Punjabi - Gurmukhi Script

Introduction

Gurmukhi derive its character set form Landa (old script of Indian sub-continent) and was standardized by Guru Angad Dev (second Sikh Guru, 1504 - 1552) in the 16th century and contained 35 consonants at that time. The word Gurmukhi literally means "from the mouth of Guru". The whole of the Guru Granth Sahib (Holy book of Sikhs) is written in Gurmukhi. Its alphabets are Abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel (a) that can be changed using vowel signs [1]. It is a left to right script and unlike Shahmukhi its characters do not assume different shapes and also do not have small and capital forms. An example sentence is give below:

Modern Gurmukhi has 41 consonants, 9 vowels symbols, 2 symbols for nasal sounds, 1 symbol that duplicates the sound of any consonant, 3 subjoined forms of the consonants Ra, Ha and Va and 1 post-base from of Ya. In Unicode, Gurmukhi sub-range is from U+0A00 to U+0A7F. This provides 128 code points for Gurmukhi characters of which only 77 are currently used (Unicode 4.0.1). In addition, Danda and Double Danda are contained in the Devanagari sub-range at U+0964 and U+0965 respectively.

Reference

• http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Gurmukhi