There are three writing systems for Saraiki, but very few of the language's speakers, even those who are

literate Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...

in other languages, are able to read or write Saraiki in any writing system.

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 Landa may refer to: * Landa (surname) *Landa, real estate investing company * Landa, Álava, a village in Basque Country, Spain * Landa, North Dakota, United States * Laṇḍā, a class of scripts in Northern India See also * Landa de Matamoros, ...

whose usage was extended beyond the mercantile domain and formalized for literary activity and printing; the others being Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Khojki (Marwari) and Khudawadi (Sindhi). 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 Langdi was a script commonly used by traders used to write Haryanvi, Punjabi, or Saraiki in the Indian subcontinent . Bookkeepers, known as munīm ( hi, मुनीम, ur, ), would also keep records in this script. Some scholars have claim ...

, 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 Saraiki writing system today is 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 cen ...

, as standardized in Pakistan as an extension to the Shahmukhi alphabet. Saraiki has a 43-letter alphabet including, which includes four letters not used in the related Punjabi and Hindko languages. Another difference the Saraiki alphabet has with

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 ...

is the disuse of the already uncommon Lam with tah above which is present in standard

Alphabet Table

Notes

Saraiki has 4 additional glyphs that are not present in its parent alphabet of

. ٻ represents the

Voiced bilabial implosive A 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 the ...

, 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 sp ...

, and ݙ represents the

Voiced retroflex implosive The voiced retroflex implosive is a type of consonantal sound. It is not known to be phonemically distinct from alveolar in any language. Sindhi has an implosive that varies between dental and retroflex articulation, while Oromo, Saraiki and ...

. 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'': indicates a glottal stop. * ''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 ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent to ...

'': 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

Saraiki uses the

Eastern Arabic numerals The Eastern Arabic numerals, also called Arabic-Hindu numerals or Indo–Arabic numerals, are the symbols used to represent numerical digits in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet in the countries of the Mashriq (the east of the Arab world) ...

Romanization

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 → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

'' is the direct representation of ''letters'' by using foreign symbols, but most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually ''

transcription Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including: Genetics * Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...

'' systems that represent the ''sound'' of the language. For example, the above rendering ' of the ar, مناظرة الحروف العربية 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 ( ; , , 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 ...

and

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 ...

scripts, written from left to right, were used by

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 ...

and Sikhs respectively around

Saraikistan South Punjab ( ur, ) or Saraikistan (Urdu, skr, ) is a proposed new province of Pakistan, comprising the areas which has a majority of Saraikis in the southern part of Punjab province. Made up of Bahawalpur Division, Multan Division and ...

. 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 (), 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 s ...

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 Saraiki language Alphabets Arabic alphabets for South Asian languages