Hindustani (standardized

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

and standardized

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

Devanagari script Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the a ...

, which is derived from the

Brāhmī script Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' o ...

Ancient India According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...

. Most Urdu texts are written in the

Urdu alphabet The Urdu alphabet (), is the right-to-left alphabet used for Urdu. It is a modification of the Persian script, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic script. The Urdu alphabet has up to 39 or 40 distinct letters with no distinct letter c ...

, which comes from the

Persian alphabet The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...

. Hindustani has been written in both scripts. In recent years, the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

has been used in these languages for technological or internationalization reasons. Historically,

Kaithi script Kaithi (), also called Kayathi () or Kayasthi (), is a historical Brahmic script that was used widely in parts of Northern and Eastern India, primarily in the present-day states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar. In particular, it was use ...

has also been used.

Devanagari script

The Devanagari script is an

abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...

, as written consonants have an inherent vowel, which in Standard Hindi is a

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

. In certain contexts, such as at the end of words, there is no vowel, a phenomenon called the schwa syncope. Other vowels are written with a diacritic on the consonant letter. Devanagari is written from left to right, with a top-bar connecting the letters together.

Vowels

Consonants

Modified consonants for non-native phonemes

Irregular ligatures: * क्ष (क and ष) ''kṣ'' is pronounced ( wiktionary:क्ष) (Irregular shape, regular pronunciation) * त्र (त and र) ''tr'' is pronounced ( wiktionary:त्र) (Irregular shape, regular pronunciation) * ज्ञ (ज and ञ) ''jñ'' is pronounced ( wiktionary:ज्ञ) (Irregular shape and pronunciation)

Schwa deletion

The schwa (अ or 'ə', sometimes written 'a') implicit in each consonant of the Devanagri script is "obligatorily deleted" in Hindi at the end of words and in certain other contexts. This phenomenon has been termed the "''schwa syncope rule''" or the "''schwa deletion rule''" of Hindi. One formalization of this rule has been summarized as ''ə -> ø , VC_CV''. In other words, when a vowel-preceded consonant is followed by a vowel-succeeded consonant, the schwa inherent in the first consonant is deleted. However, this formalization is inexact and incomplete (i.e. sometimes deletes a schwa when it shouldn't or, at other times, fails to delete it when it should), and can yield errors. Schwa deletion is computationally important because it is essential to building

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal languag ...

software for Hindi. As a result of schwa syncope, the correct Hindi pronunciation of many words differs from that expected from a literal rendering of Devanagari. For instance, राम is ''Rām'' (incorrect: ''Rāma''), रचना is ''Rachnā'' (incorrect: ''Rachanā''), वेद is ''Véd'' (incorrect: ''Véda'') and नमकीन is ''Namkeen'' (incorrect ''Namakeena'').

Persian script

The Urdu alphabet is based on the

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

, which is an Arabic alphabet. Urdu is written from right to left, and most letters link together. This leads to variations in the form of a letter depending on its position in a word. Most

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s are omitted in generic texts, although they may be written for disambiguation or for pedagogical purposes. Urdu is primarily written in a

calligraphic Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as ...

style of the script called

Nasta'liq ''Nastaliq'' (; fa, , ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'', is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script in the Persian and Urdu languages, often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, rarely for Arabic. ''Nast ...

The Latin Alphabet

The

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

has been used to write Hindustani for technological or internationalization reasons. Roman Hindi and

Roman Urdu Roman Urdu ( ur, ) is the name used for the Urdu language written with the Latin script, also known as the Roman script. According to the Urdu scholar Habib R. Sulemani: "Roman Urdu is strongly opposed by the traditional Arabic script lovers. ...

uses the basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used by young native speakers for technological applications, such as chat,

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

s and

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

ITRANS The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" (ITRANS) is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly for the Devanagari script. The need for a simple encoding scheme that used only keys available on an ordinary keyboard was felt i ...

ISCII Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) is a coding scheme for representing various writing systems of India. It encodes the main Indic scripts and a Roman transliteration. The supported scripts are: Bengali–Assamese, Devanagari ...

IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...

(and the near-identical

ISO 15919 ISO 15919 (Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters) is one of a series of international standards for romanization by the International Organization for Standardization. It was published in 2001 and uses dia ...

), and

Harvard-Kyoto The Harvard-Kyoto Convention is a system for transliterating Sanskrit and other languages that use the Devanāgarī script into ASCII. It is predominantly used informally in e-mail, and for electronic texts. Harvard-Kyoto system Prior to the ...

romanization schemes have been employed primarily for usage by non-native speakers who are more familiar with the Latin alphabet.

Transliteration

Transliteration between the three scripts can be complicated, particularly when transliterating between Devanagari and Persian scripts. One obstacle to this is that multiple different letters in one script often all correspond to the same letter in the other script. So, simple substitution often does not produce the correct spellings.

Urdu letters with similar sounds

Some sets of Urdu letters have matching sounds. * 4 letters are all ≈ Z * 3 letters are all ≈ S * 2 letters are both ≈ T (a third letter is also often shown as English T, but is different to the other two Urdu letters, see #retroflex consonants below.) * 2 letters are both ≈ H but are sometimes regarded as distinct.

Braille script

Three braille alphabets are used:

and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

Bharati braille Bharati braille ( ), or Bharatiya Braille ( hi, भारती ब्रेल ' "Indian braille"), is a largely unified braille script for writing the languages of India. When India gained independence, eleven braille scripts were in use, in d ...

conventions, and

Urdu Braille According to UNESCO (2013),World Braille Usage
UNESCO, 2013 there are di ...

in Pakistan, based on

Persian Braille Persian Braille (Persian: بریل فارسی) is the braille alphabet for the Persian language. It is largely compatible with Arabic Braille, which may be found (in uncontracted form) within Persian Braille texts. There are a few additional Pers ...

conventions. Hindi Braille is an alphabet with ''a'' not written in some environments, while for Urdu Braille in Pakistan, it seems that vowels may be optional as they are in print.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hindustani Orthography Hindustani language Hindi Urdu es:Alfabeto hindi