Updated 17 December, 2024
This page brings together basic information about the Devanagari script and its use for the Kashmiri language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Kashmiri using Unicode.
Richard Ishida, Kashmiri (Devanagari) Orthography Notes, 17-Dec-2024, https://r12a.github.io/scripts/deva/ks
सिरीनगर छु अख सॏंदर शहर। यि छु जॆहलम दऺरियावॖक्यन दॖन बठ्यन प्यठ बऺसिथ। शहरा मंज़ छि ज़ॖ बाल, शेंकराचार तॖ हारि परबथ। निशात बाग, सालॖमऺर बाग, चॆशमॖ सऻही, पऺरी महल तॖ हऻरवन सरबंद छि सऻरिय सिरीनगर शहरस मंज़। अमर नाथ तॖ तुलमुल छि हॆंद्यन हॖंद्य जॖ पवित्र तीर्थस्थान। हज़रतबल तॖ खानकाह छि मॖसलमानन हॖमंजॖ मुक्कदस ज़ियारचॖ। कल्हन पँडिथ ओस कऺशीरि हुंद अख बॊड बारॖ तऻरीखदान तॖ लल द्यद तॖ नुंदॖ र्यॊश ॴस्य् जॖ थदि पायिक्य् सूफी शऻयिर। कऻशिर्यन हॖंज़ ज़बान छि कऻशुर।
Source: koshur.org, Basic reader
Origins of the Devanagari script, 11thC – today.
Phoenician
└ Aramaic
└ Brahmi
└ Gupta
└ Siddham
└ Nagari
└ Devanagari
+ Kaithi
+ Nandinagari
+ Gujarati
+ Modi
Kashmiri is written in the devanagari script by Hindus. Muslims use the arabic script. Due to population migrations, the use of the Devanagari script to write Kashmiri has significantly dwindled, although there are efforts to revive its use, and a number of recent reforms attempted to standardise the orthography.
कऻशुर
In 1995, 2002, and 2009 the orthographic reforms centred around the representation of vowel sounds. The result is that texts on the internet can be found using various different approaches, and the largest number of pages found were written just after the introduction of the 2002 reform, and so use slightly different vowel graphemes. This page presents the orthography based on the 2009 revision. For more information see previousOrthographies.
For information about the script in general, see the Devanagari overview.u
Devanagari is an abugida. Consonant letters have an inherent vowel sound. Combining vowel signs are attached to the consonant to indicate that a different vowel follows the consonant. See the table in the right-hand column for a brief overview of features for the modern Kashmiri orthography using the Devanagari script.
Kashmiri uses fewer consonants than Hindi, but has more vowels. The orthography includes some Kashmiri-specific characters.
Devanagari text runs left-to-right in horizontal lines.
Orthographic syllables (as opposed to phonetic syllables) play a significant role in Devanagari text. An orthographic syllable starts at the beginning of any cluster of consonants and incorporates the whole cluster plus any following vowels and diacritics.
The 25 basic consonant letters are supplemented by repertoire extensions for 3 more sounds by applying the nukta diacritic to characters.
Phonetically, Kashmiri has only three forms of plosives, illustrated here with the bilabial stop: unvoiced p, voiced b, aspirated pʰ. The murmured bʱ is not used, although these letters may crop up in Sanskrit or Hindi loan words. It also has a set of retroflex consonants. Kashmiri also commonly palatalises consonants.
Consonant clusters are normally indicated using the virama between consonants, though often there is no marker for unpronounced inherent vowels. It is also common to see a visible virama, especially for palatalisation. Conjunct forms are otherwise expressed using the common Devanagari half-forms, stacked consonants, and ligated glyphs.
As part of a cluster, RA has special forms, but a palatalised RA at the beginning of a word needs special treatment to avoid a repa formation.
Syllable-final consonant nasal sounds are most commonly represented by a dedicated combining mark (anusvara). Kashmiri normally uses only one letter for m and one for n, although other nasals may occur in words borrowed from Sanskrit.
❯ basicV
The Kashmiri orthography is an abugida with one inherent vowel. It represents other vowels using 16 vowel signs. All vowel signs are combining marks.
There are no multipart vowels and no circumgraphs. There is 1 pre-base vowel sign.
