Sanskrit is the classical language of Indian and the liturgical language

of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It is also one of the 22 official

languages of India. The name Sanskrit means "refined", "consecrated"
and "sanctified". It has always been regarded as the 'high' language
and used mainly for religious and scientific discourse.
Vedic Sanskrit, the pre-Classical form of the language and the
liturgical language of the Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested
members of the Indo-European language family. The oldest known
text in Sanskrit, the Rigveda, a collection of over a thousand Hindu
hymns, composed during the 2nd millenium BC.
Today Sanskrit is used mainly in Hindu religious rituals as a ceremonial
language for hymns and mantras. Efforts are also being made to
revive Sanskrit as an everyday spoken language in the village of
Mattur near Shimoga in Karnataka. A modern form of Sanskrit is one
of the 17 official home languages in India.
Since the late 19th century, Sanskrit has been written mostly with the
Devanāgarī alphabet. However it has also been written with all the
other alphabets of India, except Gurmukhi and Tamil, and with other
alphabets such as Thai and Tibetan.
The Grantha,Sharda and Siddham alphabets are used only for
Sanskrit.
Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has also been written with the
Latin alphabet. The most commonly used system is the International
Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST), which was been the
standard for academic work since 1912.
Devanāgarī alphabet for Sanskrit
Vowels and vowel diacritics

Consonants
Conjunct consonants
There are about a thousand conjunct consonants, most of which
combine two or three consonants. There are also some with four-
consonant conjuncts and at least one well-known conjunct with five
consonants.

You can find a full list of conjunct consonants used for Sanskrit at:
http://sanskrit.gde.to/learning_tutorial_wikner/P058.html
Numerals
Sample text in Sanskrit

Translated into Sanskrit by Arvind Iyengar

Transliteration
Sarvē mānavāḥ svatantratāḥ samutpannāḥ vartantē api ca,
gauravadr̥śā adhikāradr̥śā ca samānāḥ ēva vartantē. Ētē sarvē cētanā-
tarka-śaktibhyāṁ susampannāḥ santi. Api ca, sarvē’pi bandhutva-
bhāvanayā parasparaṁ vyavaharantu.
Listen to a recording of this text by Muralikrishnan Ramasamy

Another version of this text

Thai alphabet (ตัวอักษรไทย)

Origin
The Thai alphabet was probably derived from, or at least influenced
by, the Old Khmer alphabet. According to tradition it was created in
1283 by King Ramkhamhaeng (พ่อขุนรามคำาแหงมหาราช).

Notable features
• This is a syllabic alphabet consisting of 44 basic consonants,
each with an inherent vowel: [o] in medial position and [a] in
final position. The [a] is usually found in words of Sanskrit, Pali
or Khmer origin while the [o] is found native Thai words. The 18
other vowels and 6 diphthongs are indicated using diacritics
which appear in front of, above, below of after the consonants
they modify.
 • 8 of the letters are used only for writing words of Pali and
Sanskrit origin.
• For some consonants there are multiple letters. Originally they
represented separate sounds, but over the years the distinction
between those sounds was lost and the letters were used instead
to indicate tones.
• Thai is a tonal language with 5 tones. The tone of a syllable is
determined by a combination of the class of consonant, the type
of syllable (open or closed), the tone marker and the length of
the vowel.
• There are no spaces between words, instead spaces in a Thai
text indicate the end of a clause or sentence.
Used to write
Thai (ภาษาไทย), a Tai-Kadai language spoken by about 65 million
people mainly in Thailand (ประเทศไทย), and also in the Midway Islands,
Singapore, the UAE and the USA
Thai is closely related to Lao, and northern dialects of Thai are more or
less mutually intelligible with Lao, particularly the Lao spoken in
northern Thailand. Thai vocabulary includes many words from Pali,
Sanskrit and Old Khmer.
The Thai alphabet can also be used to write Sanskrit, Pali and a
number of related languages.

Thai alphabet (ตัวอักษรไทย)

The transliteration system used here is the one from: thai2english. For
more details, see:Slice-of-Thai.com

Consonants (พยัญชนะ)
Hear a recording of the Thai alphabet by ปั ณณวิช ตันเดชานุ รต
ั น์ (Pannawit
Tandaechanurat)

Notes
• Consonants are divided into three classes: low (เสียงตำ่า), mid

(เสียงกลาง) and high (เสียงสูง) , which help to determine the tone

of a syllable.
• The sounds represented by some consonants change when they
are used at the end of a syllable (indicated by the letters on the
right of the slash). Some consonants can only be used at the
beginning of a syllable.
• Duplicate consonants represent different Sanskrit and Pali
consonants sounds which are pronounced identically in Thai.
• The letter o ang acts as a silent vowel carrier at the beginning of
words that start with a vowel.
• The names of the consonants are acrophonic and intended to
help with learning them.

