Punjabi

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Symbols

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	retroflex	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b	t d			ʈ ɖ		k ɡ
aspirated	pʰ	tʰ			ʈʰ		kʰ
affricates				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
aspirated				t͡ʃʰ
fricatives	f v		s z	ʃ			x ɣ	ɦ
nasals	m		n		ɳ	ɲ	ŋ
approximants	ʋ~w		l		ɭ	j
trills/flaps			ɾ		ɽ

Note that Punjabi has no voiced aspirated stops. The letters for these sounds do exist in Gurmukhi, but are redirected to indicate tone.

Structure

The following summary is from Wikipediawl.

The three retroflex consonants /ɳ, ɽ, ɭ/ do not occur initially, and the nasals /ŋ, ɲ/ occur only as allophones of /n/ in clusters with velars and palatals.

The well-established phoneme /ʃ/ may be realised allophonically as the voiceless retroflex fricative /ʂ/ in learned clusters with retroflexes.

The phonemic status of the fricatives /f, z, x, ɣ/ varies with familiarity with Hindustani norms, more so with the Gurmukhi script, with the pairs /f, pʰ/, /z, d͡ʒ/, /x, kʰ/, and /ɣ, g/ systematically distinguished in educated speech.

The retroflex lateral is most commonly analysed as an approximant as opposed to a flap.

Gurmukhi uses spaces to separate text into words. The inherent vowel is usually not pronounced at the end of a word, however there is often a ghost sound ᵊ, eg.

ਜਾਲ਼

Gurmukhi tends to use independent vowels rather than semi-vowels for sequences of vowel sounds, eg.

ਓਹਾਇਓ

Tone

Punjabi is a tonal language with three tones: high (transcribed as á), low (transcribed as à), and level (not transcribed). The tones cover one or two syllables.d

About 75% of words have a level tone.wl,#Tone

Sometimes these are described as contour tones: high rising falling, and low rising.

In some respects there appears to be a lack of clarity about the fine detail of how the tonal system works.b

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. Diacritics are added to the vowels to indicate nasalisation (not shown here). The right-hand column shows standalone vowels.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Inherent vowel

ਕ kə U+0A15 GURMUKHI LETTER KA

ə following a consonant is not written, but is seen as an inherent part of the consonant letter, so kə is written by simply using the consonant letter. The sound is transcribed as a.

Unlike most other indic scripts, there is generally no indication when a consonant is not pronounced with a following inherent vowel. (For the few occasions where this is made clear see clusters.) Generally speaking, the reader simply has to know whether an inherent vowel is pronounced or not, eg. ਉਤਸੁਕ

The inherent vowel is generally not pronounced at the end of a word (see the previous example), however the last letter is often followed by a ᵊ ghost, eg.

ਅੱਜ

Gurmukhi can use ੍ (called halant in Punjabi) to kill the inherent vowel after a consonant, but it is rarely seen. It isn't used at the end of a word, and is normally only used in modern Punjabi for subjoined r, ʋ (rare), and h, in which case it is invisible.

The virama may also be used occasionally to suppress the vowel in Sanskritised text, or in dictionaries for extra phonetic information.

Post-consonant vowels

Pre-base vowel sign

ਕਿ ké U+0A15 GURMUKHI LETTER KA + U+0A3F GURMUKHI VOWEL SIGN I

One vowel sign appears to the left of the base consonant letter or cluster, eg. ਕਿ

ਿ

This is a combining mark that is always stored after the base consonant. The rendering process places the glyph before the base consonant. Click on the following word to see the sequence of characters in storage.

ਕਹਿਣਾ

show composition

ਬਹਿਣਾ

Nasalisation

ੰ␣ਂ

Two separate diacritics are used to indicate nasalisation.

ੰ is used with vowels a, i, u, and with final ū, eg.

ਮੂੰਡਾ

ਂ is used for all other vowels, eg.

ਸ਼ਾਂਤ

These diacritics can also signal gemination of a following m or n, eg.

ਲੰਮੀ

Note that if a tippi is used in a location where bindi is more appropriate, some fonts may silently convert the shape to a dot.

show composition

ਧੂੰਆਂ

Standalone vowels

Gurmukhi represents standalone vowels using a set of independent vowel letters. The set includes a character to represent the inherent vowel sound.

