Gurmukhi

Gurmukhī ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ
The traditional Gurmukhi letters
Script type	Abugida
Time period	16th century CE-present
Direction	left-to-right
Languages	Punjabi Punjabi dialects Sant Bhasha Sindhi[1]
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brahmi Gupta Śāradā Laṇḍā Gurmukhī
Sister systems	Khudabadi, Khojki, Mahajani, Multani
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Guru, 310 , ​Gurmukhi
Unicode
Unicode alias	Gurmukhi
Unicode range	U+0A00–U+0A7F
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

Gurmukhī (Punjabi: ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, Punjabi pronunciation: [ˈɡʊɾᵊmʊkʰiː], Shahmukhi: گُرمُکھی‎) or Punjabi script is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552).^[2][1] Commonly regarded as a Sikh script,^{[3][4][5][6][7]} Gurmukhi is used in Punjab, India as the official script of the Punjabi language.^[6][7]

The primary scripture of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, is written in Gurmukhī, in various dialects and languages often subsumed under the generic title Sant Bhasha^[8] or saint language, in addition to other languages like Persian and various phases of Indo-Aryan languages.

Modern Gurmukhī has thirty-five original letters, hence its common alternative term paintī or "the thirty-five,"^[6] plus six additional consonants,^[6][9][10] nine vowel diacritics, two diacritics for nasal sounds, one diacritic that geminates consonants and three subscript characters.

History and development[]

The Gurmukhī script is generally believed to have roots in the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet^[11] by way of the Brahmi script,^[12] which developed further into the Northwestern group (Sharada, or Śāradā, and its descendants, including Landa and Takri), the Central group (Nagari and its descendants, including Devanagari, Gujarati and Modi) and the Eastern group (evolved from Siddhaṃ, including Bangla, Tibetan, and some Nepali scripts),^[13] as well as several prominent writing systems of Southeast Asia and Sinhala in Sri Lanka, in addition to scripts used historically in Central Asia for extinct languages like Saka and Tocharian.^[13] Gurmukhi is derived from Sharada in the Northwestern group, of which it is the only major surviving member,^[14] with full modern currency.^[15] Notable features:

• It is an abugida in which all consonants have an inherent vowel, [ə]. Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant they are applied to, are used to change the inherent vowel.
• When they appear at the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.
• To form consonant clusters, Gurmukhi uniquely affixes subscript letters at the bottom of standard characters, rather than using the true conjunct symbols used by other scripts,^[15] which merge parts of each letter into a distinct character of its own.
• Punjabi is a tonal language with three tones. These are indicated in writing using the formerly voiced aspirated consonants (gh, dh, bh, etc.) and the intervocalic h.^[16]