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Gujarati script

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Gujarati
Script type
DirectionLeft-to-right Edit this on Wikidata
LanguagesGujarati, Kutchi
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Gujr (320), ​Gujarati
Unicode
Unicode alias
Gujarati
 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.
Gujarati, written using Gujarati script.
Gujarati, written using Gujarati script.

The Gujarati script (ગુજરાતી લિપિ Gujarātī Lipi), which like all Nāgarī writing systems is strictly speaking an abugida rather than an alphabet, is used to write the Gujarati and Kutchi languages. It is a variant of Devanāgarī script differentiated by the loss of the characteristic horizontal line running above the letters and by a small number of modifications in the remaining characters.

With a few additional characters, added for this purpose, the Gujarati script is also often used to write Sanskrit.

Gujarati numerical digits are also different from their Devanagari counterparts.

Origin

Gujarati script is descended from Brahmi and is part of the Brahmic family.

The Gujarātī script was adapted from the Devanāgarī script to write the Gujarātī language. The earliest known document in the Gujarātī script is a handwritten manuscript dating from 1592, and the script first appeared in print in a 1797 advertisement. Until the 19th century it was used mainly for writing letters and keeping accounts, while the Devanāgarī script was used for literature and academic writings. It is also known as the śarāphī (banker's), vāṇiāśāī (merchant's) or mahājanī (trader's) script.[1]

Overview

Categorization and Arrangement

Excerpt from "My experiments with truth" - the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi in its original Gujarati.

The Gujarati alphabet utilizes 75 fundamental shapes, which may be broken down as follows:

  • 75 shapes
    • 59 characters
      • 36 consonants
        • 34 singular
        • 2 compound
      • 13 vowels
      • 10 numerical digits
    • 16 diacritics
      • 13 vowelic
      • 3 other

The consonants (vyañjana) are grouped in eight categories; seven of which are named by considering the usage and position of the tongue during their pronunciation. These categories are (in order): velar, palatal, retroflex, dental, labial, sonorant and fricatives. Further, each group (with a couple of exceptions) has five consonants in which the group starts with the softer sounding consonants, then the aspirated forms appear, and the group ends with the nasal sounding consonant. The alphabetic arrangement thus made aids in easy recitation and is retained in the memory for longer duration (see the point on alphabet order below for more details).

Vowels (svara), in their conventional order, are historically grouped into "short" (hrasva) and "long" (dīrgha) classes, based on the "light" (laghu) and "heavy" (guru) syllables they create in traditional verse. The historical long vowels ī and ū are no longer distinctively long in pronunciation. Only in verse do syllables containing them assume the values required by meter.[1]

Two new vowel characters were created in Gujarati to represent English's /æ/'s and /ɔ/'s.

Orthography

The Gujarati writing system is an abugida, in which each base consonantal character has an inherent vowel, that vowel being a. For postconsonantal vowels other than a, the consonant is juxtaposed with diacritics, while for non-postconsonantal vowels (initial and post-vocalic positions), there are full-formed characters. There is also a diacritic that strikes out the inherent a, as well a nasalizing diacritic used for nasalizing vowels, and in place of the five nasal consonants.

In accordance with all the other Indic scripts, Gujarati is written from left to right, and is not case-sensitive. One or more letters (akṣar) join together to make a word (śabda), which then in turn, separated by spaces, join to make a sentence (vākya).

Discrete letters are constituted by 0-5* successive consonants, followed by a vowel. Thus when a consonant lacks a directly proceeding vowel, it is not written as its own letter; it condenses and joins as a fragment the proceeding vowel-possessing letter, to make a larger "joint letter" (joḍākṣar). However, when the joint letter form can't be remembered, or is difficult to write, the characters may be left uncondensed, with a diacritic representing the lack of a vowel instead.

The "dependent" vowels held by these consonants or consonants sets spring out as a diacritical mark, or as nothing at all in the case of the inherent, default a. In contrast, bare vowels, not held by consonants, are said to be in their "independent" form, and are written as a full character. These independent forms are found at the beginning of words or following other vowels.

