Sanskrit visarga, indicating frication (or lengthened aspiration) of the preceding vowel, pronounced like ‘h’ followed by a slight echo of the preceding vowel Sanskrit anusvāra, indicating nasalization of the preceding vowel, pronounced like ‘m’ or (when followed by certain consonants) ‘ṅ’, ‘ñ’, ‘ṇ’ or ‘n’ Tamil āytam, indicating gutturalization of the preceding vowel, pronounced like ‘ch’ in loch Short vocalic ‘l’, pronounced like ‘lry’ in revelry (not to be confused with the Tamil consonant ள், which is also transliterated as ḷ)ĭiphthong ‘ai’, pronounced like ‘ai’ in aisleĭiphthong ‘au’, pronounced like ‘ou’ in sound Short vocalic ‘r’, pronounced like ‘ri’ in merrily Short ‘i’, pronounced like ‘e’ in English Likewise, in the Devanagari column, round brackets enclosing a letter indicates that it is not part of the alphabet of classical Sanskrit, though it does occur either in Vedic Sanskrit or in some other Indian languages written in Devanagari. In the Tamil column, round brackets enclosing a letter indicates that it is pronounced and transliterated as such only in words borrowed from Sanskrit or some other language.

In the Tamil and Devanagari columns, a dash (–) indicates that there is no exact equivalent in that script for the concerned letter in the other script. In the first column I list all the diacritic and non-diacritic Latin characters that I use to transliterate the Tamil and Sanskrit alphabets in the second column I give the Tamil letter that each such character represents in the third column I give the Devanagari letter that it represents and in the last column I give an indication of its pronunciation or articulation. The following table summarises this transliteration scheme. The transliteration scheme that I use is based upon several closely related schemes, namely the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST), the scheme used in the Tamil Lexicon, the National Library at Kolkata romanization scheme, the American Library Association and the Library of Congress (ALA-LC) transliteration schemes and the more recent international standard known as ‘ ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters’ (a detailed description of which is available here).

The classification of Sanskrit consonants.Transliteration of Sanskrit consonantal diacritics.Transliteration of Grantha consonants used in Tamil.Transliteration Scheme and Pronunciation.

Sanskrit alphabet in bengali