The akshara languages:

The symbol units of many writing systems of South Asia are called the akshara. While the akshara in languages like Bengali, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil may look very different from each other, they all share core characteristics because of a common ancestry which links them to the ancient Brahmi script. The akshara represent sounds at the level of both the phoneme and the syllable simultaneously giving the writing system its name- alphasyllabary. The connections between written symbols and spoken sounds have been called orthography-to-phonology and phonology-to-orthography mappings. Of particular interest to this chapter are the cognitive processes involved in learning about the akshara and how this may impact development within the phonological domain. In addition, there is preliminary evidence of how the alphasyllabic nature of the akshara uniquely shapes the reciprocal mappings across the two domains of orthography and phonology, and how this in turn shapes the literacy acquisition process. The chapter gives a detailed description of the psycholinguistic and orthographic characteristics of the akshara, trends in research pertaining to reading and spelling development in akshara languages and the implications of these findings for literacy development in the akshara languages