The Gujarati script is basically phonemic, with a few exceptions. First out of these are a-elisions, or schwa deletions; where some a's are not pronounced in spite of the spelling. One part of script-based schwa deletion works on the same basis as phonological schwa deletion (see Gujarati phonology#.C9.99-deletion), but there is a difference. One is a phonological convention of the actual deletion of existing an schwa due to suffixing, while the other is a script convention of the inferred non-pronunciation of a written schwa due to what's already there. This elision falls in line with these rules[2]:

  • A non-primary syllable, if a, will be silent if the following syllable has a non-a vowel, or has another syllable after it.
    • Among other things, this rule corresponds to phonological internal schwa deletion, such that schwas will be represented even if they have been deleted.
  • If a word's final vowel (either before a space or a postposition) is a, it will be silent.
  • The first rule does not, and the second rule might not, apply, when characters conjunct characters are involved.

Secondly, Gujarati script, being of Sanskrit-based Devanagari, retains notations for the obsolete (short i, u vs. long ī, ū; ṛ, ru; ś, ṣ), and lacks notations for innovations (/e/ vs. /ɛ/; /o/ vs. /ɔ/; clear vs. murmured vowels).[1]

* 5 is the highest number of conjunct consonants in a real word, in Devanagari (Sanskrit) at least, with the usually quoted example being kārtsnya.[3] In unicode it looks like कार्त्स्न्य — કાર્ત્સ્ન્ય, in the reference material the n fragment is made small and rests beneath s's connecting line to y.

Punctuation

Contemporary Gujarati uses European punctuation, such as the question mark, exclamation mark, comma, and full stop. Apostrophes are used for the rare(ly written) clitic. Quotation marks are not often used for direct quotes. The full stop replaced the traditional vertical bar, and the colon, mostly obsolete in its Sanskrit capacity, follows the European usage.

Romanization

There are many possible romanization schemes for Gujarati, initially created to represent Sanskrit/Devanagari. The 26 roman characters alone are not enough to clearly represent Gujarati, so this is dealt with by the use of diacritics in IAST, ISO 15919, and the National Library at Calcutta romanization, and by case-sensitivity and punctuation in ITRANS and Harvard-Kyoto. Used here and with all specimens of Gujarati on Wikipedia unless otherwise noted, is IAST. Here are its properties:

  • Not transcription, but transliteration of a Sanskrit-based script, thus inheriting the same gulfs between it and Gujarati speech.
  • However, takes heed of a elision: સરકાર → sarakāra → sarkār.
  • 22 characters. f, q, w, z excluded. (Though on Wikipedia pages about Gujarati, f and ph are used interchangeably.)
  • Diacritic-based, not case-sensitive.
  • Overlining for long vowels: ā, ī, ū. e and o were historically long, but are not overlined as there were no short counterparts.
  • Proceeding h for aspiration.
  • Underlying dot for retroflex: ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh ṇ, ḷ, ṣ.
  • Writing of the inherent a.

Gujarati characters, diacritics, and numerals

Vowels

SHORT LONG
Central અ ∅ ક a ə આ ા કા ā a
High front ઇ િ કિ i i ઈ ી કી ī i
High back ઉ ુ કુ u u ઊ ૂ કૂ ū u
High back vibrant ઋ ૃ કૃ ṛ ru
Mid front એ ે કે e e, ɛ
Mid front dipthong ઐ ૈ કૈ ai əj
Mid back ઓ ો કો o o, ɔ
Mid back dipthong ઔ ૌ કૌ au əʋ


