The Urdu alphabet (), is the right-to-left

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

used for

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Persian script, which is itself a derivative of the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...

. The Urdu alphabet has up to 39 or 40 distinct letters with no distinct letter cases and is typically written in the calligraphic Nastaʿlīq script, whereas

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

is more commonly written in the Naskh style. Usually, bare transliterations of Urdu into the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

(called

Roman Urdu Roman Urdu ( ur, ) is the name used for the Urdu language written with the Latin script, also known as the Roman script. According to the Urdu scholar Habib R. Sulemani: "Roman Urdu is strongly opposed by the traditional Arabic script lovers. ...

) omit many phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Latin script.

History

The standard Urdu script is a modified version of the

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan ( Dari Persian) since the 7th ce ...

and has its origins in 13th century

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. It is closely related to the development of the

Nastaliq ''Nastaliq'' (; fa, , ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'', is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script in the Persian and Urdu languages, often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, rarely for Arabic. ''Na ...

style of Perso-Arabic script. Despite the invention of the Urdu typewriter in 1911, Urdu newspapers continued to publish prints of handwritten scripts by calligraphers known as '' katibs'' or '' khush-navees'' until the late 1980s. The

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

i national newspaper '' Daily Jang'' was the first Urdu

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

to use ''Nastaʿlīq'' computer-based composition. There are efforts under way to develop more sophisticated and user-friendly Urdu support on computers and the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

. Nowadays, nearly all Urdu newspapers, magazines, journals, and periodicals are composed on computers with Urdu software programs. Other than the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, In ...

, the Urdu script is also used by Pakistan's large diaspora, including in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

, the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (Middle East, The Middle East). It is ...

, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Ara ...

and other places.

Nastaliq

Urdu is written in the

style ( fa, Nastaʿlīq). The Nastaliq calligraphic writing style began as a Persian mixture of the Naskh and Ta'liq scripts. After the Mughal conquest, Nastaliq became the preferred writing style for Urdu. It is the dominant style in Pakistan and many Urdu writers elsewhere in the world use it. Nastaʿlīq is more cursive and flowing than its Naskh counterpart. In the Arabic alphabet, and many others derived from it, letters are regarded as having two or three general forms each, based on their position in the word (though Arabic calligraphy can add a great deal of complexity). But the Nastaliq style in which Urdu is written uses more than three general forms for many letters, even in simple non-decorative documents.

Alphabet

The Urdu script is an

abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vow ...

script derived from the modern Persian script, which is itself a derivative of the

. As an abjad, the Urdu script only shows consonants and long vowels; short vowels can only be inferred by the consonants' relation to each other. While this type of script is convenient in

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...

like Arabic and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, whose consonant roots are the key of the sentence, Urdu is an

Indo-European language The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

, which requires more precision in vowel sound pronunciation, hence necessitating more memorisation. The number of letters in the Urdu alphabet is somewhat ambiguous and debated.

Letter names and phonemes

:Footnotes:

Additional characters and variations

Arabic Tāʼ marbūṭah

Tāʼ marbūṭah is also sometimes considered the 40th letter of the Urdu alphabet, though it is rarely used except for in certain loan words from Arabic. Tāʼ marbūṭah is regarded as a form of tā, the Arabic version of Urdu tē, But it is not pronounced as such, and when replaced with an Urdu letter in naturalised loan words it is usually replaced with Gol hē.

Table

} , rowspan=2 , ar,
, rowspan=2 style="white-space:nowrap;" , ''tāʼ marbūṭah''
"bound ta" , style="text-align:left;white-space:nowrap;" , U+06C3
''teh marbuta goal'' , - , - , style="white-space:nowrap;font-size:140%;" , , style="font-size:130%;white-space:nowrap;" , , style="text-align:left;white-space:nowrap;" , U+0629
''teh marbuta'' , - , - , style="white-space:nowrap;font-size:140%;" , , style="font-size:130%;white-space:nowrap;" , , style=white-space:nowrap; , ar,
, ar,
, style=white-space:nowrap; , ''tāʼ maftūḥah ''
"open ta" , style="text-align:left;white-space:nowrap;" , U+062A
''Teh'' , - , - ::Footnotes:

Hamza in Nastaliq

Hamza can be difficult to recognise in Urdu handwriting and fonts designed to replicate it, closely resembling two dots above as featured in Té and Qaf, whereas in Arabic and Geometric fonts it is more distinct and closely resembles the western form of the numeral 2 (two).