ਅ is actually classified as a null consonant with an inherent vowel.

In fact, all independent vowels in Gurmukhi are graphically a combination of one of three vowel carriers and a vowel sign.

Unicode has independent code points for the vowel carriers, but decomposed and precomposed standalone vowels are not regarded as canonically equivalent. This means that words containing decomposed sequences will not match those containing precomposed code points (unless the application does something special). In fact, Gurmukhi fonts will typically not render the decomposed sequences as expected.

Therefore, the Unicode Standard recommends the use of the precomposed characters, and says to not use two of the carrier symbols at all. ਅ is used on its own to represent ə, but should not be used in combinations, either.

Tones

Gurmukhi doesn't normally use tone diacritics. Instead, certain character combinations serve to indicate high and low tones. The level tone is not marked.

Vowel sounds to characters

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

ਹ can be used in combination with other consonants to indicate tone. Those combinations are not shown here. Hyphens indicate consonants that play a role in tone marking, depending on the position in the word.

For more details see consonant_mappings.

Basic consonants

Gurmukhi has a set of consonants that mostly map onto the traditional Brahmi phonetic matrix, though not all are used for articulatory distinctions.

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).

ਅ is also classified as a null consonant and is described in standalone.

Repertoire extension

਼ is used to represent foreign sounds, particularly for words taken from Persian, eg. in the following example the dot changes ਗ ɡ to ਗ਼ ɣ and ਜ s to ਜ਼ z

ਕਾਗ਼ਜ਼

The following graphemes combine nukta with an existing consonant.

The nukta should always be typed and stored immediately after the consonant it modifies, and before any combining vowels or diacritics.

ਲ਼ is different from the other extended letters in that it represents a native Punjabi sound. This letter was only recently added to the Gurmukhī alphabet. Some sources do not consider it a separate letterws, and it may not always be written. It tends to get used in dictionaries to clarify pronunciation.

These graphemes are normally represented by decomposed sequences, and in fact that is what is produced by Unicode Normalization Form C (NFC). However, there are also a set of precomposed code points in the Unicode Gurmukhi block.

The Unicode Standard recommends not to use the precomposed code points for Gurmukhi, but instead to use the base + nukta sequences. See also encoding.

Tone-related consonants

Gurmukhi uses certain characters to indicate high and low tones. These include the letters that are nominally associated with aspirated, voiced plosives (which sounds don't exist in Punjabi) and the letter ਹ.

See tones for more information.

Finals

Syllable-final consonant sounds are generally represented by ordinary consonant characters (or perhaps a conjunct with h for tonal indications). However, a final h can sometimes be represented by the visarga ( ਃ ).

Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters are written in one of the following ways:

1. No special rendering. This is the standard approach in Gurmukhi.
2. Conjuncts, where the second character appears below the first in a stack.
3. Using yakash below the initial character (quite rare).

See also clength.

Vertical stacks

੍

Normally Gurmukhi produces stacks to indicate a consonant cluster for only 3 combinations. In each case, the second letter in the cluster appears subjoined to the first.

The character h in non-initial position is used to indicate tones (see consonant_tones). When the h follows a consonant, it is subjoined to it, eg. ਚੜ੍ਹ

Syllable-initial clusters also occur with r and occasionally v, and are also indicated using subjoined forms, eg. ਪ੍ਰਬੰਧ ਸ੍ਵਰਗ Subjoined v is much less common in modern text.

To indicate conjunct clusters in Unicode text add ੍ before the subjoined character, eg. ਪ੍ਰ is produced by the sequence 0A2A 0A4D 0A30.

The virama may also be used occasionally to suppress the vowel in Sanskritised text, or in dictionaries for extra phonetic information.ws In some fonts subjoined forms are available for other consonant clusters, though they are not used unless the content author uses a virama.

See a table of 2-consonant clusters.
The table allows you to test results for various fonts.

Consonant length

Doubling or reinforcement of a consonant sound is indicated, unusually for an indic script, using a diacritic, ੱ. It is typed before the consonant (In this way it resembles the small tsu in Japanese), and is placed to the left of the consonant it affects (not over it), eg. ਪੱਕੀ

The diacritic may appear over the right side of the preceding consonant, but if that consonant has a vowel sign or extension above the horizontal topline, it may be displayed on a short extension of the joining line.

