#1स्वर
🍎
अ
⌨️ Type अ
Switch your keyboard to Hindi (हिन्दी), then press the letter.
Swipe the card left or right, or tap ◀ ▶. Tap 🔠 to jump to any letter. The app remembers where you stopped.
The 🔊 Auto button on the card stays the way you set it while you flip. When it is on, each card speaks as soon as you open it. On the 🎵 Song tab you hear the card's chant line. On the ✏️ Write tab you hear just the letter. Turn it off any time for quiet practice.
The voice starts a little slower than normal speech, the way a teacher sounds out a new word. Tap 🐢 to slow it down or 🐇 to speed it up. Each tap changes it by 10% and says the card again so you can hear it. The app remembers your speed.
The 🌓 button at the top picks the colours. 🌓 follows your phone. ☀️ is always light. 🌙 is always dark. Tap it to switch.
Every line has the same shape: the letter, then se, then the picture word. Se usually means "from". In this chant it works like "for" in "A for apple". So अ से अनार means "a for pomegranate". Say it in a steady beat, like a nursery rhyme:
अ से अनार · आ से आम
इ से इमली · ई से ईख
Six letters never start a Hindi word: अः ङ ञ ण ड़ ढ़. Their line uses jaise ("as in") and a word that has the letter inside it, like ण जैसे हिरण.
Tap ▶ Chant along and the phone reads each line and moves to the next card. Repeat after it. Many children's videos sing it with a tune. Search YouTube: अ से अनार varnamala song.
Open ✏️ Write. Trace the grey letter with your finger. Draw the body of the letter first. Then draw the headline, the line across the top called शिरोरेखा (shirorekha), as its own stroke from left to right. Most Indian schools teach it this way. A few letters, like ध and भ, have a headline over only part of the letter. Follow the grey letter.
The two dashed lines show where the headline sits and where the letter ends at the bottom. Some letters reach above the headline (ई ऐ ओ) or below the bottom line (उ ऊ ऋ).
After each stroke the pad shows a match score for your whole drawing. It checks how much of the letter you covered and how much of your line stayed on the letter. The score is the lower of the two, so 85% means you traced at least 85% of the letter and kept at least 85% of your line on it. The headline must be drawn too, so the score jumps up when you add it.
Use the Hindi keyboard with Hindi letters on the keys (हिन्दी). In Gboard: Settings, System, Keyboard, On-screen keyboard, Gboard, Languages, Add keyboard, Hindi, then pick the हिन्दी layout.
Gboard can also turn English letters into Hindi (the abc to हिन्दी layout). Don't use that one for the game, because it guesses whole words.
Some letters take more than one key. The box waits until the letter is complete:
् is the halant key. It joins two letters. ़ is the dot under a letter (nukta). ङ ञ ण ऋ, the halant and the dot may sit on the second page of keys or behind a long press. Vowels also have short signs (ा ि ी). The game wants the full vowel letter.
Tap the corners button at the top to hide the browser bars. Tap it again, or swipe from the edge and press back, to leave.
Pictures are emoji. Some are only close, because no exact emoji exists: .
If the app is silent, your phone needs a Hindi voice. On Android open Settings and search for Text-to-speech. Choose Speech Services by Google as the engine. Tap the gear next to it, then Install voice data, and install Hindi (हिन्दी). Menu names differ a little between phone brands.
If the voice sounds robotic, try another Hindi voice. In the same Install voice data screen, tap Hindi. Many phones show several Hindi voices. Tap each one to hear it and pick the one that sounds most natural. The app uses the voice you pick there. Some voices need the phone to be online the first time.
Phone voices find a few letters hard to say on their own. They say ण and ड़ with a short "a" in front. They say ढ़ like ढा, without the flap. Some voices also say the flap in पेड़ and सीढ़ी close to an r. Listen to a Hindi speaker for these.
Hindi letters use Baloo 2, Copyright 2019 The Baloo 2 Project Authors (https://github.com/EkType/Baloo2). English uses Nunito, Copyright 2014 The Nunito Project Authors (https://github.com/googlefonts/nunito). Both fonts are licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1: openfontlicense.org. Baloo 2 was chosen because its letters are upright and evenly drawn, close to how children are taught to write.