Digraphs

Differences from
Persian alphabet The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran (Western Persian) and Afghanistan ( Dari Persian) since the 7th cen ...

Urdu has more letters added to the Perso-Arabic base to represent sounds not present in Persian, which already has additional letters added to the Arabic base itself to represent sounds not present in Arabic. The letters added are shown in the table below: A separate do-chashmi- he letter, , exists to denote a /ʰ/ or a /ʱ/. This letter is mainly used as part of the multitude of digraphs, detailed in above sub-section. In addition to these letters,

Shahmukhi Shahmukhi (, ) is a Perso-Arabic alphabet script used historically by Punjabi Muslims (primarily in present-day Pakistani Punjab) to write the Punjabi language. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, which is also used f ...

adds 2 consonants on top of Urdu alphabet to write

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

, and Saraiki further adds 4 more consonants.

Retroflex letters

Old Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England * Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, M ...

Hindustani used four dots over three Arabic letters to represent retroflex consonants. In handwriting those dots were often written as a small vertical line attached to a small triangle. Subsequently, this shape became identical to a small letter ''t̤oʼē''. It is commonly and erroneously assumed that ''ṭāʾ'' itself was used to indicate retroflex consonants because of it being an emphatic alveolar consonant that Arabic scribes thought approximated the Hindustani retroflexes. In modern Urdu , called ''to'e'' is always pronounced as a dental, not a retroflex.

Vowels

The Urdu language has ten vowels and ten nasalized vowels. Each vowel has four forms depending on its position: initial, middle, final and isolated. Like in its parent Arabic alphabet, Urdu vowels are represented using a combination of digraphs and diacritics. Alif, Waw, Ye, He and their variants are used to represent vowels.

Vowel chart

Urdu does not have standalone vowel letters. Short vowels (''a'', ''i'', ''u'') are represented by optional diacritics (''zabar'', ''zer'', ''pesh'') upon the preceding consonant or a placeholder consonant (''alif'', ''ain'', or ''hamzah'') if the syllable begins with the vowel, and long vowels by consonants ''alif'', ''ain'', ''ye'', and ''wa'o'' as matres lectionis, with disambiguating diacritics, some of which are optional (''zabar'', ''zer'', ''pesh''), whereas some are not (''madd'', ''hamzah''). Urdu does not have short vowels at the end of words. This is a table of Urdu vowels:

''Alif''

''Alif'' is the first letter of the Urdu alphabet, and it is used exclusively as a vowel. At the beginning of a word, ''alif'' can be used to represent any of the short vowels: ''ab'', ''ism'', ''Urdū''. For long ''ā'' at the beginning of words alif-mad is used: ''āp'', but a plain alif in the middle and at the end: ''bhāgnā''.

''Wāʾo''

''Wāʾo'' is used to render the vowels "ū", "o", "u" and "au" ( ː ː �and �ːrespectively), and it is also used to render the labiodental approximant, � Only when preceded by the consonant ''k͟hē (''), can ''wāʾo'' render the "u" ( � sound (such as in , "''k͟hud''" - ''myself''), or not pronounced at all (such as in ', "''k͟haab''" - ''dream''). This is known as the silent ''wāʾo'', and is only present in words loaned from Persian.

''Ye''

''Ye'' is divided into two variants: ''choṭī ye'' ("little ye") and '' baṛī ye'' ("big ye"). ''Choṭī ye'' () is written in all forms exactly as in Persian. It is used for the long vowel "ī" and the consonant "y". ''Baṛī ye'' () is used to render the vowels "e" and "ai" ( and respectively). ''Baṛī ye'' is distinguishable in writing from ''choṭī ye'' only when it comes at the end of a word/ligature. Additionally, ''Baṛī ye'' is never used to begin a word/ligature, unlike ''choṭī ye''.

''The 2 he's''

''He'' is divided into two variants: ''

gol he Gol may refer to: Places * * Gol, Gilan, a village in Gilan Province, Iran * Gol, South Khorasan, a village in South Khorasan Province, Iran * Gol, Bukan, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Gol, Chaldoran, a village in West Azerbaij ...