All standalone vowel sounds are written using one of 17 independent vowel letters. One vocalic letter is also used.
Two vowel signs and letters represent diphthongs.
Vowels may be nasalised, using the candrabindu diacritic.
Native digits are used. Punctuation is mostly ASCII, but dandas may be used for phrase boundaries.
See the Devanagari overview.u
These are sounds for the Kashmiri language.
Click on the sounds to reveal locations in this document where they are mentioned.
| labial | dental | alveolar | post- alveolar |
retroflex | palatal | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stops | p b | t d | ʈ ɖ | k ɡ | ||||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | ʈʰ | kʰ | ||||
| affricates | t͡s | t͡ʃ d͡ʒ | ||||||
| aspirated | t͡sʰ | t͡ʃʰ | ||||||
| fricatives | s z | ʃ | h | |||||
| nasals | m | n | ||||||
| approximants | w | l | j | |||||
| trills/flaps | r | |||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Kashmiri has no voiced aspirated sounds.
The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.
ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. Dependent vowels are on the left, standalone vowels on the right. Diacritics are added to the vowels to indicate nasalisation (not shown here).
| Plain: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Diphthongs: | ||
| Vocalics: |
For additional details see vowel_mappings.
क ka U+0915 DEVANAGARI LETTER KA
a following a consonant is not written, but is seen as an inherent part of the consonant letter, so ka is written by simply using the consonant letter.
Post-consonant vowels are written using using 16 vowel signs. All vowel signs are combining marks.
There are no multipart vowels and no circumgraphs. There is 1 pre-base vowel sign.
की kiː U+0915 DEVANAGARI LETTER KA + U+0940 DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN II
Kashmiri uses the following dedicated combining marks for vowels.
Some of these vowel signs are the result of recent standardisation of the orthography (see previousOrthographies).
Eight vowel signs are spacing combining characters, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.
All vowel signs are typed and stored after the base consonant, and the rendering process puts them in the correct place for display.
An orthography that uses vowel signs is different from one that uses simple diacritics or letters for vowels, in that the vowel signs are generally attached to an orthographic syllable, rather than just applied to the letter of the immediately preceding consonant. In other words, pre-base vowel sign components are rendered before a whole consonant cluster if that cluster is rendered as a conjunct (see prebase_vowels for an example).
कि ki U+0915 DEVANAGARI LETTER KA + U+093F DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN I
One vowel sign appears to the left of the base consonant letter or cluster, eg. कि
This is a combining mark that is always typed and stored after the base consonant(s), ie. the codepoints follow the order in which the items are pronounced. The rendering process places the glyph before the base consonant without changing the code points.
It is actually placed before the start of an orthographic syllable. In fig_prebase the sequence of glyphs for the orthographic syllable is rendered VCC, whereas the pronunciation is CCV. In conjuncts with 3 consonants, it will still be rendered before the consonants.
बेत्रि
However, if the cluster is split by a visible virama, this creates two syllables and the pre-base vowel sign appears after the last consonant with the virama. The sequence of displayed glyphs is now CVC. If the conjunct contains 3 consonants, the displayed order will be CCVC.
Vowel length is indicated by the vowel sign used (see combiningV).
Nasalisation of the vowel in a syllable can be indicated using 0901. मुँह वाँदुर
The following list shows where vowel signs are positioned around a base consonant to produce vowels, and how many instances of that pattern there are.
Kashmiri represents standalone vowels using a set of independent vowel letters. The set contains a character to represent the inherent vowel sound.
As was the case for the vowel signs, some of these letters are the result of recent standardisation of the orthography (see previousOrthographies).
Kashmiri is not a tonal language.
To kill the inherent vowel after a consonant Kashmiri uses 094D.
In conjuncts, the virama is usually not seen, but it is often seen in Kashmiri words that end with palatalisation (see palatalisation).