Geminated mm and nn may be written using a nasalisation diacritic associated with the preceding vowel,d eg. ਲੰਮੀ

Consonant sounds to characters

Encoding independent vowels

Visually, Gurmukhi independent vowels are written using a combination of a vowel sign attached to one of three base letters. Those combinations are encoded by the Unicode Standard as single, precomposed code points, but it is also possible to analyze the letter as using a decomposed sequence of code points: a base letter followed by a vowel sign.

The precomposed characters don't decompose when normalised using NFD, nor do the decomposed sequences change under NFC. They are therefore not treated in Unicode as canonically equivalent. The Unicode Standard recommends that the precomposed characters be used.

Many fonts (such as Noto Fonts) will display a dotted circle if the content author tries to use the decomposed sequence, but not all fonts do. Content authors who created their content with a font such as Gurmukhi MN will find that their content no longer looks right when a different font is used.

It is unlikely that content authors will always choose the approach recommended by the Unicode Standard, so applications should be able to treat precomposed and decomposed independent vowels as the same, even though they are not canonically equivalent.

Encoding the nukta

The nukta is a small dot used to extend the Gurmukhi repertoire to additional sounds (see extendedC. The decomposed sequence of letter+nukta is recommended by the Unicode Standard. NFC does not recombine the parts into precomposed characters. Instead, normalisation produces decomposed forms for both NFC and NFD. So both alternatives are canonically equivalent, but decomposed is recommended.

Combining mark order

The following indicates the expected ordering of Unicode characters within a Punjabi combining character sequence. Follow the links to see what characters are represented by a given label.

Punjabi has 2 types of combining character sequence (CCS).

Killed vowel. This CCS belongs to the non-final part of a consonant cluster, or to a consonant with a killed vowel. It consists of just the base, with an optional Nukta, and the Virama.

General. The alternative CCS uses the following preferred ordering after a base.

1. Nukta
2. Yakash
3. Dependent vowels (15)
4. Nasalisation marks (2)
5. Gemination mark
6. Visarga

Ordering characters as shown above avoids potential ambiguities and maximises the likelihood of success when rendering the text.

Glyph joining

Within a Gurmukhi word, spacing glyphs are joined together at the top bar (shirorekha).

ਚਿੜੀ-ਛਿੱਕਾ

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.

ਅਧਿਆਪਕ

Letters 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.

Letterform slopes, weights, & italics

See type samples.

Gurmukhi text doesn't commonly use italicisation for emphasis, but slanted text and bolding do occur in modern texts. Italicisation tends to be used to offset blocks of text, by-lines, etc., rather than for emphasis.

The following figures show slanted text being used to set off text.

Word boundaries

See type samples.

In modern texts, Gurmukhi words are separated by spaces.

Certain older texts did not contain spaces. This is called larivaar.@GitHub,https://github.com/r12a/scripts/issues/118#issue-1359804026

Some grammatical suffixes are also separated from their stem by a space, and in this case the two parts should not become separated.@GitHub,https://github.com/w3c/iip/issues/98

Words are occasionally hyphenated, eg.

ਚਿੜੀ-ਛਿੱਕਾ

Graphemes

Although grapheme clusters alone provide good segmentation for many Gurmukhi syllables (because of the lack of conjuncts), they are not sufficient to represent typographic units for stacks. Stacks are common and must not be split apart by edit operations that visually change the text (such as letter-spacing, first-letter highlighting, and in-word line breaking). For those operations one needs to segment the text using orthographic syllables, which string grapheme clusters together with a virama.

The Gurmukhi virama (halant) is ੍, which has an Indic Syllabic Category of Virama.

Grapheme clusters

Base Combining_mark* ZW(N)J?

Grapheme clusters cover the combinations described just above. In these sequences, Gurmukhi combining marks used for Punjabi may include zero or more of the following types of character.

1. Nukta [1] (see extendedC) Only one per grapheme cluster, typed and stored immediately after the base consonant.
2. Dependent vowels [9] (see combiningV) Always a single code point.
3. Bindi [2] (see nasalisation) Occurs over an independent vowel or over a consonant.
4. Gemination mark [1] (see clength) Occurs after a consonant (with optional nukta).
5. Other marks [3] (see yakash, finals and udaat) All are uncommon and occur after a consonant (with optional nukta).
6. Virama (halant) (see clusters and novowel) Occurs immediately after a consonant (and optional nukta) at the beginning of a cluster. In modern Punjabi text stacks are only formed with a subjoined RA or HA, and on rare occasions VA. Other consonant clusters are simple sequences of consonant letters.

