U+0948 "ै" Devanagari Vowel Sign Ai Unicode Character

U+0948 "ै" Devanagari Vowel Sign Ai is a combining diacritical mark used in the Devanagari script to represent the vowel sound "ai," which is typically a diphthong found in languages like Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit. It is written as a horizontal line with a small hook above the consonant it modifies, attaching to the top of the base character to change its inherent vowel from a short "a" to the longer "ai" sound. This sign is a standard component of the Devanagari abugida, where it follows the consonant in visual order and is encoded for digital text to ensure proper rendering of South Asian languages.