Shahmukhi (,, lit. 'from the Shah's or king's mouth', ) is the right-to-left abjad-based script developed from the Perso-Arabic alphabet used for the Punjabi language varieties, predominantly in Punjab, Pakistan. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, which is also used for Persian and Urdu. Shahmukhi is one of the two standard scripts used for Punjabi, the other being Gurmukhi used mainly in Punjab, India. Shahmukhi is written from right to left, while Gurmukhi is written from left to right. Shahmukhi has 36 primary letters with some other additional letters.

History

Before the advent of Shahmukhi, writing systems were not popular for the Old Punjabi varieties. The name 'Shahmukhi' is a recent coinage, imitating its counterpart 'Gurmukhi'. However, the writing of Punjabi in the Perso-Arabic script is well-attested from the 17th century onwards. According to Dhavan, Punjabi began to adopt the script as a "side effect" of educational practices in Mughal-era Punjab, when Punjabi Muslims learned the Persian language in order to participate in Mughal society. Educational materials taught Persian to Punjabi speakers by using Punjabi written in Persian's alphabet, which was a novel innovation. This was one of the first attempts at standardising the Punjabi language; prior to this, Punjabi was primarily a spoken language, not formally taught in schools. Shackle suggests that the Gurmukhi script was not favoured by Punjabi Muslims due to its religious (Sikh) connotations.

Alphabet

Shahmukhi script is a modified version of the Arabic script's Persian alphabet. It is identical to the Urdu alphabet, but contains additional letters representing the Punjabi phonology. For writing Saraiki, an extended Shahmukhi is used that includes 4 additional letters for the implosive consonants.

Vowel diacritics

Like Urdu, Shahmukhi also has diacritics, which are implied - a convention retained from the original Arabic script, to express short vowels.

Consonants

No Punjabi words begin with ں, ھ, or ے. Words which begin with ڑ are exceedingly rare, but some have been documented in Shahmukhi dictionaries such as Iqbal Salahuddin's Waddi Punjabi Lughat. The digraphs of aspirated consonants are as follows. In addition, and form ligatures with : and.

Aspirates

Difference from Persian and Urdu

Shahmukhi has more letters than its Persian base and related Urdu alphabet, to represent the special sounds that are only in Punjabi, which already have additional letters added to the Arabic base itself to represent sounds not present in Arabic. Characters added which differ from Persian but not Urdu include: to represent /ʈ/, to represent /ɖ/, to represent /ɽ/, to represent /◌̃/, and to represent /ɛ:/ or /e:/. Furthermore, a separate do-cashmi-he letter,, exists to denote a /ʰ/ or a /ʱ/, this letter is mainly used as part of the multitude of digraphs, detailed above. Characters added which differ from Urdu include: ࣇ| لؕ to represent /ɭ/ and ݨ to represent /ɳ/. These characters, however are rarely used.

Pronunciation

The letter is pronounced 'j' in French or as vion in English and the letter is often transliterated in many ways due to its changing sound in various Arabic and Persian words.

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