Shahmukhi

History

Before the advent of Shahmukhi, writing systems were not popular for the Old Punjabi varieties.

The name 'Shahmukhi' is a recent coinage, imitating its counterpart 'Gurmukhī'. However, the writing of Punjabi in the Perso-Arabic script is well-attested from the 17th century onwards. According to Dhavan, Punjabi began to adopt the script as a "side effect" of educational practices in Mughal-era Punjab, when Punjabi Muslims learned the Persian language in order to participate in Mughal society. Educational materials taught Persian to Punjabi speakers by using Punjabi written in Persian's alphabet, which was a novel innovation. This was one of the first attempts at standardising the Punjabi language; prior to this, Punjabi was primarily a spoken language, not formally taught in schools.

Shackle suggests that the Gurmukhī script was not favoured by Punjabi Muslims due to its religious (Sikh) connotations. Shahmukhi Punjabi was added to Google Translate in 2024.

Alphabet

Shahmukhi script is a modified version of the Arabic script's Persian alphabet. It is identical to the Urdu alphabet, but contains additional letters representing the Punjabi phonology. For writing Saraiki, an extended Shahmukhi is used that includes 4 additional letters for the implosive consonants ().

Vowel diacritics

Like Urdu, Shahmukhi also has diacritics, which are implied - a convention retained from the original Arabic script, to express short vowels.

Consonants

No Punjabi words begin with ں, ھ, or ے. Words which begin with ڑ are exceedingly rare, but some have been documented in Shahmukhi dictionaries such as Iqbal Salahuddin's Waddi Punjabi Lughat. The digraphs of aspirated consonants are as follows. In addition, and form ligatures with : () and ().

Aspirates

• {{nq|ے}} (waddi ye) is only found in the final position, when writing the sounds e (ਏ) or æ (ਐ), and in initial and medial positions, it takes the form of {{nq|ی}}.
• Vowels are expressed as follows:

Difference from Persian and Urdu

Shahmukhi has more letters than its Persian base and related Urdu alphabet, to represent the special sounds that are only in Punjabi, which already have additional letters added to the Arabic base itself to represent sounds not present in Arabic. Characters added which differ from Persian but not Urdu include: {{Nastaliq|ٹ}} to represent /ʈ/, {{Nastaliq|ڈ}} to represent /ɖ/, {{Nastaliq|ڑ}} to represent /ɽ/, {{Nastaliq|ں}} to represent /◌̃/, and {{Nastaliq|ے}} to represent /ɛ:/ or /e:/. Furthermore, a separate do-cashmi-he letter, {{Nastaliq|ھ}}, exists to denote a /ʰ/ or a /ʱ/, this letter is mainly used as part of the multitude of digraphs, detailed above. Characters added which differ from Urdu include: لؕ to represent /ɭ/ and ݨ to represent /ɳ/. These characters, however are seldom used.

Pronunciation

The letter {{nq|ژ}} is pronounced 'j' in French or as vision in English and the letter {{nq|ع}} is often transliterated in many ways due to its changing sound in various Arabic and Persian words.

Gallery

File:Modern_Shahmukhi_alphabets_in_Nastaliq.png|Modern Shahmukhi alphabet table in Mehr Nastaliq Saraiki font File:Standard_Shahmukhi_alphabets.png|Standard Shahmukhi alphabets File:Shahmukhi nastaliq.png|"Shahmukhi" written in Shahmukhi script File:Bhulay Shah.jpg|Another example of poetry by Bulleh Shah in Shahmukhi

References

References

1. (1 May 2019). "Unicode Proposal for ArLaam". Punjabi Parchar.
2. (August 2008). "Shahmukhi to Gurmukhī Transliteration System". Coling 2008 Organizing Committee.
3. (May 2013). "Punjabi Documents Clustering System". Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence.
4. (October 2015). "Design and Implementation of Shahmukhi Spell Checker".
5. (27 June 2012). "Analysis of Noori Nasta'leeq for Major Pakistani Languages".
6. Dorren, Gaston. (2018). "Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages". Profile Books.
7. (May 2013). "Punjabi Documents Clustering System". Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence.
8. (2019). "Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography". Springer.
9. Shackle, Christopher. "Punjabi language".
10. Shackle, Christopher. (2007). "The Indo-Aryan Languages". Routledge.
11. Dhavan, Purnima. (2019-12-31). "Marking Boundaries and Building Bridges: Persian Scholarly Networks in Mughal Punjab". University of California Press.
12. (27 June 2024). "110 new languages are coming to Google Translate".
13. Shah, Aditi. (28 June 2024). "Google Translate Now Supports 110 New Languages Including Marwari, Awadhi, Shahmukhi And More". NDTV.
14. (2 June 2024). "Milestone for Punjabi-speaking community, Google translate now supports Shahmukhi script". Babushahi.
15. (2019). "A descriptive grammar of Hindko, Panjabi, and Saraiki". De Gruyter Mouton.
16. Bhardwaj, Mangat. (2016). "Panjabi: A Comprehensive Grammar". Routledge.
17. (2003). "Beginner's Urdu Script". McGraw-Hill.
18. Rarely used in literature, except when a distinction between the pronunciation of the non-retroflex character is needed
19. {{cite Q. Q113450202. link
20. "Urdu romanization". The Library of Congress.
21. {{cite Q. Q113450202. link