anusvara

Anusvara is a term used in Sanskrit and related Indian languages to denote a nasal sound that is indicated in writing by a diacritic called anusvara or by a related nasal sign in various scripts. In phonology, it marks nasalization of the preceding vowel and, before a following consonant, it is realized as a nasal consonant that matches the place of articulation of that consonant (a homorganic nasal). In transliteration, it is commonly represented by ṁ or ṃ.

In Devanagari and many other Indic scripts, the anusvara is written as a dot (bindu) placed above or after the letter, and it is often transliterated as ṁ. There is also a related diacritic called chandrabindu, which more explicitly marks nasalization of the syllable. The practical effect of an anusvara in a word is context-dependent: before a consonant, it becomes a nasal consonant that agrees with the following sound (for example, labial, dental, alveolar, palatal, or velar nasal); before a vowel or at the end of a word before a vowel, it commonly denotes nasalization of the preceding vowel rather than a separate consonant.

Anusvara is distinct from visarga, another nasal-like feature in Indic scripts. Visarga represents an aspirated voiceless-fricative sound (often written as ḥ) after a vowel, whereas anusvara primarily signals nasalization and nasal consonants. The concept and symbol are used across Sanskrit, Pali, and related languages, and appear in the orthography of many South Asian scripts.