Editing Devanagari transliteration (section)

==Details==

===Treatment of inherent schwa ===
Devanāgarī consonants include an "inherent a" sound, called the [[schwa]], that must be explicitly represented with an "a" character in the transliteration. Many words and names transliterated from Devanāgarī end with "a", to indicate the pronunciation in the original [[Sanskrit]]. This [[Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages|schwa is obligatorily deleted]] in several modern [[Indo-Aryan languages]], like [[Hindi]], [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]], [[Marathi language|Marathi]] and others. This results in differing transliterations for Sanskrit and schwa-deleting languages that retain or eliminate the schwa as appropriate:
*Sanskrit: Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, Śiva, Sāmaveda
*Hindi: Mahābhārat, Rāmāyaṇ, Śiv, Sāmved

Some words may keep the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it:
* Krishna, Vajra, Maurya

Because of this, some words ending in consonant clusters are altered in various modern Indic languages as such:
Mantra=mantar. Shabda=shabad. Sushumna=sushumana.

===Retroflex consonants===
Most [[Languages of India|Indian languages]] make a distinction between the retroflex and dental forms of the dental consonants. In formal transliteration schemes, the standard Roman letters are used to indicate the dental form, and the retroflex form is indicated by special marks, or the use of other letters. E.g., in [[IAST]] transliteration, the retroflex forms are ṇ, ṭ, ḍ and ṣ.

In most informal transcriptions the distinction between retroflex and dental consonants is not indicated. However, many capitalise retroflex consonants on QWERTY keyboard in informal messaging. That generally obviates the need for transliteration.

===Aspirated consonants===
Where the letter "h" appears after a [[plosive consonant]] in Devanāgarī transliteration, it always indicates [[aspiration (phonetics)|aspiration]]. Thus "ph" is pronounced as the ''p'' in "pit" (with a small puff of air released as it is said), never as the ''ph'' in "photo" ([[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] /f/). (On the other hand, "p" is pronounced as the ''p'' in "spit" with no release of air.) Similarly "th" is an aspirated "t", neither the ''th'' of "this" (voiced, IPA /ð/) nor the ''th'' of "thin" (unvoiced, IPA /θ/).

The aspiration is generally indicated in both formal and informal transliteration systems.