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Chandrabindu

Diacritic mark typically denoting nazalization, in Indian abugidas

Chandrabindu (Sanskrit: चन्द्रबिन्दु; IAST: candrabindu, lit.'moon dot') is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali-Assamese (), Gujarati (ઁ), Odia (ଁ), Tamil (◌𑌁 Extension used from Grantha), Telugu (ఁ), Kannada (◌ಁ), Malayalam (◌ഁ), Sinhala (◌ඁ), Javanese ( ꦀ) and other scripts.

It usually means that the previous vowel is nasalized.

In Hindi, it is replaced in writing by anusvara when it is written above a consonant that carries a vowel symbol that extends above the top line.

In Classical Sanskrit, it seems to occur only over a lla, yya, or vva conjunct consonant, to show that it is pronounced as a nasalized double l, y, or v which occurs if they have become assimilated in sandhi.

In Vedic Sanskrit, it is used instead of anusvara to represent the sound anunasika when the next word starts with a vowel. It usually occurs where in earlier times a word ended in -ans.

01Glyph comparison

02Unicode

Unicode encodes chandrabindu and chandrabindu-like characters for a variety of scripts:

  • U+0901 DEVANAGARI SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+A8F2 DEVANAGARI SIGN SPACING CANDRABINDU
  • U+A8F3 DEVANAGARI SIGN CANDRABINDU VIRAMA
  • U+0900 DEVANAGARI SIGN INVERTED CANDRABINDU
  • U+0A01 GURMUKHI SIGN ADAK BINDI
  • U+0A70 GURMUKHI TIPPI
  • U+0C80 KANNADA SIGN SPACING CANDRABINDU
  • U+0C81 KANNADA SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+0C01 TELUGU SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+0C00 TELUGU SIGN COMBINING CANDRABINDU ABOVE
  • U+0981 BENGALI SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+0B01 ORIYA SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+0D01 MALAYALAM SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+0A81 GUJARATI SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+11000 𑀀 BRAHMI SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+115BC 𑖼 SIDDHAM SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+11301 𑌁 GRANTHA SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+11F00 𑼀 KAWI SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+0F82 TIBETAN SIGN NYI ZLA NAA DA
  • U+0F83 TIBETAN SIGN SNA LDAN
  • U+A873 PHAGS-PA LETTER CANDRABINDU
  • U+11443 𑑃 NEWA SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+11C3C 𑰼 BHAIKSUKI SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+111CF 𑇏 SHARADA SIGN INVERTED CANDRABINDU
  • U+1193C 𑤼 DIVES AKURU SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+A8C5 SAURASHTRA SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+11080 𑂀 KAITHI SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+114BF 𑒿 TIRHUTA SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+11CB6 𑲶 MARCHEN SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+1B01 BALINESE SIGN ULU CANDRA
  • U+1B00 BALINESE SIGN ULU RICEM
  • U+1C34 LEPCHA CONSONANT SIGN NYIN-DO
  • U+1C35 LEPCHA CONSONANT SIGN KANG
  • U+11A35 𑨵 ZANABAZAR SQUARE SIGN CANDRABINDU
  • U+11A36 𑨶 ZANABAZAR SQUARE SIGN CANDRABINDU WITH ORNAMENT
  • U+11A37 𑨷 ZANABAZAR SQUARE SIGN CANDRA WITH ORNAMENT
  • U+0310 ̐ COMBINING CANDRABINDU is a general-purpose combining diacritical mark intended for use with Latin letters in transliteration of Indic languages.
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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Chandrabindu, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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