Urdu Ṭe, Initial Form

It marks the retroflex t sound in Urdu-style writing.

ﭨ is the initial joining shape of Urdu's letter ٹ: a t pronounced with the tongue tip turned back. Punjabi written in Shahmukhi, the Perso-Arabic script used for Punjabi, uses the Urdu-style letter too. Initial, medial, final, and isolated are joining positions, not separate meanings.

Why type ٹ instead of ﭨ?

Type base letter ٹ in ordinary Urdu words.

ﭨ stores one compatibility shape. Unicode's normal text model stores U+0679 and lets the font choose initial, medial, final, or isolated shapes from joining context. Nearby letters or the font can change the visible shape without changing the sound; use the presentation form for legacy data or an exact-glyph requirement.

How did the Urdu letter develop?

Urdu adapted ت to mark a retroflex sound.

Urdu's ٹ replaces ت's dots with a small mark shaped like the Arabic letter ṭā (ط). Before modern Urdu orthography, Arabic and Persian alphabets had no dedicated letter for this South Asian sound. An author's handwritten manuscript around 1810 marks retroflexion with a vertical stroke; earlier personal manuscripts sometimes left it unmarked when context made the sound clear.

In 1919, Urdu writer Abdullah Yusuf Ali called the four-dot spelling ٿ antiquated and promoted the small-ط form partly to ease printing with metal type. Punjabi in Shahmukhi uses Urdu's form; Pashto ټ and Sindhi ٽ are related letters in their own orthographies.