'' ("round he") and ''do-cašmi he'' ("two-eyed he"). ''Gol he'' () is written round and zigzagged, and can impart the "h" () sound anywhere in a word. Additionally, at the end of a word, it can be used to render the long "a" or the "e" vowels ( or ), which also alters its form slightly (it is worth noting that on modern digital writing systems, this final form is achieved by writing two ''he's'' consecutively). ''Do-cašmi he'' () is written as in Arabic Naskh style (as a loop), in order to create the aspirate consonants and write Arabic words.

''Ayn''

''Ayn'' in its initial and final position is silent in pronunciation and is replaced by the sound of its preceding or succeeding vowel.

''Nun Ghunnah''

Vowel nasalization A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced with ...

is represented by ''nun ghunna'' written after their non-nasalized versions, for example: ' when nasalized would become '. In middle form ''nun ghunna'' is written just like ''nun'' and is differentiated by a diacritic called or ''ulta jazm'' which is a

superscript A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, whil ...

V symbol above the . Examples:

Diacritics

Urdu uses the same subset of diacritics used in

based on Persian conventions. Urdu also uses Persian names of the diacritics instead of Arabic names. Commonly used diacritics are ''zabar'' (Arabic ''fatḥah''), ''zer'' (Arabic ''kasrah''), ''pesh'' (Arabic ''dammah'') which are used to clarify the pronunciation of vowels, as shown above. ''Jazam'' ( , Arabic ''sukun'') is used to indicate a

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

and ''tashdid'' (, Arabic ''shaddah'') is used to indicate a

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

, although it is never used for verbs, which require double consonants to be spelled out separately. Other diacritics include ''khari zabar'' (Arabic ''dagger alif''), ''do zabar'' (Arabic ''fathatan'') which are found in some common

loan words. Other Arabic diacritics are also sometimes used though very rarely in loan words from Arabic. ''Zer-e-izafat'' and ''hamzah-e-izafat'' are described in the next section. Other than common diacritics, Urdu also has special diacritics, which are often found only in dictionaries for the clarification of irregular pronunciation. These diacritics include ''kasrah-e-majhool'', ''fathah-e-majhool'', ''dammah-e-majhool'', , ''ulta jazam'', ''alif-e-wavi'' and some other very rare diacritics. Among these, only is used commonly in dictionaries and has a Unicode representation at U+0658. Other diacritics are only rarely written in printed form, mainly in some advanced dictionaries.

Iẓāfat

''Iẓāfat'' is a syntactical construction of two nouns, where the first component is a determined noun, and the second is a determiner. This construction was borrowed from Persian. A short vowel "i" is used to connect these two words, and when pronouncing the newly formed word the short vowel is connected to the first word. If the first word ends in a consonant or an ''ʿain'' (), it may be written as ''zer'' () at the end of the first word, but usually is not written at all. If the first word ends in ''choṭī he'' () or ''ye'' ( or ) then ''hamzā'' () is used above the last letter ( or or ). If the first word ends in a long vowel ( or ), then a different variation of ''baṛī ye'' () with ''hamzā'' on top (, obtained by adding to ) is added at the end of the first word.

Computers and the Urdu alphabet

In the early days of computers, Urdu was not properly represented on any

code page In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some c ...

. One of the earliest code pages to represent Urdu was IBM Code Page 868 which dates back to 1990. tp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CS01248.pdf "IBM 868 code page"/ref> Other early code pages which represented Urdu alphabets were

Windows-1256 Windows-1256 is a code page used under Microsoft Windows to write Arabic and other languages that use Arabic script, such as Persian and Urdu. This code page is ''neither'' compatible with ISO-8859-6 nor the MacArabic encoding. Windows-1256 enc ...

and MacArabic encoding both of which date back to the mid-1990s. In

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

, Urdu is represented inside the Arabic block. Another code page for Urdu, which is used in India, is Perso-Arabic Script Code for Information Interchange. In Pakistan, the 8-bit code page which is developed by National Language Authority is called Urdu Zabta Takhti () (UZT) which represents Urdu in its most complete form including some of its specialized diacritics, though UZT is not designed to coexist with the Latin alphabet.

