Editing Anusvara (section)

== Sanskrit ==
In [[Vedic Sanskrit]], the anusvāra ({{lit|after-sound' or 'subordinate sound}}){{Sfn|Allen|1953|p=40}} was an [[allophonic]] (derived) nasal sound.

The exact nature of the sound has been subject to debate. The material in the various [[Prātiśākhya|ancient phonetic treatises]] points towards different phonetic interpretations, and these discrepancies have historically been attributed to either differences in the description of the same pronunciation<ref>[[William Dwight Whitney|Whitney]], cited in {{Harvnb|Emeneau|1946|p=91}}</ref> or to dialectal or diachronic variation.{{sfn|Varma|1961|pp=148–55}}{{sfn|Emeneau|1946|p=91}} In a 2013 reappraisal of the evidence, Cardona concludes that these reflect real dialectal differences.{{sfn|Cardona|2013}}

The environments in which the anusvara could arise, however, were well defined. In the earliest [[Vedic Sanskrit]], it was an allophone of /m/ at a [[morpheme]] boundary, or of /n/ within morphemes, when it was preceded by a vowel and followed by a [[fricative]] ({{IAST|/ś/, /ṣ/, /s/, /h/}}).{{sfn|Allen|1953|p=40}} In later Sanskrit its use expanded to other contexts, first before /r/ under certain conditions, then, in [[Classical Sanskrit]], before {{IAST|/v/}} and {{IAST|/y/}}.{{sfn|Allen|1953|p=40}}

Later still, [[Pāṇini]] gave anusvara as an alternative pronunciation as word-final [[sandhi]], and later treatises also prescribed it at morpheme junctions and within morphemes.{{sfn|Allen|1953|p=41}} In the later written language, the diacritic used to represent anusvara was optionally used to indicate a [[nasal stop]] having the same [[place of articulation]] as a following [[plosive]], which was written in some evolved scripts (e.g. in Bengali-Assamese) as an additional sandhi letter (no longer as a diacritic) for Vedic transcriptions of Sanskrit, to distinguish it with the anusvara diacritic that was used to transcribe other phonemes.