This article is about chandrabindu, the character in several Brahmi

Brāhmī script

Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...

 derived scripts. For the Bangla band by the same name, see Chandrabindoo (band)

Chandrabindoo (band)

Chandrabindoo , based in Kolkata, is a bangla band. Their name refers both to the last character in the Bengali alphabet and to a dialogue from the nonsense work HaJaBaRaLa by Sukumar Ray....

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Chandrabindu (meaning "moon-dot" in Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

, alternatively spelled candrabindu, chandravindu, candravindu, or chôndrobindu) is a diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

 sign having the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari

Devanagari

Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...

 (ँ), Bengali

Bengali script

The Bengali alphabet is the writing system for the Bengali language. The script with variations is used for Assamese and is basis for Meitei, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Kokborok, Garo and Mundari alphabets. All these languages are spoken in the eastern region of South Asia. Historically, the script has...

 , Gujarati

Gujarati script

The Gujarati script , which like all Nāgarī writing systems is strictly speaking an abugida rather than an alphabet, is used to write the Gujarati and Kutchi languages...

 (ઁ), Oriya

Oriya script

The Oriya script or Utkala Lipi or Utkalakshara is used to write the Oriya language, and can be used for several other Indian languages, for example, Sanskrit.- History :...

  and Telugu

Telugu script

Telugu script, an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write the Telugu language, a language found in the South-Central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh as well as several other neighboring states. The Telugu script is derived from the Bhattiprolu script...

 (ఁ) scripts.

It usually means that the previous vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

 is nasalized

Nasalization

In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...

. It is represented in Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 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

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

 letters in transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

 of Indic languages.

In Hindi, it is replaced in writing by anusvara

Anusvara

Anusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word and the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....

 when it is written above a consonant which carries a vowel symbol which extends above the top line.

In Classical Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 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

Assimilation (linguistics)

Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...

 in sandhi

Sandhi

Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...

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In Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the oldest preserved Iranian language...

 it is used instead of anusvara

Anusvara

Anusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word and the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....

 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

Fermata

A fermata is an element of musical notation indicating that the note should be sustained for longer than its note value would indicate...

, similar in appearance to an upside-down chandrabindu, is an element of musical notation

Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...

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