Topic summary
Burushaski language
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Burushaski.
Modern evolution
Burushaski has predominantly been a spoken language. One of the earliest examples of modern Burushaski literature was the poetry written by Prof. Allamah Nasiruddin Nasir Hunzai in the 1940s. He began by using the Urdu alphabet to write the language, but soon realized that Urdu script was not adequate to the task, since it lacked the necessary letters to represent certain phonemes unique to Burushaski. This led him to undertake the task of devising a standardised Urdu-derived alphabet geared specifically to the accurate transcription of the Burushaski language. To this end, he went on to create consonant letters ݼ [tsʰ], څ [ʈʂ], ڎ [ts], ݽ [ʂ], ڞ [ʈʂʰ], and ݣ [ŋ]. Furthermore, innovative writers of Burushaski began to use superscriptUrdu numbers to indicate different stress patterns, tones and vowel-lengths. For example, in Burushaski, the letter ـو (waw) represents a long vowel with a falling tone, "óo". The letter ـݸ (waw with a superscript 2) represents a short vowel "o", and the letter ـݹ (waw with a superscript 3) represents a long vowel with a rising tone, "oó".