Devanagari letter Ddha

It marks a voiced, retroflex d with a breathy release. Curl the tongue tip back toward the roof of your mouth, keep your voice vibrating, then release with a puff of air. Its scholarly transliteration is ḍha; the Unicode character name spells it ddha.

Early Brahmi forms of this consonant are associated with Ashokan-era inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE. Their shapes changed through regional writing and a later Gupta-period style before developing into the Devanagari form. By the 11th century, Devanagari was a major script for Sanskrit literature. Gujarati ઢ is a related letter in a different script, not another Devanagari font.

Devanagari is an abugida: an unmarked consonant carries a short a, a vowel sign replaces it, and virama suppresses it. In Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit, ढ spells this consonant; the word and language determine whether the built-in vowel is heard.

Why does ढ change shape?

A virama can reshape it when another consonant follows.

Write ढ, virama, then the next consonant. OpenType shaping and the font determine whether ढ appears as a half-form, part of a stacked conjunct, or with the virama visible; the character sequence remains in the same order.

The built-in a also behaves differently by language: Sanskrit teaching normally pronounces it, while Hindi usually drops it at a word's end. Read the whole word before deciding which vowel to say.