Chandrabindu

ँ Chandrabindu
Diacritics accent acute( ´ ) double acute( ˝ ) grave( ` ) double grave(  ̏ ) breve( ˘ ) inverted breve(  ̑ ) caron / háček( ˇ ) cedilla / cédille( ¸ ) circumflex / vokáň( ˆ ) dot( · ) hook / dấu hỏi(  ̉ ) horn / dấu móc(  ̛ ) macron( ¯ ) ogonek / nosinė( ˛ ) ring / kroužek( ˚, ˳ ) rough breathing / dasia( ῾ ) smooth breathing / psili( ᾿ ) diaeresis (diaeresis/umlaut)( ¨ ) Marks sometimes used as diacritics apostrophe( ’ ) bar( | ) colon( : ) comma( , ) hyphen( ˗ ) tilde( ~ ) titlo(  ҃ ) Diacritical marks in other scripts Arabic diacritics Gurmukhi diacritics Hebrew diacritics Indic diacritics anusvara( ं ং ം ) chandrabindu( ँ ఁ ) nukta( ़ ) virama( ् ് ్ ් ್ ) IPA diacritics Japanese diacritics dakuten( ﾞ ) handakuten( ﾟ ) Khmer diacritics Syriac diacritics Thai diacritics Related Punctuation marks
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This article is about chandrabindu, the character in several Brahmi derived scripts. For the Bangla band by the same name, see Chandrabindoo (band).

Chandrabindu (meaning "moon-dot" in Sanskrit, alternatively spelled candrabindu, chandravindu, candravindu, or chôndrobindu) is a diacritic sign having the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali (ঁ), Gujarati (ઁ), Oriya (ଁ) and Telugu (ఁ) scripts.

It usually means that the previous vowel is nasalized. It is represented in Unicode as U+0901 in Devanagari, U+0981 in Bengali, U+0A81 in Gujarati, U+0B01 in Oriya, and U+0C01 in Telugu. There is also a general-purpose combining diacritical mark COMBINING CANDRABINDU code point U+0310 (◌̐), but this is intended for use with Latin letters in transliteration of Indic languages.

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

In Classical Sanskrit it only seems to occur over a lla conjunct consonant, to show that it is pronounced as a nasalized double l, which occurs where -nl- have become assimilated in sandhi.

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

Not to be confused with

Another symbol called the fermata, similar in appearance to an upside-down chandrabindu, is an element of musical notation.

See also

• Anunaasika
• Anusvara
• Fermata