How Gurmukhi works

An alphabet that reads the way it sounds

Gurmukhi is the script Punjabi is written in, and the script of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Guru Angad Dev Ji shaped it and spread it so that everyone, not only scholars, could read. The name means “from the mouth of the Guru”.

It reads left to right, like English, and it has no capital letters. Most letters hang from a line along the top, and in a word those lines join into one bar.

Each letter is a consonant that already carries a short “a”: ਕ on its own says “ka”, not “k”. To write any other vowel, you add a small mark to the letter. Those marks come in lessons 5 and 6.

Until then, a few example words use letters and marks from later lessons. Read the letters you know, and let the romanized line do the rest.

At the end of a word the built-in “a” is usually silent: ਘਰ is “ghar”, not “ghara”.

• ਘਰ

  ghar

  home, house

• ਕਲਮ

  kalam

  pen

• ਗਰਮ

  garam

  hot, warm

• ਮਨ

  man

  mind, heart

• ਚਲ

  chal

  come on, let’s go

  Said to a friend or a child. To an elder, it’s chalo.

The painti: 35 letters in rows of five

The traditional alphabet is called the painti, “the thirty-five”. It is laid out in seven rows of five, and the rows follow the mouth, from the throat to the lips. Learn the pattern and you can guess how most letters sound from where they sit.

The first row holds the three vowel carriers and two letters, ਸ and ਹ. Rows two to six are the core: each row is one place in the mouth, and inside each one the same pattern repeats. A plain sound, the same sound with a puff of air, a voiced sound, a letter that makes a tone, and a nasal. The last row is the rest: y, r, l, v and ੜ.

Six more letters are made by putting a dot under a letter: five for sounds Punjabi borrowed from Persian, Arabic and English, and ਲ਼ for a curled-back l that is Punjabi’s own. They come in lesson 4.

ਸੁਝਾਅ: Punjabi schools teach the letters by name, row by row: oorha, airha, eerhi, sassa, haha; kakka, khakha, gagga, ghagga, nganga.

Row one: the vowel carriers, ਸ and ਹ

ੳ, ਅ and ੲ are not consonants. They are carriers: a vowel mark needs a letter to sit on, so a word that starts with a vowel starts with one of these. Lesson 6 shows which vowels each one carries.

• ੳuoorhaNever said alone. It carries u, oo and o.
• ਅaairhaCarries a, aa, ai and au. On its own it says a, as at the start of ਅਸੀਂ (asi, we).
• ੲieerhiNever said alone. It carries i, ee and e.
• ਸssassas as in sun.
• ਹhhahah as in hat. After a vowel it often turns into a tone instead (lesson 8).

Row two: from the back of the mouth

This row shows the pattern every core row follows. ਕ is a k with no puff of air, like the k in “skip”. ਖ is a k with a strong puff, like the k in “kite”. English hears those as one sound; Punjabi hears two letters. Hold your hand in front of your mouth: ਖ should blow on it, and ਕ should not.

• ਕkkakkak with no puff of air, as in skip.
• ਖkhkhakhak with a strong puff of air, as in kite.
• ਗggaggag as in go.
• ਘghghaggaWritten gh, but it makes a tone rather than a breathy g (lesson 8).
• ਙngngangaThe ng of sing. Rare outside Gurbani.

• ਕਲਮ

  kalam

  pen

  Starts with ਕ: no puff of air.

• ਘਰ

  ghar

  home, house

  Starts with ਘ, the tone letter of this row.

• ਗਰਮ

  garam

  hot, warm

  Starts with ਗ, a plain g.