Visarga

In Sanskrit phonology, Visarga (IPA: [ʋisɐrɡɐ(hɐ)]) is the name of the voiceless glottal fricative, written in Devanagari as 'ः' [h]. It was also called, equivalently, visarjanīya by earlier grammarians. The word visarga (Sanskrit: विसर्ग) literally means "sending forth, discharge".

Visarga is an allophone of /r/ and /s/ in pausa (at the end of an utterance). Since /-s/ is a common inflectional suffix (of nominative singular, second person singular, etc.), visarga appears frequently in Sanskrit texts. In the traditional order of Sanskrit sounds, visarga and anusvāra appear between vowels and stop consonants.

The precise pronunciation of visarga in Vedic texts may vary between Śākhās. Some pronounce a slight echo of the preceding vowel after the aspiration: aḥ will be pronounced [ɐhᵄ], and iḥ will be pronounced [ihⁱ]. Visarga is not to be confused with colon.

The visarga is commonly found in writing, resembling the punctuation mark of colon or as two tiny circles one above the other. This form is retained by most Indic scripts.

According to Sanskrit phonologists, the visarga has two optional allophones, namely जिह्वामूलीय (jihvāmūlīya or the guttural visarga) and उपध्मानीय (upadhmānīya or the labial visarga). The former may be pronounced before ⟨क⟩, ⟨ख⟩, and the latter before ⟨प⟩, and ⟨फ⟩, as in तव पितामहः कः (tava pitāmahaḥ kaḥ?, 'who is your grandfather?'), पक्षिणः खे उड्डयन्ते (pakṣiṇaḥ khe uḍḍayante, 'birds fly in the sky'), भोः पाहि (bhoḥ pāhi, 'sir, save me'), and तपःफलम् (tapaḥphalam, 'result of penances'). They were written with various symbols, e.g. X-like symbol vs sideways 3-like symbol above flipped sideways one, or both as two crescent-shaped semi-circles one above the other, facing the top and bottom respectively. Distinct signs for jihavamulīya and upadhmanīya exists in Kannada, Tibetan, Sharada, Brahmi and Lantsa scripts.

In the Burmese script, the visarga (variously called ရှေ့ကပေါက် shay ga pauk, ဝစ္စနစ်လုံးပေါက် wizza nalone pauk, or ရှေ့ဆီး shay zi and represented with two dots to the right of the letter as း), when joined to a letter, creates the high tone.

Motoori Norinaga invented a mark for visarga which he used in a book about Indian orthography.

In the Javanese script, the visarga, known as the wignyan (ꦮꦶꦒ꧀ꦚꦤ꧀), is represented by two curls to the right of a syllable as ꦃ: the first curl is short and circular, and the second curl is long. It adds a /-h/ after a vowel.