There are three writing systems for Saraiki:

Multani script

Multani is a Brahmic script originating in the Multan region of Punjab. The script was used for routine writing and commercial activities. Multani is one of four Landa scripts whose usage was extended beyond the mercantile domain and formalized for literary activity and printing; the others being

Gurmukhi Gurmukhī ( , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). Commonly regarded as a Sikh script, Gurmukhi is used in Punjab, India as the official scrip ...

Khojki Khojkī or Khojā Sindhī ( (Arabic script) खोजकी (Devanagari)), is a script used formerly and almost exclusively by the Khoja community of parts of the Indian subcontinent, including Sindh, Gujarat, and Punjab. However, this script ...

and

Khudabadi Khudabadi, also known as Khudawadi, Hathvanki or Warangi, is a script used to write the Sindhi language, sometimes used by some Sindhis even in present-day Pakistan. The script originates from Khudabad, a city in Sindh, and is named after it. K ...

. Although Multani is now obsolete, it is a historical script in which written and printed records exist. Traders or bookkeepers wrote in a script known as Langdi, although use of this script has been significantly reduced in recent times. Preliminary Proposal to Encode the Multani Script in ISO/IEC 10646 was submitted by Anshuman Pandey, on 26-04-2011. Saraiki Unicode has been approved in 2005.

Perso-Arabic script

The most common writing system for Saraiki today is

Shahmukhi Shahmukhi (, , , ) is the right-to-left abjad-based script developed from the Perso-Arabic alphabet used for the Punjabi language varieties, predominantly in Punjab, Pakistan. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, whic ...

, based on the

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...

. It is non-standardized and is generally written with an extension to the standard Shahmukhi alphabet. Saraiki has a 43-letter alphabet which include four letters that are not used in standard Shahmukhi. Another difference the Saraiki alphabet has with standard Shahmukhi is the disuse of the already uncommon Lam with tah above which is present in the standard form.

Alphabet Table

Notes

Saraiki has 4 additional glyphs that are not present in its parent alphabet of standard Shahmukhi. ٻ represents the

Voiced bilabial implosive The voiced bilabial implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is b_<. Features Features of th ...

, ڄ represents the

Voiced palatal implosive The voiced palatal implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\_<. Typographically, the IP ...

, ڳ represents the

Voiced velar implosive The voiced velar implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g_<. It is familiar to English s ...

, and ݙ represents the

Voiced retroflex implosive The voiced retroflex implosive is a type of consonantal sound. Wadiyara Koli phonemically distinguishes it from the alveolar . Sindhi has an implosive that varies between dental and retroflex articulation, while Oromo, Saraiki and Ngad'a hav ...

. 3 out of the 4 implosive consonants (ٻ,ڄ,ڳ) are shared with the Sindhi alphabet, and ݙ was proposed in 2002 to differentiate from ڏ of Sindhi. Saraiki also lacks the phoneme /ʒ/, and therefore, employs other phonemes such as /ʃ/ to represent the letter ژ. Due to this, ژ is only used in loanwords.

Diacritics

* (ئ ؤ and stand alone ء) ''

hamza The hamza ( ') () is an Arabic script character that, in the Arabic alphabet, denotes a glottal stop and, in non-Arabic languages, indicates a diphthong, vowel, or other features, depending on the language. Derived from the letter '' ʿayn'' ( ...

'': indicates a

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

. * ''ḥarakāt'' (In Arabic: حركات also called تشكيل ''tashkīl''): ** (ــَـ) ''fatḥa'' (a) ** (ــِـ) ''kasra'' (i) ** (ــُـ) ''ḍamma'' (u) ** (ــْـ) ''sukūn'' (no vowel) * (ــٰـ) ''superscript alif'' (also "short" or "dagger alif": A replacement for an original alif that is dropped in the writing out of some rare words, e.g. لاكن is not written out with the original alif found in the word pronunciation, instead it is written out as لٰكن. * (ــّـ) ''

shadda Shaddah ( , , also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ) is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthograp ...

'': Gemination (doubling) of consonants. *(--ٖ--) Arabic subscript alef (U+0656), KhaRRi Zeer *(___ٗ__) Inverted Zamma , Ulti Pesh , Such as in : کٗرتا، مٗردا *(___٘__) Ghunna, over the noon * Tanween

** (__ً_) ݙو زبر ** (ٍ--) ݙو زیر ** (____) ݙو پیش

Numerals

Standard Punjabi Punjabi, sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It is one of the most widely spoken native languages in the world, with approximately 150 million native speakers. Punjabi is t ...

, Saraiki also uses the

Eastern Arabic numerals The Eastern Arabic numerals, also called Indo-Arabic numerals or Arabic-Indic numerals as known by Unicode, are the symbols used to represent numerical digits in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet in the countries of the Mashriq (the east o ...

Romanization

The romanization is often termed "transliteration" but that is not strictly correct, as ''

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...

'' is the direct representation of ''letters'' by using foreign symbols, but most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually '' transcription'' systems that represent the ''sound'' of the language. For example, the above rendering ' of the is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example of transliteration would be '. For Saraiki, all letters and symbols are used in Saraiki in Latin script.

Modern Indic scripts

The

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

and

scripts, written from left to right, were used by

Hindus Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...

and

Sikhs Sikhs (singular Sikh: or ; , ) are an ethnoreligious group who adhere to Sikhism, a religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Guru Nanak. The term ''Sikh'' ...

respectively around southern

Punjab Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...

. Though not used in present-day Pakistan, there are still emigrant speakers in India who know the Devanagari or Gurmukhi scripts for Saraiki. Devanagari has support for all the 4 Saraiki implosive consonants: ॻ (ڳ), ॼ (ڄ), ॾ (ݙ) and ॿ (ٻ), which were actually introduced to write Sindhi. In Gurmukhi, these are approximated by

gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

ligatures.

References

External links

Download Saraiki font and keyboard for Windows and AndroidSaraiki Keyboard in RomanSaraiki Matchine Transliteration Software
{{Arabic alphabets Persian alphabets Arabic alphabets Hindustani orthography Punjabi dialects Saraiki language Alphabets Arabic alphabets for South Asian languages