Gojri (Gujari) Script & Letters

Gojri (گوجری), which Pakistani sources often call Gujari, is the language of the Gujjar and Bakarwal communities of the mountains between Kashmir and Hazara. It is commonly written right to left in Perso-Arabic, often using Urdu-based conventions, but Gojri orthographies vary among writers and institutions. In India a few books and signs also use Devanagari, but much of the Gojri in print and on phones is in the Urdu letters.

A common Urdu-based Gojri set, in Urdu order, is ا آ ب پ ت ٹ ث ج چ ح خ د ڈ ذ ر ڑ ز ژ س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ک گ ل م ن ں و ہ ھ ء ی ے; published Gojri alphabets may also include ڵ and ݩ. As in Urdu, letters join up and change shape at the start, middle and end of a word; Unicode assigns code points to characters and fonts draw joined forms; Gojri aspirated consonants are written with two-character sequences. ث ح ذ ص ض ط ظ ع ق appear mainly in words and names from Arabic and Persian, such as محمد and قرآن, and are pronounced like ordinary s, h, z, t and k.

Short vowels are normally left unwritten. The long vowels have letters: ا for ā, ی for ī (and y), ے for ē at the end of a word and و for ō and ū (and w). When a word could be misread, or in books for learners, the marks zabar َ (a), zer ِ (i) and pesh ُ (u) spell out the short vowels, shadda ّ doubles a consonant and jazm ْ shows that no vowel follows.

ھ, ٹ ڈ ڑ and ں: the Gojri letters people look for

ھ, the two-eyed he (do-chashmī he, U+06BE), forms aspirated spellings in sequences such as بھ (bh), پھ (ph), تھ (th), ٹھ (ṭh), جھ (jh), چھ (chh), دھ (dh), ڈھ (ḍh), کھ (kh) and گھ (gh); some Gojri spellings also use it to mark tone. Gojri place names show it everywhere: پونچھ (Poonch), ڈھوک (dhok, a summer pasture). Do not confuse it with the ordinary h, the round ہ (U+06C1), which is a sound of its own, or with the Arabic ه that an Arabic keyboard types instead.

ٹ ڈ ڑ are three retroflex consonants, said with the tip of the tongue curled back: a hard ṭ, a hard ḍ and a flapped ṛ, written as in Urdu with a small ط on top of ت, د and ر. Gojri also has retroflex nasal and lateral phonemes, represented by ݩ and ڵ in a published alphabet. They are some of the most common sounds in Gojri, which, like the Rajasthani and Punjabi languages around it, uses them in many everyday words.

ں, nūn ghunna, the n without a dot, marks a nasal vowel at the end of a word, as in Urdu میں and ہاں. ے (baṛī ye) writes a final ē, and آ (alif madda) a long ā at the start of a word. ء hamza marks a break between two vowels. Many Gojri words are spelled differently from writer to writer, since there is no single standard orthography; published alphabets may also include additional characters such as ڵ and ݩ.

How to type Gojri: Urdu keyboard, phone and codes

There is no built-in Gojri layout in Windows, macOS, Android or iOS, but the Urdu keyboard covers the letters in the grid on this page. On Windows, open Settings, Time & language, Language & region, add Urdu and switch layouts with Windows + Space. On a Mac, add Urdu under System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources. On a phone, add the Urdu keyboard in Gboard or in the iPhone keyboard settings; both include ھ, ٹ, ڈ, ڑ and ں.

If you are typing on another keyboard, Word accepts Unicode codes: type 06BE and press Alt + X for ھ, 0679 for ٹ, 0688 for ڈ, 0691 for ڑ and 06BA for ں. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type the same code. In HTML write ھ and so on. The rupee sign ₨ is U+20A8 and the Indian rupee ₹ is U+20B9; most people simply write Rs or روپے.

Gojri uses the Urdu punctuation: the full stop is the dash-like ۔, not a dot, and the comma ،, question mark ؟ and semicolon ؛ are turned to face right-to-left text. Numbers are written with 0–9 or with the Urdu digits ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹, whose 4, 6 and 7 differ from the Arabic ٤ ٦ ٧; digits run left to right even inside Gojri text.

Gojri language in Pakistan and in Jammu and Kashmir

Gojri is spoken across the western Himalaya: in Pakistan in Hazara (around Mansehra and the Kaghan Valley), Swat, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; in India above all in Jammu and Kashmir, in districts such as Poonch and Rajouri, and among Gujjar herders in Himachal Pradesh; and in small communities in eastern Afghanistan. CLDR estimates about 500,000 speakers in Pakistan alone, and its figure leaves out the large Gojri-speaking population of Jammu and Kashmir. Many Gujjars still move their herds each year between the lowlands in winter and the high meadows in summer, and Bakarwals, the goat- and sheep-herding Gujjars, are usually said to take their name from a word for goat, such as bakri.

Gojri is an Indo-Aryan language. Linguists group it with the Rajasthani languages, and George Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India already noted its closeness to Mewati, which fits the Gujjars' traditions of having come north from Rajasthan and Gujarat long ago. It is not the same language as Gujarati, despite the shared root of the names, and Gujarati has a script of its own. Gojri has its own songs, among them the sung bait, and its own programmes on radio in Jammu and Kashmir. For its neighbours and relatives see the Urdu, Punjabi, Hindko, Kashmiri, Dogri and Pashto collections, the Rajasthani, Mewati and Gujarati ones, and the Pakistan and India collections for the countries' flags and emoji.