Virama

Virama (Sanskrit: विराम, virāma ्) is a generic term for the diacritic in many Brahmic scripts, including the Devanagari and Eastern Nagari scripts, used to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter.

Names

The name is Sanskrit for "cessation, termination, end". As a Sanskrit word, it is used in place of several language-specific terms, such as halant (Hindi: हलन्त, halant ्); halanta (Marathi: हलंत, halanta ्), hoshonto (Bengali: হসন্ত, hôsôntô ্); (Assamese: হসন্ত or হছন্ত, hoxonto or hosonto ্); (Sylheti: ꠢꠡꠘ꠆ꠔꠧ, ośonto ꠆); pollu (Telugu: పొల్లు, Pollu ్); pulli (Tamil: புள்ளி, puḷḷi ்), chandrakkala or viraamam (Malayalam: ചന്ദ്രക്കല/വിരാമം, candrakkala/viraamam ്); halanta (Kannada: ಹಲಂತ, halanta ್); halanta (Odia: ହଳନ୍ତ, haḷanta ୍); halant (Punjabi: ਹਲਂਤ, halant ੍); hal kirima (Sinhala: හල් කිරිම, hal kirīma ්); a that (Burmese: အသတ်, a.sat IPA: [ʔa̰θaʔ], lit. "nonexistence" ်); karan (Thai: การันต์, pinthu (พินทุ), lit. "point" or "dot" or thanthakhat (ทัณฑฆาต)); and pangkon (Javanese: ꦥꦁꦏꦺꦴꦤ꧀).

Usage

In Devanagari and many other Indic scripts, a virama is used to cancel the inherent vowel of a consonant letter and represent a consonant without a vowel, a "dead" consonant. For example, in Devanagari,

1. क is a consonant letter, ka,
2. ् is a virama; therefore,
3. क् (ka + virama) represents a dead consonant k.

If this k क् is further followed by another consonant letter, for example, ṣa ष, the result might look like क्‌ष, which represents kṣa as ka + (visible) virama + ṣa. In this case, two elements k क् and ṣa ष are simply placed one by one, side by side. Alternatively, kṣa can be also written as a ligature क्ष, which is actually the preferred form.

Generally, when a dead consonant letter C₁ and another consonant letter C₂ are conjoined, the result may be:

1. A fully conjoined ligature of C₁+C₂;
2. Half-conjoined—
   • C₁-conjoining: a modified form (half form) of C₁ attached to the original form (full form) of C₂
   • C₂-conjoining: a modified form of C₂ attached to the full form of C₁; or
3. Non-ligated: full forms of C₁ and C₂ with a visible virama.

If the result is fully or half-conjoined, the (conceptual) virama which made C₁ dead becomes invisible, logically existing only in a character encoding scheme such as ISCII or Unicode. If the result is not ligated, a virama is visible, attached to C₁, actually written.

Basically, those differences are only glyph variants, and three forms are semantically identical. Although there may be a preferred form for a given consonant cluster in each language and some scripts do not have some kind of ligatures or half forms at all, it is generally acceptable to use a nonligature form instead of a ligature form even when the latter is preferred if the font does not have a glyph for the ligature. In some other cases, whether to use a ligature or not is just a matter of taste.

The virama in the sequence C₁ + virama + C₂ may thus work as an invisible control character to ligate C₁ and C₂ in Unicode. For example,

• ka क + virama + ṣa ष = kṣa क्ष

is a fully conjoined ligature. It is also possible that the virama does not ligate C₁ and C₂, leaving the full forms of C₁ and C₂ as they are:

• ka क + virama + ṣa ष = kṣa क्‌ष

is an example of such a non-ligated form.

The sequences ङ्क ङ्ख ङ्ग ङ्घ [ŋka ŋkʰa ŋɡa ŋɡʱa], in correct Devanagari handwriting, should be written as conjuncts (the virama and the top cross line of the second letter disappear, and what is left of the second letter is written under the ङ and joined to it).

End of word

The inherent vowel is not always pronounced, in particular at the end of a word (schwa deletion). No virama is used for vowel suppression in such cases. Instead, the orthography is based on Sanskrit where all inherent vowels are pronounced, and leaves to the reader of modern languages to delete the schwa when appropriate.

See also

• Sukun, a similar diacritic in Arabic script
• Zero consonant

External links

• Blog: Sorting it all Out