Letters of the ‘be’ group can take on different short-forms depending upon the letters following them. To keep things clear, let’s start by re-visiting the letters of the ‘be’ group:

Above: Full-forms of the letters in the ‘be’ group. Read right-to-left (‘be’ comes first)

2.5.1: Initial-position short-form with ‘alif’:

Remember how we saw the word “baa” (बा) was written on the previous page?

Above: The word “baa”

When ‘be’ group letters are in the initial position, they join with ‘alif’ by taking upon the following short-form

Above: Short-forms of the letters in the ‘be’ group

To make things clearer, look at the comparative below illustrating this for the letter ‘be’:

Above: Comparative showing the letter ‘be’ in its full and short forms

Therefore, the break-down of the word “baa” we saw earlier:

Above: ‘be’ + ‘alif’ = “baa”

Essentially depicts the following:

Above: Short-form of ‘be’ + ‘alif’ = “baa”

IMPORTANT

The short-form of a letter is essentially a shortened or “condensed” version of the original basic-shape with the same nuqte. Meaning, the number and the placement of nuqte, above or below the shortened basic-shape, remain the same.

Following that, here are all five words created by joining the letters of the ‘be’ group with ‘alif’ - “baa”, “paa”, “taa”, “Taa” and “saa”. Look at the animation to see how they’re written:

Above: The words “baa”, “paa”, “taa”, “Taa” and “saa” being written. Notice that the number and the placement of the nuqtas remains the same with the short-forms.

Great! Let’s quickly move on to making some new words now.