Hindustani orthography

Hindustani (Standard Hindi and Urdu) has been written in several different scripts. Most Hindi texts are written in the Devanagari script, which is derived from the Brāhmī script of Ancient India. Most Urdu texts are written in the Urdu alphabet, which comes from the Persian alphabet. Hindustani has been written in both scripts. In recent years the Latin script has been used in these languages for technological or internationalization reasons.

Devanagari script

The Devanagari script is an abugida, as written consonants have an inherent vowel, which in Standard Hindi is a schwa. In certain contexts, such as at the end of words, there is no vowel, a phenomenon called the schwa syncope.^[1] 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.

क्ष kṣ is pronounced /kʃ/ and ज्ञ jñ is /ɡj/.

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.^[2] This phenomenon has been termed the "schwa syncope rule" or the "schwa deletion rule" of Hindi.^[1][2] 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.^[1][3] 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 software for Hindi.^[3][4]

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 Namakeen).^[3][4]

Persian script

The Urdu alphabet is based on the Persian, 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 vowels are omitted in generic texts, although they may be written for disambiguation or for pedagogical purposes. Urdu is primarily written in a calligraphic style of the script called Nasta'liq.

Romanized Hindustani

The Latin alphabet has been used to write Hindustani for technological or internationalization reasons. Roman Urdu uses the basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used by young native speakers for technological applications, such as chat, emails and SMS.

ITRANS, ISCII, IAST, and Harvard-Kyoto romanization schemes have been employed primarily for usage by non-native speakers who are more familiar with the Latin alphabet.

Braille script

Three braille alphabets are used: Hindi and Urdu braille in India, based on Bharati braille conventions, and Urdu Braille in Pakistan, based on Persian Braille 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.

See also

• Hindustani etymology
• Hindustani phonology
• Hindustani grammar
• Nukta

References