Writing system
The Urdu Nastaʿliq alphabet, with names in the Devanāgarī
and Latin alphabets
Persian script
Urdu is written right-to left in an extension of the Persian
alphabet, which is itself an extension of the Arabic alphabet. Urdu is
associated with the Nastaʿlīq style of Persian calligraphy, whereas Arabic is
generally written in the simpler Naskh style. Nasta’liq is notoriously
difficult to typeset, so Urdu newspapers were hand-written by masters of
calligraphy, known as katib or khush-navees, until the late 1980s.
Kaithi script
Urdu was also written in the Kaithi script. A highly
Persianized and technical form of Urdu was the lingua franca of the law courts
of the British administration in Bengal, Bihar, and the North-West Provinces
& Oudh. Until the late 19th century, all proceedings and court transactions
in this register of Urdu were written officially in the Persian script. In
1880, Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal abolished the use of
the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal and Bihar and ordered the
exclusive use of Kaithi, a popular script used for both Urdu and Hindi.
Kaithi's association with Urdu and Hindi was ultimately eliminated by the
political contest between these languages and their scripts, in which the
Persian script was definitively linked to Urdu.
Devanagari script
More recently in India, Urdu speakers have adopted
Devanagari for publishing Urdu periodicals and have innovated new strategies to
mark Urdū in Devanagari as distinct from Hindi in Devanagari. The popular Urdu
monthly magazine, महकता आंचल (Mahakta Anchal), is published
in Delhi in Devanagari in order to target the generation of Muslim boys and
girls who do not know the Persian script. Such publishers have introduced new
orthographic features into Devanagari for the purpose of representing Urdu
sounds. One example is the use of अ
(Devanagari a) with vowel signs to mimic contexts of ع (‘ain). To Urdu publishers, the use of
Devanagari gives them a greater audience, but helps them to preserve the
distinct identity of Urdu when written in Devanagari.
Roman script
Urdu is occasionally also written in the Roman script. Roman
Urdu has been used since the days of the British Raj, partly as a result of the
availability and low cost of Roman movable type for printing presses. The use
of Roman Urdu was common in contexts such as product labels. Today it is
regaining popularity among users of text-messaging and Internet services and is
developing its own style and conventions. Habib R. Sulemani says, "The
younger generation of Urdu-speaking people around the world, especially
Pakistan, are using Romanised Urdu on the Internet and it has become essential
for them, because they use the Internet and English is its language. Typically,
in that sense, a person from Islamabad in Pakistan may chat with another in
Delhi in India on the Internet only in Roman Urdū. They both speak the same
language but would have different scripts. Moreover, the younger generation of
those who are from the English medium schools or settled in the west, can speak
Urdu but can’t write it in the traditional Arabic script and thus Roman Urdu is
a blessing for such a population." Roman Urdu also holds significance
among the Christians of Pakistan and North India. Urdū was the dominant native
language among Christians of Karachi and Lahore in present-day Pakistan and
Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan in India, during the early part of the
nineteenth and twentieth century, and is still used by Christians in these
places. Pakistani and Indian Christians often used the Roman script for writing
Urdū. Thus Roman Urdū was a common way of writing among Pakistani and Indian
Christians in these areas up to the 1960s. The Bible Society of India publishes
Roman Urdū Bibles which enjoyed sale late into the 1960s (though they are still
published today). Church songbooks are also common in Roman Urdū. However, the
usage of Roman Urdū is declining with the wider use of Hindi and English in
these states.
Differences with Perso-Arabic script
Perso-Arabic script has been extended for Urdu with
additional letters ٹ,ڈ,ڑ. In order to make the language suitable for the
people of South Asia (mainly Pakistan), two letters ہ and ی
have added dimensions in use. ہ
is used independently as any other letter in words such as ہم (we) and باہم (mutual). As an extended
use, ہ is also used
denote uniquely defined phonetics of South Asian origin. Here it is referred as
do-chashmi he and it follows the nearest letters of the Perso-Arabic script to
render the required phonetic. Some example of the words are دھڑکن (heartbeat), بھارت (India). On the other
hand ی is used in two
vowel forms: Chhoti ye (ی)
and Badi ye (ے). Chhoti
ye denotes the vowel sound similar to "ea" in the English word beat
as in the word ساتھی
(companion). Chhoti ye is also used as the Urdu consonant "Y" as in
word یار
(companion/friend). Badi ye is supposed to give the sound similar to
"a" in the word "late" (full vowel sound - not like a
diphthong) as in the word کے
(of). However, in the written form both badi ye and chhoti ye are same when the
vowel falls in the middle of a word and the letters need to be joint according
to the rules of the Urdu grammar. Badi ye is also used to play a supporting
role for a diphthong sound such as the English "i" as in the word
"bite" as in the word مے
(wine). However, no difference of ye is seen in words such as کیسا (how) where the vowel
comes in the middle of the written word. Similarly the letter و is used to denote vowel sound
-oo similar to the word "food" as in لوٹ
(loot), "o" similar to the word "vote" as in دو (two) and it is also used as
a consonant "w" similar to the word "war" as in وظیفہ (pension). It is also
used as a supportive letter in the diphthong construction similar to the
"ou" in the word "mount" as in the word کون (who). و is silent in many word of
Persian origin such as خواب
(dream), خواہش (desire).
It has diminutive sound similar to "ou" in words such as "would",
"could" as in the words خود
(self), خوش (happy). The
vowel/accent marks (اعراب)
mainly support the core Arabic vowels. Non-Arabic vowels such as -o- in mor مور- (peacock) and the -e- as
in Estonia (ایسٹونیا) are
referred as مجہول
(alien/ignorant phonetics) and hence are not supported by the vowel/accent
marks (اعراب). A
description of these vowel marks and the word formation in Urdu can be found at
this website.
Encoding Urdu in Unicode
Like other writing systems derived from the Arabic Script,
Urdu uses the 0600-06FF Unicode range. Certain glyphs in this range appear
visually similar (or identical when presented using particular fonts) even
though the underlying encoding is different. This presents problems for
information storage and retrieval. For example, the University of Chicago's
electronic copy of John Shakespear's "A Dictionary, Hindustani, and
English" includes the word 'بهارت'
(India). Searching for the string "بھارت"
returns no results, while querying with the (identical-looking in many fonts)
string "بهارت"
returns the correct entry. This is because the medial form of the Urdu letter
do chashmi he (U+06BE) - used to form aspirate digraphs in Urdu - is visually
identical in its medial form to the Arabic letter hāʾ (U+0647; phonetic value
/h/). In Urdu, the /h/ phoneme is represented by the character U+06C1, called
gol he (round he), or chhoti he (small he).
In 2003, the Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing
(CRULP) - a research organization affiliated with Pakistan's National University
of Computer and Emerging Sciences - produced a proposal for mapping from the
1-byte UZT encoding of Urdu characters to the Unicode standard. This proposal
suggests a preferred Unicode glyph for each character in the Urdu alphabet.
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