Punjabi and Gurmukhi
Learn Gurmukhi Alphabet
All letters of a script have three aspects. Every letter has a particular shape, particular name and it represent a particular sound. Sanskrit may have been one of the first languages to group the letters according to their sounds. At one time there were only thirty-five letters in the Gurmukhi script, but later, five more letters were added in order to accommodate other sounds correctly. This need arose because many lone words are used in Punjabi. More recently, an extra character ( ਲ਼ ) was introduced. The shape, name and sound of Gurmukhi alphabet is as above:
Note: ੳ, ਅ, ੲ are only vowel bearers. So they don't represent any sound independently except ਅ as mukta vowel.
It can also be noted that most of the characters have a horizontal line at the upper part. The characters are connected mostly by this line called head line to form a word. A letter in Gurmukhi script can be partitioned into three horizontal zones. The upper zone denotes the region above the head line, where the vowels reside, while the middle zone represents the area below the headline where the consonants and some sub-parts of vowels are present. The middle zone is the busiest zone. The lower zone represents the area below middle zone where some vowels and certain half-characters lie in the foot of consonants.
Listen to the full alphabet as well.