Kashmiri commonly suppresses the inherent vowel without a conjunct or visible virama appearing in the orthography, eg. अतलास रफतार
This section maps Kashmiri vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Devanagari orthography.
vowel sign ि
standalone इ
vowel sign ी
standalone ई
vowel sign ॖ
standalone ॶ
vowel sign ॗ
standalone ॷ
vowel sign ु
standalone उ
vowel sign ू
standalone ऊ
vowel sign ॆ
standalone ऎ
vowel sign े
standalone ए
vowel sign ॊ
standalone ऒ
vowel sign ो
standalone ओ
vowel sign ऺ
standalone ॳ
vowel sign ऻ
standalone ॴ
vowel sign ॏ
standalone ॵ
inherent vowel eg. दर्शुन
standalone अ
vowel sign ा
standalone आ
vowel sign ै
standalone ऐ
vowel sign ौ
standalone औ
Prior to 1995 there was no standard way to write Kashmiri, and people spelled words in different ways.rt,7 There was an orthographic standardisation reform in 1995, followed by another in 2002, and a further revision in 2009.
Prior to the orthographic reform in 2002, the phonemes ɨ and ɨː were respectively written 0945 0941 and 0945 0942.ep The 2002 reform replaced those with 0956 and 0957, and a pair of equivalent independent vowels.mkr
It also brought in a number of other characters shown in fig_orthographic_changes.
| phoneme | 1995 | 2002 | 2009 | Current usage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ɨ | ॅु | ॖ ॶ |
0956 0976 |
|
| ɨː | ॅू | ॗ ॷ |
0957 0977 |
|
| ə | ऽ | ॅ ॲ |
ऺ ॳ |
093A 0973 |
| əː | ॉ ऑ |
ऻ ॴ |
093B 0974 |
|
| e | े' | ॆ ऎ |
0946 090E |
|
| o | ो' | ो ओ |
094B 0913 |
|
| ɔ | व | ॏ ॵ |
094F 0975 |
Another revision occurred in 2009, resulting in the set of characters used in this page.l Principle changes included the substitution of 0973 and 0974 for ॲ and ऑ, respectively.
The reform also introduced a new character, ॵ, and its equivalent vowel sign, 094F, to replace the use of ्व for the vowel ɔ. For example, the following shows the spelling changes for the word sɔkʰmoth.
Old: *स्वखNew: सॏख
The new characters were added in Unicode v6. In the gap, there was some experimentation with Gurmukhi characters for the phonemes ɨ and ɨː.
Observation: Raina & Trakru describe the use of a single vocalic. It appears to be used for Sanskrit-derived words, and 2 of the four example words given also include the letter ष, which is not usually used for Kashmiri.
One of the examples also uses a vowel sign to modify the inherent sound of the standalone vocalic, which is somewhat unusual. The example is ऋॆष्य्.
The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.
| Onsets | |
|---|---|
| Finals |
For additional details see vowel_mappings.
Basic set of consonants used for Kashmiri. Whereas the table just above takes you from sounds to letters, the following simply lists the basic consonant letters (however, since the orthography is highly phonetic there is little difference in ordering).
Three items in the lists above are combinations of 093C and another character.
Only one of those combinations exists in precomposed form. The other two have to be typed and stored as two characters.
NFC does not recombine the decomposed version of this character into a precomposed character. Instead, normalisation produces decomposed forms when using both NFC and NFD. So both approaches are canonically equivalent, but the decomposed form is recommended by the Unicode Standard.
Palatalisation is a frequent feature of Kashmiri words. It is represented using य as the final element of a cluster.
Inside a word the YA forms a conjunct or a cluster with the preceding consonant, eg. त्यम्बॖर
At the end of a word, the YA is followed by a visible virama, eg. थऺन्य्
Use preceding the inherent vowel is typically transcribed using ê, eg. têmbar. At the end of a word, it is often transcribed using a superscript i, eg. tånⁱ
Some care needs to be taken when the palatalisation follows r at the beginning of a word, so as to prevent the sequence forming a repha, ie. र्य. The required rendering can be achieved using र्य, eg. र्यथ Word-internal use of the repha with palatalisation can, however, be seen, eg. पऻर्यज़ान
Since they are palatal sounds, the YA is not needed after the following consonants.