Vowel diacritics (รูปสระ)

Hear a recording of the Thai vowel sounds by ปั ณณวิช ตันเดชานุ รต
ั น์

Grantha alphabet
Origin
The Grantha alphabet is a descendent of the Brahmi alphabet and
started to emerge during the 5th century AD. Most of the alphabets of
southern India evolved from Grantha, and it also influenced the
Sinhala and Thai alphabets.
The Grantha alphabet has traditional been used by Tamil speakers to
write Sanskrit and is still used in traditional vedic schools (patasalas)
Notable features
 • Each letters represents a consonant with an inherent vowel (a).
Other vowels were indicated using a diacritics or separate
letters.
• Letters are grouped according to the way they are pronounced.
Grantha vowels

Grantha vowel diacritics (with ka)

Grantha consonants

Grantha numerals
Tibetan
Origin
During the 7th Century AD Songstem Gampo [སོང་བཙན་སམ་པོ་] (569-649AD),
the 33rd king of the Yarlung Dynasty of southern Tibet and the first
Emperor of Tibet, sent Thonmi Sambhota, one of his ministers, to
India to gather information on Buddhism. The minister then reputedly
devised a script for Tibetan based on the Devanagari model and also
wrote a grammar of Tibetan based on Sanskrit grammars.
The new Tibetan alphabet was used to write Tibetan translations of
Buddhists texts. The first Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary, Mahavyutpatti,
appeared in the 9th century. Wood block printing, introduced from
China, was used in Tibet from an early date and is still used in a few
monasteries.
Tibetan literature is mainly concerned with Buddhist themes and
includes works translated from Sanskrit and Chinese and original
Tibetan works. There are also literary works about the Bon religion, a
pre-Buddhist religion indigenous to Tibet. The most unusual genre of
Tibetan literature is that of gter-ma (གཏེར་མ་) or 'rediscovered' texts -
reputedly the work of ancient masters which have been hidden in
remote caves for many centuries.
Notable features
• The Tibetan alphabet is syllabic, like many of the alphabets of
India and South East Asia. Each letter has an inherent vowel /a/.
Other vowels can be indicated using a variety of diacritics which
appear above or below the main letter.
• Syllables are separated by a dot.
• Consonant clusters are written with special conjunct letters.
Used to write:
Tibetan (བོད་སད), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 6 million
people in China (Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan), India,
Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and Nepal. In Mongolia Tibetan is considered
the Classical language of Buddhism and was widely taught until quite
recently.
Before 1949-50, Tibet comprised of three provinces: Amdo, now split
between the Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan provinces; Kham, now
largely incorporated into the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and
Qinghai, and U-Tsang, which, together with western Kham, is now
known as the Tibet Autonomous Region, which was created in 1965.
Dzongkha (Bhutanese) (རོང་ཁ), which is spoken by about 130,000
people in Bhutan, where it is the national language, and also in Nepal
and India. It is a Sino-Tibetan language which is quite closely related
to Tibetan and distantly related to Chinese.
The Tibetan alphabet
The form of the alphabet shown below, known as u-chen (དབུ་ཅན་) is used
for printing. Cursive versions of the alphabet, such as the gyuk yig or
'flowing script' (རུག་ཡིག་) are used for informal writing.
Consonants

Vowels diacritics
Conjunct consonants
Note
This table includes the standard consonant combinations used for
native Tibetan words. It does not include other combinations found in
common loan words or the thousands of combinations used for
translitterating Sanskrit words in religious texts.
Source: http://sites.google.com/site/chrisfynn2/tibetanlettercombinati
ons
Numerals

Punctuation and other symbols

Downloads
Download a Tibetan alphabet chart in Excel, Word or PDF format
Sample text - Tibetan (དབུ་ ཅན་: u-chen script)

Sample text - Tibetan (རུག ་ཡིག ་: gyuk yig script)

Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one
another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Useful phrases in Tibetan

Tibetan language courses, dictionaries and other materials

Tibetan script for Sanskrit
These are the Tibetan letters used to write Sanskrit. Some of them are
not used in Tibetan.
Sharda alphabet
Origins
The Sharda or Śāradā alphabet developed from the Brahmi script
during the second half of the 8th century AD. The earliest known
inscription in the Sharda alphabet dates from 774 AD and was
discovered in a village called Hund in the west of Pakistan.
Today only a small group of Brahmins continue to use the Sharda
alphabet for writing and calculating astrological and ritual
formulations.
Notable features
• This is a syllabic alphabet. Each consonant has an inherant vowel
which is changed using vowel diacritics.
Used to write
Kashmiri, Sanskrit and a number of other languages in the northwest
of India, the Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and in parts of Central Asia.
Sharda alphabet
Consonants

Vowel diacritics

Numerals

Siddham script
Origin
The Siddham script is a descendent of the Brahmi script and an
ancestor of the Devanagari script. The name Siddham comes from
Sanskrit and means "accomplished or perfected" The Siddham script is
mainly used by Shingon Buddhists in Japan to write out mantra and
sutras in Sanskrit. It was introduced to Japan by Kukai in 806 AD after
he had studied Sanskrit and Mantrayana Buddhism in China. In Japan
the Siddham script is known as 梵字 (bonji).
Notable features
• Type of writing system: syllabic alphabet

• Writing direction: left to right in horizontal lines.

• Used to write: Sanskrit
Siddham script
Vowels

Vowel diacritics with ka

Consonants