[5] What sets balabodha apart from the Devanagari script used for other languages is the more frequent and regular use of both ळ /ɭ/ (retroflex lateral approximant) and र् (called the eyelash reph / raphar).
In primary knowledge, Muḷākshare (Basic Letters), consisting of 12 vowels अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ अं अः (like A, E, I, O, and U in English) and 36 consonants in five groups (क वर्ग, च वर्ग, ट वर्ग, त वर्ग and प वर्ग) and 11 individual consonants, are taught to children and illiterate persons through recitation and writing on slates.
[6] The retroflex lateral approximant (ळ /ɭ/ ) exists in many Dravidian languages such as Telugu (ళ), Malayalam (ള), Kannada (ಳ), and Tamil (ள).
[10] [11] While common computer fonts may not provide both the eyelash and the simple reph/ rapahar or default to the simple raphar in QWERTY-keyboard based typing, a common instruction while writing by hand for the "ry" consonant cluster specifically was to use the simple raphar (common with Sanskrit) for Sanskrit-based loanwords (Tatsama) and those words from other languages which have a half-R in the nominative case (the Arabic "darya" or "dariya," meaning ocean, as shown above), while the eyelash reph (also known as the "in the stomach" form, akin to a dagger to the "belly" of the Y, in colloquial usage) was to be used with pluralizations and stem forms of R-ending words ("valleys" and "cook" in the above example).
William Carey published the first book on Marathi grammar in 1805 using balabodha since printing in the Modi script was not available to him in Serampore, Bengal.
However, subsequent editions of William Carey's book on Marathi grammar, starting in 1810, did employ the Modi script.