Nuqta

The nuqta (Hindi–Urdu: नुक़्ता/نقطہ/nuqtā, Persian: نُقطه, romanized: noqte; from Arabic: نقطة, romanized: nuqta, lit. 'dot'), also spelled nukta, is a diacritic mark that was introduced in Devanagari and some other Indic scripts to represent sounds not present in the original scripts. It takes the form of a dot placed below a character. This idea is inspired from the Arabic script; for example, there are some letters in Urdu that share the same basic shape but differ in the placement of dots(s) or nuqta(s) in the Perso-Arabic script: the letter ع ain, with the addition of a nuqta on top, becomes the letter غ g͟hain.^[1]

Use in Devanagari[]

Perso-Arabic consonants[]

Examples from Devanagari, the script used to write Hindi, are क़, qa; ख़, k͟ha; ग़, ġa; ज़, za; झ़, zha; ड़, ṛa; ढ़, ṛha; and फ़, fa. Respectively, these letters modify क, ka; ख, kha; ग, ga; ज, ja; झ, jha; ड, ḍa; ढ, ḍha; and फ, pha. The term nuqtā (नुक़्ता) is itself an example of the use of the nuqta. Other examples include क़िला (Urdu: قلعہ), qilā, 'fortress'; and आग़ा ख़ान (Urdu: آغا خان), Āġā K͟hān: a combination of a Perso-Arabic (āġā) and a Turko-Mongolic (k͟hān) honorific, now the title of the leader of the Nizari Ismaili sect. Examples of more common words are बड़ा, baṛā, 'big'; पढ़ना, paṛhnā, 'to read'; पेड़, pēṛ, 'tree'; अंग्रेज़ी, Aṅgrēzī, 'English'; and करोड़, karōṛ, 'crore'.

The nuqta, and the phonological distinction it represents, is sometimes ignored in practice; e.g., क़िला qilā is simply spelled as किला kilā. In the text Dialect Accent Features for Establishing Speaker Identity, Manisha Kulshreshtha and Ramkumar Mathur write, "A few sounds, borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic, are written with a dot (bindu or nuktā). Many people who speak Hindi as a second language, especially those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak conventional Hindi (also called Khariboli), or speak in one of its dialects, pronounce these sounds as their nearest equivalents." For example, these rural speakers will assimilate the sound ɣ (Devanagari: ग़; Urdu: غ) as ɡ (Devanagari: ग; Urdu: گ).^[2]

With a renewed Hindi–Urdu language contact, many Urdu writers now publish their works in Devanagari editions. Since the Perso-Arabic orthography is preserved in Nastaʿlīq script Urdu orthography, these writers use the nuqta in Devanagari when transcribing these consonants. Sometimes, व़ is used to explicitly represent the /w/ consonant and to differentiate it from /v/ consonant व.

Dravidian consonants[]

Devanagari also includes coverage for the Dravidian consonants ऴ, ḻa; ऱ, ṟa and ऩ, ṉa. (Respectively, these letters modify ळ, ḷa; र, ra and न, na). An example is तमिऴ् (Tamil: தமிழ்), tamiḻ.

Dardic consonants[]

For example, the letters च़ and छ़ are used in Devanagari to write the Kashmiri palatal consonants ژ [t͡s] and ژھ [t͡sʰ] respectively.

Eastern Indo-Aryan letters[]

To represent the Eastern Nagari letter য় representing /e̯ɔ/, the consonant य़, ẏa is used in Devanagari.

In Maithili, there are four non-syllabic vowels: i̯, u̯, e̯, o̯ written in Devanagari as य़, व़, य़ॆ, व़ॊ. But colloquially, these are written without nuqta.

Encoding in Unicode[]

The nuqta is important for accurate transliteration of scripts and representation of speech sounds. Indic scripts with a nuqta include Devanagari, Grantha, Kannada, Odia, Gujarati, Bengali–Assamese, Gurmukhi, and Telugu.

Similar diacritics[]

In Tamil script, the special character ஃ (ஆய்த எழுத்து, āyda eḻuttu) is used like nuqta to represent non-native consonants.

In Thaana script of Maldives, one or many nuqtas are added to their native consonants to represent Perso-Arabic consonants, and each phoneme is encoded as a whole in the Unicode block (instead of a separate codepoint for the diacritic).

See also[]

• Hindustani phonology
• Hindi-Urdu transliteration
• Hunterian transliteration

References[]

Works cited[]

Bibliography[]

• Vajpeyi, K. D. (Kishorī Dās Vājpayī; किशोरीदास वाजपेयी), Hindī shabdanushāsan हिन्दी शब्दनुशासन (1957, 1958, 1973, 1976, 1988).

External links[]

• Nuqte ka funda | नुक़्ते का फ़ंडा | نقطے کا فنڈا (in Hindi/Urdu)
• An Introduction to Indic scripts Archived 2009-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
• SCRIPT GRAMMAR FOR HINDI LANGUAGE