Symbolen
65Klik op een symbool om het te kopiëren en de pagina ervan te openen.
Alphabet (Urdu script)
Dakhini is written with the Urdu alphabet, right to left, in Urdu order. Letters marked "Arabic words" sound like a neighbour and mostly appear in borrowed Arabic words; آ and ئ sit with the letter they are built on, ں and ھ with ن and ہ.
Vowel marks (aʿrāb)
Usually left out, as in all Urdu writing; added to spell out a word or in poetry for learners. Each sits on the letter it follows.
Punctuation
The dash-like ۔ ends a sentence; ، ؛ ؟ face right to left.
Urdu digits
The Eastern Arabic digits of Urdu-script text, written left to right inside right-to-left lines; plain 0–9 are just as common.
Currency
Prices in the Deccan are in Indian rupees: ₹, or روپے in Urdu.
Where it's spoken
Dakhini is a language of India; CLDR places all its estimated speakers there.
Op de kaart
Laden…
What is the Dakhini language?
Dakhini is the Hindustani of the Deccan, the plateau of southern India; the name means "southern", from Sanskrit dakṣiṇa, the same root as Deccan. It grew from the speech that soldiers, officials and Sufis brought from Delhi after Muhammad bin Tughluq moved his capital to Daulatabad in 1327, and it became a written, courtly language under the Bahmani Sultanate and then the sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda. Poetry and prose were written in Dakhini in the Deccan before Delhi's poets turned from Persian to their own speech.
Today Dakhini is above all the everyday language of Hyderabad and of Muslim families across the Deccan, and many of its speakers simply call it Urdu or Hyderabadi. Living for centuries beside Telugu, Kannada and Marathi, it took words and turns of grammar from all three, which is what makes it sound so different from the Urdu of Lucknow or Lahore.
The Dakhini Urdu alphabet
Dakhini is written in the Perso-Arabic script, like Urdu. This page therefore gives the full Urdu alphabet in Urdu order. Beyond the Arabic base it has the Persian letters پ p, چ ch, ژ zh and گ g, and the letters Urdu made for Indian sounds: ٹ ṭ and ڈ ḍ, said with the tongue curled back, and ڑ ṛ, a quick flap. ں nūn ghunna nasalises the vowel before it, as in hain ہیں, and ھ do-chashmī he marks aspiration, so کھ is kh as in khana کھانا, "food".
Several letters exist twice or more for one sound, such as ث س ص for s and ذ ز ض ظ for z; they keep the spelling of Arabic loanwords. Make sure you have the Urdu forms: Urdu kāf ک , not the Arabic ك; the round choṭī he ہ , not the Arabic ه; and the Urdu ye ی , which has no dots at the end of a word. ے, baṛī ye, writes a final e or ai, as in hai ہے.
Short vowels are normally left unwritten. To spell a Dakhini word out exactly, add َ zabar (a), ِ zer (i), ُ pesh (u), ْ jazm for a consonant with no vowel after it, ّ tashdīd for a doubled consonant, and ً for the -an of Arabic words like fauran فوراً, "at once". Sentences end with the Urdu full stop ۔, and the comma ، and question mark ؟ face right to left.
Deccani Urdu vs Urdu: words you will hear in Hyderabad
Written Dakhini today mostly follows standard Urdu, so the differences are in speech, and they are the words people search for. Nakko نکو means "no, don't, I don't want it"; hau means "yes"; kaiku means "why?"; hallu means "slowly, gently"; and the little word ich adds emphasis, as in aisa ich hai, "it's just like that". Baigan, "aubergine", is the Hyderabadi way to dismiss something as nonsense.
In chats and on social media most of this is typed in Roman letters. When it is written in Urdu script, it uses the same letters as Urdu, with no extra ones; there is no fixed spelling for the purely Dakhini words, so writers spell them as they sound.
How to type Dakhini Urdu letters
There is no separate Dakhini keyboard; use Urdu. Windows: add Urdu under Settings › Time & language › Language & region and switch with Win Space. Mac: add Urdu in System Settings › Keyboard › Input Sources. Phones: add the Urdu keyboard in Gboard or the iPhone keyboard settings and switch with the globe key; many Indian phones also offer Urdu in their own keyboards.
In Word you can type a code and press Alt X: 0679 for ٹ, 0688 for ڈ, 0691 for ڑ, 06BA for ں, 06BE for ھ, 06C1 for ہ, 06D2 for ے. In HTML write them as ٹ and so on. Or tap any letter on this page to copy it.
Where Dakhini is spoken
CLDR gives a rough figure of about 14 million speakers for Deccan (dcc) in India . The heart of the language is Hyderabad and Telangana; it is also spoken across northern Karnataka, in Kalaburagi (Gulbarga), Bidar and Vijayapura (Bijapur), and in Bengaluru, in Maharashtra's Marathwada around Aurangabad, in Andhra Pradesh around Kurnool, and in Tamil Nadu, where the Urdu of Chennai is a Dakhini variety. Hyderabadi communities have settled in the Gulf, Pakistan, Britain and North America, taking their Urdu with them.
For the standard language and its full alphabet see the Urdu collection; Hindi is the same Hindustani core in Devanagari, and Telugu, Kannada and Marathi, Dakhini's neighbours for six centuries, have collections of their own, as does India for the country's emoji. Prices are in Indian rupees, .
How to use them
5 situationsKlik om te kopiërenDakhini Urdu Letters combos
11Goed om te weten
- Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, the Golconda sultan who founded Hyderabad and built the Charminar in 1591, was a Dakhini poet; his collected poems are often called the first diwan, the first collected book of poems, in Urdu.
- Wali Dakani's reception in Delhi in the early 18th century is often credited with encouraging Rekhta poetry, though both the details and the extent of his influence are debated.
- Sab Ras, written by Mulla Wajhi at Golconda in 1635, is counted among the earliest prose works in Urdu.
- Deccan and Dakhini both come from Sanskrit dakṣiṇa, "south": Dakhini simply means "the southern language".
Veelgestelde vragen
7What is Dakhini language?
Dakhini (Deccani, Dakhni) is the Hindustani language of the Deccan in southern India, best known as the speech of Hyderabad. It began in the 14th century and was a literary language of the Deccan sultanates.
What script is Dakhini written in?
The Urdu (Perso-Arabic) alphabet, right to left, with Urdu's own letters ٹ ڈ ڑ ں ھ ے. In chats it is often typed in Roman letters.
Is Deccani Urdu different from Urdu?
Yes, in speech: Dakhini has its own words and grammar, shaped by Telugu, Kannada and Marathi: nakko, hau, kaiku, ich. Written Dakhini today mostly follows standard Urdu and uses exactly the same alphabet.
What is the difference between Hyderabadi Urdu and Pakistani Urdu?
They share the alphabet and the standard written language. Spoken Hyderabadi Urdu is Dakhini, with words like nakko (no) and hau (yes), the emphatic ich and different grammar, while Pakistani Urdu is close to the Urdu of Delhi and Lucknow.
What does Dakhini mean?
"Southern": it comes, like Deccan, from Sanskrit dakṣiṇa, "south".
Where is Dakhini spoken?
In India: Hyderabad and Telangana, northern Karnataka and Bengaluru, Marathwada in Maharashtra, Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh and Chennai in Tamil Nadu. CLDR gives a rough figure of about 14 million speakers for Deccan (dcc).
How do I type Urdu letters for Dakhini on my phone?
Add the Urdu keyboard in Gboard or the iPhone settings and switch with the globe key; it has every letter Dakhini uses, including ٹ ڈ ں ے. Or tap a letter on this page to copy it.
