User:GSMR/Devanagari ligatures
Devanagari is the most used writing system in North India, used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit. Because a vowel is inherent in each character, the only way to express a consonant clusters is by combining them.
Half-form characters
[edit]The consonants ब (ba), ग (ga), ज (ja), प (pa), च (cha), म (ma), न (na), व (va), ल (la), स (sa), श (sha), भ (bha), घ (gha), ध (dha), झ (jha), ख (kha), त (ta), थ (tha), ण (nna), and ष (ssa) become "half-form" consonants because they contain a stem; a vertical line on the right side of their form which is simply removed, and then the remaining form is attached to the left side of the following character. For example, the characters म and प form म्प, an obvious combination of the two.
Bottom-joined characters
[edit]| Note that the font Mangal, which is the default font for Windows Devanagari support, will not display some characters correctly. |