Gurmukhi

Gurmukhi (ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, "from the mouth of the Guru") is the script used to write Punjabi in India, primarily by Sikhs and the Indian Punjabi-speaking community. It was standardised by Guru Angad Dev in the 16th century as the script for Sikh religious texts, including the Guru Granth Sahib. Gurmukhi is derived from the Landa script, itself a descendant of Brahmi. The script has 35 base consonants (including six vara added later), 10 vowel symbols, and various diacritic marks including the tippi (ਂ, nasalisation), bindi (ਂ or ਁ, alternative nasalisation), and addak (ੱ, gemination/doubling). Punjabi is also written in Shahmukhi (Perso-Arabic script) in Pakistan and by some Punjabi Muslim communities in India — these are two distinct scripts for the same language community across political borders. Gurmukhi text is written left-to-right without the shirorekha line that characterises Devanagari.

How it works

Gurmukhi letter set includes: vowels ਅ ਆ ਇ ਈ ਉ ਊ ਏ ਐ ਓ ਔ with their matra equivalents (ਾ ਿ ੀ ੁ ੂ ੇ ੈ ੋ ੌ); consonants organised into velars (ਕ ਖ ਗ ਘ ਙ), palatals (ਚ ਛ ਜ ਝ ਞ), retroflexes (ਟ ਠ ਡ ਢ ਣ), dentals (ਤ ਥ ਦ ਧ ਨ), bilabials (ਪ ਫ ਬ ਭ ਮ), plus semivowels, liquids, and fricatives; and special characters like halant (੍) for conjuncts. Gurmukhi includes a tone system — Punjabi is one of the few Indo-Aryan languages that has phonemic tone — shown via specific letters (ਘ, ਝ, ਢ, ਧ, ਭ) that indicate low-rising or high-falling tone. Unicode block U+0A00–U+0A7F covers Gurmukhi. Correct rendering requires fonts supporting all base consonants, matras, and the addak character, plus a shaping engine that handles virama-based conjuncts.

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