ENGLISH
Low front ઍ ૅ કૅ â æ
Mid back ઑ ૉ કૉ ô ɔ


Consonants

Plosive Nasal Sonorant Sibilant
Voiceless Voiced
Unaspirated Aspirated Unaspirated Aspirated
Velar ક ka kə ખ kha khə ગ ga ɡə ઘ gha ɡɦə ઙ ṅa ŋə
Palatal ચ ca tʃə છ cha tʃhə જ ja dʒə ઝ jha dʒɦə ઞ ña ɲə ય ya jə શ śa ʃə
Retroflex ટ ṭa ʈə ઠ ṭha ʈhə ડ ḍa ɖə ઢ ḍha ɖɦ ણ ṇa ɳə ર ra rə2 ષ ṣa ʃə3
Dental ત ta t̪ə થ tha t̪hə દ da d̪ə ધ dha d̪ɦə ન na nə2 લ la lə2 સ sa sə2
Labial પ pa pə ફ pha fə1 બ ba bə ભ bha bɦə મ ma mə વ va ʋə


Guttural હ ha hə
Retroflex ળ ḷa ɭə
ક્ષ kṣa4
જ્ઞ jña4


  • Listed above is the traditional Sanskrit-based consonantal matrix. Gujarati deviations from that are signified by yellow-colouring, and superscripted to an explanation.
    • 1 Originally /ph/
    • 2 More accurately alveolar
    • 3 Originally /ʂ/
  • The palatals c, ch, j, and jh are phonetically affricates but they pattern like the other stops.[4]
  • Letters can take names, by suffixing કાર kār. ર ra is an exception; it's called રેફ reph.[5]
  • Starting with ક ka and ending with જ્ઞ jña, the order goes[6]:
Plosives & Nasals (left to right, top to bottom) → Sonorants & Sibilants (top to bottom, left to right) → Bottom box (top to bottom)
  • 4 These are compound characters that happen to be traditonally included in the set.

Digits

૦ ૧ ૨ ૩ ૪ ૫ ૬ ૭ ૮ ૯
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Gujarati in Unicode

The Unicode range for Gujarati script is from U+0A80 to U+0AFF. The ISCII Code-page identifier for Gujarati script is 57010.

The table below shows the glyphs that are implemented in Unicode standard 4.0.0. Gray boxes indicate the code-points that are undefined/unused.

x= 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+0A8x   ઁ ં ઃ   અ આ ઇ ઈ ઉ ઊ ઋ   ઍ   એ
U+0A9x ઐ ઑ   ઓ ઔ ક ખ ગ ઘ ઙ ચ છ જ ઝ ઞ ટ
U+0AAx ઠ ડ ઢ ણ ત થ દ ધ ન   પ ફ બ ભ મ ય
U+0ABx ર   લ ળ   વ શ ષ સ હ     ઼ ઽ ા િ
U+0ACx ી ુ ૂ ૃ ૄ ૅ   ે ૈ ૉ   ો ૌ ્    
U+0ADx ૐ                              
U+0AEx ૠ           ૦ ૧ ૨ ૩ ૪ ૫ ૬ ૭ ૮ ૯
U+0AFx                                

Gujarati keyboard layouts

Inscript keyboard layout

INSCRIPT Keyboard - available for MS Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris.

Keyboard and script resources

How To: Use Unicode for creating Gujarati script

Additional details regarding how to use Unicode for creating Gujarati script can be found on Wikibooks: b:How to use Unicode in creating Gujarati script or on this Subpage - /How To: Use Unicode for creating Gujarati script

References

  1. ^ a b c Mistry, P. J. (1996) "Gujarati Writing". The World's Writing Systems. Ed. Daniels and Bright: Oxford University Press. pp. 391-393.
  2. ^ Snell, R. with Weightman, S. (1989) Teach Yourself Hindi. McGraw-Hill. Reprint 2003. p. 16.
  3. ^ Wikner, C. (1996) A Practical Sanskrit Introductory. p. 59.
  4. ^ Mistry, P.J. (2001) "Gujarati". Facts about the world's languages: An encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. Ed. Jane Garry, and Carl Rubino: New England Publishing Associates. pp. 274-277.
  5. ^ Dwyer, R. (1995) Teach Yourself Gujarati. (43 Mb) London: Hodder and Stoughton. p. 18.
  6. ^ Gujarati-English Dictionary. Ratilal Chandaria's Online Language Resources. —Notice the order of the consonants on the keyboard.

See also

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