Words directly borrowed from Sanskrit and Hindi may use additional characters that are not normally used in Kashmiri.mkr
Kashmiri normally uses only 2 of the 5 standard nasal letters in Sanskrit. The missing letters shown just above are normally rendered in Kashmiri using 0902mkr, eg. compare*ब्रह्मण्ड b͓rh͓mɳ͓ɖब्रह्मांड
They may, however, be found occasionally in conjuncts,rt,9 eg. ang in the Kashmiri orthography is written अंगbut may be written अङ्ग
On the other hand, they normally never appear outside of a conjunct, ie. ganapatʰ is more properly written in Kashmiri asगनपथ gnptʰ rather than the Sanskrit गणपथ gɳptʰThat said, some writers will nonetheless use the Sanskrit forms.rt,9
The voiced aspirated plosive letters of Devanagari shown just above may be used to write Sanskrit words, or those words may be written without, eg. dharma may be written धर्म using Sanskrit letters, or दर्म in the Kashmiri style.rt,9
The letter and the two special conjuncts listed just above are also not used in Kashmiri, although they may pop up sometimes in words borrowed directly from Sanskrit.
Clusters of consonant letters at the beginning of an orthographic syllable occur in Kashmiri, and they are handled as described in the section clusters.
Special behaviours include handling of RA at the beginning of an orthographic syllable (see rconjuncts).
0902 represents a nasal that is homorganic with a following consonant. It is positioned over the previous consonant or vowel sign,mkr eg. पॖंच़ॗहज़ॊंग
See also the candrabindu diacritic, which nasalises a vowel.
The visarga is not used in Kashmiri.rt,8
See the Devanagari overview.
Gemination and consonant lengthening are handled using the normal approach to consonant clusters (see clusters).
This section maps Kashmiri consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Devanagari orthography.
The list includes consonant letters are not normally found in Kashmiri words, and generally occur only in loan words that have kept their original spelling. They are often replaced with one of the consonants used for Kashmiri sounds.
Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc. Light coloured characters occur infrequently.
consonant प
consonant फ
consonant ब
consonant भ Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant त
consonant थ
consonant च़
consonant छ़
consonant च
consonant छ
consonant द
consonant ध Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant ज
consonant झ Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant ट
consonant ठ
consonant ड
consonant ढ Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant क
consonant ख
consonant cluster क्ष Spelling retained in Sanskrit loans.
consonant ग
consonant घ Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant cluster ज्ञ Spelling retained in Sanskrit loans.
consonant व
consonant स
consonant ज़
precomposed consonant ज़
consonant श
consonant ष Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant ह
consonant म
final nasal ं Coda.
consonant न
final nasal ं Coda.
consonant ञ Rare. Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant ण Spellings retained in Sanskrit loans.
final nasal ं Coda.
consonant ङ Rare. Retained in unassimilated loan words. Often replaced by mainstream Kashmiri consonants.
consonant व
consonant र
vocalic vowel sign ृ
vocalic independent vowel ऋ
vowel sign ॄ
independent vowel ॠ
consonant ल
consonant/palatalisation marker य
palatalisation marker य् Palatalisation indicator.
consonant/palatalisation marker य Palatalisation indicator.
This section looks at alternative strategies for typing and storing letters used by Kashmiri, taking into consideration the effects of normalising the text using Unicode Normalisation Form D (NFD), and Normalisation Form C (NFC).
The single code points on the left should be used, and not the sequences on the right, because they are not made the same by normalisation. Therefore the content will be regarded as different, which will affect searching and other operations on the text.
| Use | Do not use |
|---|---|
| 094B | 093E 0947 |
| 094C | 093E 0948 |
| 094A | 093E 0946 |
| 093B | 093E 093A |
The next table shows vowel signs that were rendered obsolete by recent standardisation work. Use the characters on the left, rather than those on the right. (See previousOrthographies.)
| Use | Do not use |
|---|---|
| 0956 | 0945 0941 |
| 0957 | 0945 0942 |
| 093A | 0945 093D |
| 093B | 0949 |
| 0946 | 0947 02BC |
| 094B | 094B 02BC |
| 094F | व |
Again, the single code points on the left should be used, and not the sequences on the right, because they are not made the same by normalisation.
| Use | Do not use |
|---|---|
| आ | 0905 093E |
| ॳ | 0905 093A |
| ॴ | 0905 093B |
| ओ | 0905 094B |
| औ | 0905 094C |
| ऒ | 0905 094A |
| ॶ | 0905 0956 |
| ॷ | 0905 0957 |
| ऐ | 090F 0947 |
| ऎ | 090F 0946 |
The next table shows vowel signs that were rendered obsolete by recent standardisation work. Use the characters on the left, rather than those on the right. (See previousOrthographies.)
