Baṛī ye (, ; lit. 'greater ye') is a letter in the Urdu alphabet (and other Indo-Iranian language alphabets based on it) directly based on the alternative "returned" variant of the final form of the Arabic letter ye/yāʾ (known as yāʾ mardūda) found in the Hijazi, Kufic, Thuluth, Naskh, and Nastaliq scripts. It functions as the word-final yā-'e-majhūl ([]) and yā-'e-sākin ([]). It is distinguished from the "choṭī ye ("lesser ye")", which is the regular Perso-Arabic yāʾ (ی) used elsewhere. In Punjabi, where it is a part of the Shahmukhi alphabet, it is called waḍḍī ye with the Gurmukhi equivalent ਏ. It is also used in the Pakistani Pashto alphabet, with the Afghan equivalent being ی.

History

The baṛī ye is based on the stretched, horizontal, "returned" form of the Arabic yā’, originating in the Kufic and Hijazi script and also used occasionally in Thuluth, Naskh, and Nastaliq calligraphy. The form began to be used in this manner for Classical Persian in India, for example kasē ("someone") was often written as.

Forms

Baṛī ye is written multiple ways depending on its position: There are also medial (ـیـ) and initial (یـ) forms, but they are not encoded on Unicode and are generally represented by the regular ye. In Balochi, baṛī ye (or cappi yà as it is known as) has the forms ⟨ࢩـ ـࢩـ ـے ے⟩.

Diacritical variants

In Urdu, only the hamza can be applied to baṛī ye: In Kashmiri, there is a letter that is visually a baṛī ye with a small v sign above, known as the nīmü yāyūk:

Burushaski

In Burushaski, there are 3 baṛī ye's: ے, ݺ, and ݻ. One of the additional letters is a baṛī ye with the Arabic–Indic digit 2 (۲). It is used to represent the short vowel //. Another letter has a 3 (۳) above it. Unlike ݺ, which represents a shorter sound than the regular baṛī ye, it represents the same long vowel (//) but with primary stress (e.g. //).

Character encoding