Encoding Urdu in Unicode

Like other writing systems derived from the Arabic script, Urdu uses the 0600–06FF Unicode range. Certain glyphs in this range appear visually similar (or identical when presented using particular fonts) even though the underlying encoding is different. This presents problems for information storage and retrieval. For example, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

's electronic copy of John Shakespear's "A Dictionary, Hindustani, and English" includes the word '' (''bhārat'' "India"). Searching for the string "" returns no results, whereas querying with the (identical-looking in many fonts) string "" returns the correct entry. This is because the medial form of the Urdu letter ''do chashmi he'' (U+06BE)—used to form aspirate digraphs in Urdu—is visually identical in its medial form to the Arabic letter hāʾ (U+0647; phonetic value ). In Urdu, the phoneme is represented by the character U+06C1, called ''gol he'' (round ''he''), or ''chhoti he'' (small ''he''). In 2003, the Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP)—a research organisation affiliated with Pakistan's

National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences The National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences ( Initials: NUCES) ( ur, ), also commonly known as "Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology" (FAST), ( ur, ) is a private research university with multiple campuses in di ...

—produced a proposal for mapping from the 1-byte UZT encoding of Urdu characters to the Unicode standard. This proposal suggests a preferred Unicode glyph for each character in the Urdu alphabet.

Software

The ''Daily Jang'' was the first Urdu newspaper to be typeset digitally in ''Nastaliq'' by computer. There are efforts underway to develop more sophisticated and user-friendly Urdu support on computers and on the Internet. Nowadays, nearly all Urdu newspapers, magazines, journals and periodicals are composed on computers via various Urdu software programmes, the most widespread of which is InPage Desktop Publishing package.

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

has included Urdu language support in all new versions of Windows and both

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and Microsoft Office 2007 are available in Urdu through

Language Interface Pack In Microsoft terminology, a Language Interface Pack (LIP) is a skin for localizing a Windows operating system in languages such as Lithuanian, Serbian, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, and Thai. Based on Multilingual User Interface (MUI) "technolog ...

support. Most Linux Desktop distributions allow the easy installation of Urdu support and translations as well.

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

implemented the Urdu language keyboard across

Mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physica ...

s in its iOS 8 update in September 2014.

Romanization standards and systems

There are several romanization standards for writing Urdu with the Latin alphabet, though they are not very popular because most fall short of representing the Urdu language properly. Instead of standard romanization schemes, people on Internet, mobile phones and media often use a non-standard form of romanization which tries to mimic

English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, ...

. The problem with this kind of romanization is that it can only be read by native speakers, and even for them with great difficulty. Among standardized romanization schemes, the most accurate is ALA-LC romanization, which is also supported by National Language Authority. Other romanization schemes are often rejected because either they are unable to represent sounds in Urdu properly, or they often do not take regard of Urdu orthography, and favor pronunciation over orthography. The National Language Authority of Pakistan has developed a number of systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be properly read by someone already familiar with the loan letters. Roman Urdu also holds significance among the Christians of Pakistan and

North India North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Cen ...

. Urdu was the dominant native language among Christians of

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...

and

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second List of cities in Pakistan by population, most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th List of largest cities, most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is th ...

in present-day Pakistan and

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the second ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 195 ...

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern ...

in India, during the early part of the 19th and 20th century, and is still used by Christians in these places. Pakistani and Indian Christians often used the Roman script for writing Urdu. Thus Roman Urdu was a common way of writing among Pakistani and Indian Christians in these areas up to the 1960s. The Bible Society of India publishes Roman Urdū Bibles that enjoyed sale late into the 1960s (though they are still published today). Church songbooks are also common in Roman Urdu. However, the usage of Roman Urdu is declining with the wider use of Hindi and English in these states.

Appendices

Glossary of key words from letter names

References

Sources

* * * *

External links

Urdu alphabet

calligraphyislamic.com
a resource for Urdu calligraphy and script
Urdu Script Introduction from Columbia University

{{DEFAULTSORT:Urdu Alphabet Hindustani orthography Urdu Arabic alphabets Arabic alphabets for South Asian languages Officially used writing systems of India