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Shahmukhi شاہمُکھی
"Shahmukhi" written using the Nastaliq calligraphic hand
Script type	Abjad
Direction	Right-to-left script
Languages	Punjabi
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic Perso-Arabic Shahmukhi
Unicode
Unicode range	U+0600 to U+06FF U+0750 to U+077F U+08A0 to U+08FF U+FB50 to U+FDFF U+FE70 to U+FEFF
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between , / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Shahmukhi (Template:Lang-pa, Template:Lang-pa) is a modified Perso-Arabic alphabet used by Punjabi Muslims (primarily in Punjab, Pakistan) to write the Punjabi language. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, which is also used for Urdu. Perso-Arabic is one of two scripts used for Punjabi, the other being Gurmukhi, used by Sikhs and Hindus in Punjab, India.

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. It became the conventional writing style for the Muslim populace of the Pakistani province of Punjab following the Partition of India, while the largely Hindu and Sikh modern-day state of Punjab, India adopted the Gurmukhi or the Devanagari scripts to record the Punjabi language.

Shahmukhi can be considered as a superset to Urdu alphabet because it has same alphabet as Urdu but with just 2 extra consonants; hence all Urdu readers can naturally read Shahmukhi (and vice-versa) without any practical difficulty. Urdu being the national language of Pakistan, Shahmukhi is colloquially just referred as Urdu script (or Urdu-Shahmukhi).

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 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 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 not normally written and only implied, like Urdu, Shahmukhi also has diacritics, taken from the Arabic language, to express short vowels.

Consonants

No Punjabi words begin with Template:Rtl-lang, Template:Rtl-lang, Template:Rtl-lang or Template:Rtl-lang. The digraphs of aspirated consonants are as follows. In addition, ل and لؕ form ligatures with ا: لا (ـلا) and لؕا (ـلؕا).

• 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 یَ.
• 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: ٹ to represent /ʈ/, ڈ to represent /ɖ/, ڑ to represent /ɽ/, ں to represent /◌̃/, and ے to represent /ɛ:/ or /e:/. Furthermore, a separate do-cashmi-he letter, ھ, 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 loanwords. 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, any loanwords which contained pre-existing sounds were more easily transliterated without the need for characters modified with subscript dots.

ژ is pronounced 'j' in French or as vision in English

ع is often transliterated in many ways due to its changing sound in various Arabic and Persian words.

Gallery

• An example of poetry in Shahmukhi by Bulleh Shah, a prominent Sufi-poet
• Another example of poetry by Bulleh Shah in Shahmukhi

See also

• Gurmukhī alphabet
• Saraiki alphabet

References

1. Evans, Lorna Priest; Malik, M.G. Abbas (1 May 2019). "Unicode Proposal for ArLaam" (PDF). Unicode. Punjabi Parchar. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
2. Singh Saini, Tejineder; Singh Lehal, Gurpreet; S Kalra, Virinder (August 2008). "Shahmukhi to Gurmukhi Transliteration System". Aclweb.org. Coling 2008 Organizing Committee: 177–180. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 August 2017. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
3. ^ Sharma, Saurabh; Gupta, Vishal (May 2013). "Punjabi Documents Clustering System" (PDF). Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence. 5 (2): 174. doi:10.4304/JETWI.5.2.171-187. S2CID 55699784. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
4. ^ Dhanju, Kawarbir Singh; Lehal, Gurpreet Singh; Saini, Tejinder Singh; Kaur, Arshdeep (October 2015). "Design and Implementation of Shahmukhi Spell Checker" (PDF). Learnpunjabi.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
5. Malik, Muhammad Ghulam Abbas; Boitet, Christian; Bhattcharyya, Pushpak (27 June 2012) . "ANALYSIS OF NOORI NASTA'LEEQ FOR MAJOR PAKISTANI LANGUAGES". King AbdulAziz University. Penang, Malaysia. p. 4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 August 2017. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
6. ^ Dorren, Gaston (2018). Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages. Profile Books. ISBN 978-1782832508.
7. Sharma, Saurabh; Gupta, Vishal (May 2013). "Punjabi Documents Clustering System" (PDF). Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence. 5 (2): 174. doi:10.4304/JETWI.5.2.171-187. S2CID 55699784. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
8. Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography. Springer. 2019. p. 142. ISBN 978-3030059774.
9. Shackle, Christopher. "Punjabi language". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-06-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
10. ^ Shackle, Christopher (2007). Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (eds.). Panjabi. Routledge. p. 655. ISBN 978-0-415-77294-5. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
11. Dhavan, Purnima (2019-12-31), Green, Nile (ed.), "Marking Boundaries and Building Bridges: Persian Scholarly Networks in Mughal Punjab", The Persianate World, University of California Press, pp. 168–169, doi:10.1525/9780520972100-009, ISBN 978-0-520-97210-0, retrieved 2021-06-12
12. Bhardwaj, Mangat (2016). Panjabi: A Comprehensive Grammar. Routledge. p. 378. ISBN 978-1317643265. It is an ancient Arabic writing tradition (carried on in Persian, Urdu and Shahmukhi) to omit the diacritics (except the Hamza) in ordinary writing and to depend on the context to interpret a word.
13. "Punjabi - Shahmukhi Script". sanlp.org. Archived from the original on 19 September 2019. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
14. Delacy 2003, p. XV–XVI. sfn error: no target: CITEREFDelacy2003 (help)
15. ^ Rarely used in literature, except when a distinction between the pronunciation of the non-retroflex character is needed
16. ^ "Urdu romanization" (PDF). The Library of Congress.

External links

• Shahmukhi to Gurmukhi Transliteration System: A Corpus based Approach
• The Western Panjabi Alphabet
• Learn Shahmukhi
• Likhari in Shahmukhi
• Kalam-e-Baba Nanak
• Punjabi and Punjab
• E-Book on Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi
• PDF on Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi

• Arabic alphabets
• Language orthographies
• Punjabi language
• Arabic alphabets for South Asian languages