Gurmukhī alphabet

Therefore, a Punjabi dictionary with the independent vowels begins in order of vocal support, ie: u ¾ oa ai au ā i ī e In contrast, the Vokaldiakritika in the "normal " order of the other Indic scripts are located, ie: a ā i ī u ū e ai o au.

But:

Be Tippi, Bindi, Adhak and set point in the alphabetical arrangement is not observed!

Name and pronunciation of the letters

The letters of the Gurmukhi alphabet are named and pronounced as follows:

Consonant ligatures

Consonant ligatures are almost no longer found in the Gurmukhi script. Only , , and as the second component of a group of two consonants take on special forms:

The special forms of and are rarely used.

Instead of under -written version of the normal form is often used without the voraufgehende consonant is marked as vowelless. In the dictionary, you can often find both spellings next to each other. In most cases here the same pronunciation is given for both:

In contrast to all other north Indian scriptures there are in Gurmukhi no " Reph " (see Indian writing circle).

The most important special characters is the under -written . It is not usually pronounced, but is used as a diacritic for designating of sounds in words that do not contain voiced aspirated plosives or no . Strictly speaking, one can thus combining " consonant under written " no longer be called a ligature, especially the under -written can also be viewed under a vowel carrier:

Orthography

In the Gurmukhi script, much of the historical writing on the state of today's language ( Punjabi ) have been adjusted in contrast to most other modern writings of Indian writing circle. This concerns in particular:

• Omission of the sign of syllabic consonants,
• Elimination of most of ligatures and lack of Virama ( Halant )
• Diacritic for consonant length,
• In pronunciation elimination of aspiration ( beginning of a word also voicing ) voiced plosives associated with high or low frequency of the word accent -bearing syllable,
• In the debate, partially elimination of [h ] (except in word-initial ) associated with high or low frequency of the word accent -bearing syllable,
• Under written as diacritic to denote tones.

The spelling is not clear whether the inherent vowel / a / is spoken or not. Definitely would be either the use of Halant for Vokallosigkeit or introduction of a Diakritikums for / a /.

Under Written does not always mean that the above it is spoken consonant vowelless. Therefore, there are also spelling variants here (see above).

Marking of tones

In synchronous observation, one can say that the sign of the aspirated voiced plosives the marking of tones used. Overall, the sounds of Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script as follows can therefore be marked graphically:

• Aspirated voiced plosives
• Under written

In general, a word containing only one tontragende syllable. This is always the word carries the accented syllable. This is however not referred graphically. Depending on the position of the word accent and the sound mark a treble or a bass is spoken. For this purpose, the following rule applies:

• Word accent sound mark > bass
• Word accent before sound mark > tweeter

All unstressed syllables and all syllables of words without sound mark to be spoken in a medium pitch.

Examples ( tonal marks are in the transliteration (< ... > ) in bold [ '] = treble, .. [` ] = Bass )

Comparison of the Gurmukhi script with the neighboring Devanagari

At first glance, the Gurmukhi script seems to have great similarity to Devanagari. On closer inspection, however, show some significant differences. Who, for example, Devanagari and wants to learn Gurmukhi, must beware of " false friends " ( misleading similarities ).

A comparison of the two documents show the tables as a sign stock (see above).

Gurmukhi digits

Gurmukhi in Unicode

Unicode for Gurmukhi is U 0 A00 ... U 0 A7F.