| Use | Do not use |
|---|---|
| ॶ | 0945 0941 |
| ॷ | 0945 0942 |
| ॳ | ॲ ऽ |
| ॴ | ऑ |
| ऎ | 0947 02BC |
| ओ | 094B 02BC |
| ॵ | व |
The table just below shows precomposed and decomposed representation of a Kashmiri letter which are treated as canonically equivalent by Unicode, meaning that you can use either. The Unicode Standard, however, recommends the use of the decomposed version, because normalisation does not reconstitute the precomposed from the decomposed.
| Recommended | Not recommended |
|---|---|
| ज़ | ज़ |
Observation: Clarification needed on whether or not Kashmiri uses indic digits, and the rupee sign. Sources used so far keep to ASCII digits, but the Devanagari block has a set of digits that are used in Hindi.
Kashmiri in the Devanagari script runs left to right in horizontal lines.
Show default bidi_class properties for characters in the Kashmiri orthography described here.
You can experiment with examples using the Kashmiri character app.
Within a Kashmiri word, spacing glyphs are typically joined together at the top bar (shirorekha).
काहवऺट
The top bar extends across or through most spacing letters, including both consonants and vowels, but some letters create a gap in the line (while still joining at either side). Two such letters can be seen in the following example.
अथॖ
Characters that create these gaps include digits and the following:
Alignment of the top bar may be appropriate when mixing text of different sizes (see initials). Also, when Gurmukhi text is mixed with another script that also has a top bar, such as Devanagari, the top bars of both scripts may need to be aligned.
The shape of a character when displayed can vary, often dramatically, according to the context.
One very common example in most indic scripts is the handling of 'conjunct consonants', ie. groups of consonants with no intervening vowel sounds. Since consonants in indic scripts have an inherent vowel sound, when two consonants are combined this way you have to indicate that the vowel of the initial consonant is suppressed. This is normally done by altering the shape of the first consonant, or merging the shape of the two consonants.
To tell the font to do this, in Unicode you add 094D between the two consonants. This produces the change in the shapes of the glyphs that indicates to the reader that this is a conjunct. The actual outcome is font dependent. For the word below which contains a conjunct of two ल characters (making a long L sound) you may see a 'half-form' used for the first LA (shown on the left) or you may see (as shown on the right) a ligated form.
There are other types of context-based shaping, which are font specific. One is shown below. The width of the glyph for 093F differs according to the base character to which it is attached.
Diacritics regularly combine with a vowel sign attached to the same consonant or consonant cluster. The example below shows two combining characters that are positioned above the base character in a very common form of the verb 'to be'. One is 0948, and the other the nasalisation mark 0902.
Combining characters need to be placed in different positions, according to the context.
The example on the left below displays the dot (anusvara) immediately over the long vertical stroke. The example to the right has moved the dot slightly to the right in order to accomodate the vowel sign.
In the following the image to the left shows the normal position of 0942, beneath the first letter. The example on the right shows that character displayed higher up and to the right when combined with the base character र.
Word boundaries are indicated by spaces.
Kashmiri sometimes uses a hyphen to separate parts of a compound noun, eg. ॶंह-रारय
tbd
Devanagari uses standard Latin punctuation, but also has its own version of a full stop, ।.
| phrase | , ; : |
|---|---|
| sentence | । ? ! |
| paragraph | ॥ |
Kashmiri commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.
| start | end | |
|---|---|---|
| standard | ( |
) |
Devanagari is normally wrapped at word boundaries.
As in almost all writing systems, certain punctuation characters should not appear at the end or the start of a line. The Unicode line-break properties help applications decide whether a character should appear at the start or end of a line.
Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the modern Kashmiri orthography.
The following list gives examples of typical behaviours for characters used in modern Hindi. Context may affect the behaviour of some of these and other characters.
Click on the Hindi characters to show what they are.
Line breaking should also not move a danda or double danda to the beginning of a new line, even if they are preceded by a space character. These punctuation characters should behave in the same way as a full stop does in English text.
Devanagari text can be hyphenated during line wrap, though it is not very common (unlike several south Indian scripts).
Hyphenation adds a hyphen at the end of the line when a word is broken.