Hi Rod and David

Since you asked, let me try a brief trotting out of my understanding of the differences in sounds (to Northern Indian ears at least) that n or m (as we have them) would take.

Basically, in languages using Devanagari (Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi), there are five different nasal sounds. Four of them sound like our n (in different contexts) and the fifth is represented by our m.

Each nasal sound 'attaches' to a set of four consonants (unvoiced, unvoiced aspirated/plosive, voiced, voiced aspirated/plosive), so that 20 consonants are involved in total. (There are a further 5-10 consonants in the script, but these do not get conjoined to preceding nasal sounds - s, sh, r, h, l, y, v etc).

I'll try to illustrate by providing as closely as possible, English words for these twenty consonants (with the nasal tone preceding). For some, blank brackets ( ) will indicate no English equivalent, and (full) brackets will indicate the consonant, but no nasal conjunction (I couldn't think of one).

Set1:

Anchor, (loch), anger, "Unghh"

Set2:

Crunch, (achhoo), injury, ( )

Set3:

Anther, ( ), (the), ( )

Set4:

Inter, ( ), under, ( )

Set5:

Umpire, amphora, umbrage, ( )

You will notice, if you observe yourself making these sounds, that the first is a sort of 'ng', the second is almost unpronounced - think Hispanic 'n' with the tilde on top, the third is the classic 'n' of nose or nanny, and the fourth is slightly less pronounced (pun intended) than the third. The fifth, of course, is our classic 'm'.

The point about ordering the sets of consonants in this way (as they are when taught to students of the language) is that each successive set is produced from further forward in the mouth (apart of the slight anomaly of Set4 which uses a flick of the tongue). Starting with the 'k' sequence back near the uvula, to the purely labial 'p'.

Hope this helps.

cheer

the sunshine warrior