Devanāgarī is a thousand-year-old script whose beauty and mystique have helped it capture the public fancy far from its Indian homeland. In South Asia, it is widely known as the script used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Nepali and more; in the West, even those who don't use the script have certainly spotted it on merchandise emblazoned with the oṃ symbol (ॐ), in tattoos (sometimes famously misspelled) and in other contexts.
In this class, participants will learn the basics of how to read and write the Devanāgarī script. Students will focus on how to draw well-formed letters, and how these letters express syllables and combine into words - much differently than our Roman alphabet. They'll talk about the order of the letters and how it reflects the ancient Indian science of speech sounds. Participants will also touch on the history of the script, whose relatives are found across Asia, from the temples of Cambodia to the scrolls of Japan.