ZW(N)J is not usually found in Gurmukhi text.

The following examples show a variety of typical grapheme clusters:

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	ਧੂੰਆਂ
	ਖਿੱਚਣਾ
	ਕਾਗ਼ਜ਼
	ਭਿਖੵਾ
	ਕ਼ੌਮ
	ਪ੍ਰਭੂ
	ਹੜ੍ਹ

Note how grapheme clusters segment the parts of a stack after the virama in the last 2 examples. This is not always desirable (see orthographicS just below).

Larger typographic units

(Consonant Nukta? Virama)* Grapheme_cluster

Gurmukhi stacks medial RA (and sometimes VA) and HA after a syllable coda (see clusters). The stacks represent consonant clusters (but not gemination, which is indicated using a diacritic).

Grapheme clusters terminate after a sequence of marks that includes a halant, but editorial operations that change the visual appearance of the text, such as letter-spacing, first-letter highlighting, line-breaking, and justification, should never split conjunct forms apart. For this reason, an alternative way of segmenting graphemes is needed. This may not apply, however, for some other operations such as cursor movement or backwards delete.

Where stacks appear, a typographic unit contains multiple grapheme clusters. The non-final grapheme clusters all end with ੍, and the final grapheme cluster begins with a consonant.

The following are examples. Some examples were shown in the previous section: here the stack is treated as a single typographic unit.

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	ਪ੍ਰਭੂ
	ਹੜ੍ਹ
	ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤਸਰ
	ਪ੍ਰਾਂਗਾਰ
	ਫ਼੍ਰੈਂਚ

Phrase & section boundaries

See type samples.

Gurmukhi generally uses ASCII punctuation.

। may be used rather than a period at the end of a sentence. It is often separated from the last word in the sentence by a small gap, but should not wrap alone to the beginning of the next line. The gap also doesn't grow during justification.

Quotations & citations

See type samples.

Punjabi texts typically use quotation marks. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.

Single quotation marks are used for quotations within quotations.

Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

See type samples.

ਃ is used very occasionally in Gurmukhi. In some cases it acts like a Sanskrit visarga, producing a voiceless h sound, but in others it represents an abbreviation, in the same way the period is used in English.ws

However, contractions are very common in Punjabi text, and a much more common way of indicating these is to use 02BC (or ' U+0027 APOSTROPHE). A particularly common contraction is to represent ਵਿੱਚ as 'ਚ. @GitHub,https://github.com/r12a/scripts/issues/118#issue-1359804026

Other inline features

Line breaking & hyphenation

By default, Gurmukhi breaks lines at inter-word spaces.

Text alignment & justification

tbd

See type samples.

fig_justification shows lines justified by stretching the inter-word spaces.

Note that the space before the danda at the end of a sentence is not stretched during justification.

Baselines, line height, etc.

Gurmukhi uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

It also has a 'hanging baseline', which may be used for text alignment in things such as initial letter highlighting. The hanging baseline is based on the top bar that joins the letters.

Gurmukhi requires slightly more vertical space than Latin text. To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Gurmukhi glyphs from Noto fonts. The basic Gurmukhi letters are typically slightly higher than the Latin x-height, and conjunct stacks and other diacritics extend slightly below the Latin descenders. The hanging baseline is slightly higher than the Latin x-height (Noto fonts actually have a lower top bar than many others).

fig_baselines_other shows similar comparisons for the Baloo Paaji 2 and Raavi fonts.

Counters, lists, etc.

See type samples.

You can experiment with counter styles using the Counter styles converter. Patterns for using these styles in CSS can be found in Ready-made Counter Styles, and we use the names of those patterns here to refer to the various styles.

The modern Punjabi orthography uses a native numeric style.

Examples

Styling initials

See type samples.

Punjabi content sometimes enlarges the first part of the first word in a paragraph, in a similar way to drop caps. Instead of enlarging just the first letter in the word, it is normal to enlarge the first orthographic syllable (see fig_first_letter). If the first character is the beginning of a conjunct, the whole stack should be included in the styling.

In principle, the top line of the characters should align in the large text and the following first line.