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Font: Gurmukhi
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Gurmukhi belongs to the group of Northern Indic scripts which descended from Brahmi script. It is used by the Sikh community for writing the Panjabi language in the Indian state of Panjab. In the Pakistani region of Panjab, the same language is written in Arabic script. As with all Brahmi-derived Indic scripts, Gurmukhi manifests the typical features of that model.1 Its basic unit is the consonant-based syllable which embodies an inherent [a] vowel. Gurmukhi took its present shape in the 16th century AD under Guru Angad, hence, its name, who set out to devise a rational system for writing Panjabi. The shapes of its characters are heavily influenced by Devanagari; the resemblance even extends to the horizontal joining bar which typifies Devanagari.
Gurmukhi is written horizontally from left to right and its basic set of symbols consists of 35 consonants2 and 10 vowels. At the beginning of a syllable, vowels appear in independent form which consists of a 'vowel bearer' and a modifier. The gamut of 10 vowels is divided into three groups, each of which uses a distinct vowel bearer. When used to replace the inherent vowel of a consonantal syllable, vowels appear in diacritic (or satellite) form before, after, above, below or surrounding the modified syllable. While a few consonant clusters (i.e. sequences of contiguous consonants) are written using special forms of the component characters, Gurmukhi has very few such forms in comparison to Devanagari or Bengali. Geminate (or long) consonants are marked with the addak, a brève-like diacritic which precedes the affected consonant. Although Panjabi is a tonal language, there are no explicit symbols dedicated to the indication of tone. Rather, tone is inferred from the use of certain consonants. The tippi (downward pointing half-circle) and the bindi (a dot) are used in different contexts to indicate nasalization. An underdot is used in extending the consonant repertoire to support non-Panjabi sounds in foreign loan words. Traditionally, the end of a sentence is signaled by a vertical stroke. However, in current practice, European punctuation is often used. Likewise, although Gurmukhi has a native set of symbols for numerals, nowadays Arabic numbers are often used.
1 For a fuller description of the features of Brahmi-derived scripts, see 'Devanagari'.
2 This number can vary depending on what is considered a consonant.
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