to figure out where, how, and why that happens. For example, take the word धन्यबाद - “thank you” in Nepali. This is a very common word, maybe even the first one you learned in Nepali. At the end there, we have द - which, if you refer to the chart up above, is “da”. But this word धन्यबाद i...
