Shahmukhi (, ) is a
Perso-Arabic alphabet script used historically by
Punjabi Muslims (primarily in present-day
Pakistani Punjab) to write the
Punjabi language
Punjabi (; ; , ), sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It has approximately 113 million native speakers.
Punjabi is the most widely-spoken first language in Pakistan, with 80.5 ...
.
It is generally written in the
Nastaʿlīq calligraphic
Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as ...
hand,
which is also used for
. Shahmukhi script is used in
Pakistani Punjab as the official script for writing
Punjabi. Perso-Arabic is one of two scripts used for Punjabi, the other being
Gurmukhi
Gurmukhī ( pa, ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). It is used by Punjabi Sikhs to write the language, commonly ...
, used by
Sikhs and
Hindus
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
in
Indian Punjab
Punjab (; ) is a state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the north and northeast, Haryana to the south and southeast, and ...
.
Shahmukhi is written from right to left, while Gurmukhi is written from left to right.
It is also used as the main alphabet to write
Pahari–Pothwari in
Azad Kashmir and
Jammu and Kashmir.
The Shahmukhi alphabet was first used by the
Sufi poets of
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
, and became the conventional writing style for the
Muslim populace of the
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
i province of
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
following the
Partition of India, while the largely
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
and
Sikh modern-day state of
Punjab, India
Punjab (; ) is a state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the north and northeast, Haryana to the south and southeast, and ...
adopted the
Gurmukhi
Gurmukhī ( pa, ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). It is used by Punjabi Sikhs to write the language, commonly ...
or seldom, the
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
scripts to record the Punjabi language.
Shahmukhi script is a modified version of the Arabic script. It was introduced by the Muslim Sufi poets in the 12th century for Punjabi language. While it is virtually identical to the
Urdu alphabet, it is sometimes considered as a superset when additional letters are attempted to be included, representing
Punjabi phonology; hence all Urdu readers can naturally read Shahmukhi (and vice versa) without any practical difficulty. For writing
Saraiki, an
extended Shahmukhi is used that includes 4 additional letters for the
implosive consonants ().
History
The name 'Shahmukhi' is a recent coinage, imitating its counterpart 'Gurmukhi'. However, the writing of Punjabi in the Perso-Arabic script is well-attested from the 12th century onwards.
According to Dhavan, Punjabi began to adopt the script as a "side effect" of educational practices in
Mughal-era
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
, when Punjabi Muslims learned the
Persian language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken a ...
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 in writing and standardising the Punjabi language; prior to this, Punjabi was primarily a spoken language, not formally taught in schools.
Shackle suggests that the Gurmukhi script was not favoured by Punjabi Muslims due to its religious (Sikh) connotations.
Alphabet
Vowel diacritics
Though only implied, 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 , , or . Words which begin with are exceedingly rare, but some have been documented in Shahmukhi dictionaries such as Iqbal Salahuddin's ''Waddi Punjabi Lughat''.
The
digraphs of
aspirated consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with t ...
s are as follows. In addition, and form ligatures with : () and ().
Aspirates
* (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 .
* Vowels are expressed as follows:
Difference from Persian and Urdu
Shahmukhi has more letters added to the Urdu base to represent sounds not present in Urdu, which already has additional letters added to the Arabic and Persian base itself to represent sounds not present in Arabic. Characters added which differ from Persian but not Urdu include: to represent
/ʈ/, to represent
/ɖ/, to represent
/ɽ/, to represent
/◌̃/, and to represent
/ɛ:/ or
/e:/. Furthermore, a separate do-cashmi-
he letter, , exists to denote a
/ʰ/ or a
/ʱ/, this letter is mainly used as part of the multitude of digraphs, detailed below. Characters added which differ from Urdu include:
ࣇ to represent
/ɭ/ and
ݨ to represent
/ɳ/. These characters, however are rarely used.
Loanwords
In Punjabi, there are many Arabic and Persian
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s. These words contain some sounds which were alien to South Asian languages before the influence of Arabic and Persian, and are therefore represented by introducing dots beneath specific Gurmukhi characters. Since the Gurmukhi alphabet is
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
, any loanwords which contained pre-existing sounds were more easily transliterated without the need for characters modified with
subscript dots.
is pronounced 'j' in French or as vion in English
is often transliterated in many ways due to its changing sound in various Arabic and Persian words.
Gallery
File:Bulleh Shah poetry example.png, An example of poetry in Shahmukhi by Bulleh Shah
Syed Abdullah Shah Qadri ( pa, ; ; 1680–1757), known popularly as Bulleh Shah ( pa, ; ) and Bulleya, was a Punjabi philosopher and Sufi poet during 17th-century Punjab. His ancestors had migrated from Bukhara (modern-day Uzbekistan) ...
, a prominent Sufi-poet
File:Bhulay Shah.jpg, Another example of poetry by Bulleh Shah in Shahmukhi
See also
*
Gurmukhī alphabet
Gurmukhī ( pa, ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). It is used by Punjabi Sikhs to write the language, commonly re ...
*
Saraiki alphabet
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Shahmukhi to Gurmukhi Transliteration System: A Corpus based Approach
Learn ShahmukhiKalam-e-Baba NanakPunjabi and PunjabE-Book on Gurmukhi and ShahmukhiPDF on Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shahmukhi alphabet
Arabic alphabets
Orthographies by language
Punjabi language
Arabic alphabets for South Asian languages