Urdu Alphabet & Letters

The Urdu alphabet is written from right to left. In the order of the school chart, the ḥurūf-e-tahajjī, with each letter's Urdu name and the sound it writes: ا alif (a, ā), آ alif mad (ā), ب be (b), پ pe (p), ت te (t), ٹ ṭe (ṭ), ث se (s), ج jīm (j), چ che (ch), ح baṛī he (h), خ khe (kh), د dāl (d), ڈ ḍāl (ḍ), ذ zāl (z), ر re (r), ڑ ṛe (ṛ), ز ze (z), ژ zhe (zh), س sīn (s), ش shīn (sh), ص su'ād (s), ض zu'ād (z), ط to'e (t), ظ zo'e (z), ع ain (a vowel catch, often silent), غ ghain (gh), ف fe (f), ق qāf (q), ک kāf (k), گ gāf (g), ل lām (l), م mīm (m), ن nūn (n), ں nūn ghunna (nasal vowel), و vā'o (v, ū, o), ہ choṭī he (h), ھ do-chashmī he (aspiration), ء hamza, ی choṭī ye (y, ī) and ے baṛī ye (e, ai).

How many letters Urdu has depends on the chart: most count 38 or 39, because some give آ, ں, ھ or ء a place of their own and others treat them as forms of another letter, and some primers add the aspirated pairs بھ پھ تھ ٹھ … to reach 50 and more. Urdu has no capital letters, so there is no upper and lower case to choose between.

Urdu keeps the Arabic spelling of its Arabic loanwords, so several letters write the same sound: ث س ص are all s, ذ ز ض ظ are all z, ت ط are both t and ح ہ both h. Like Persian, from which Urdu took much of its vocabulary, it also has پ چ ژ گ, the four letters Persian added to the Arabic alphabet.

Urdu is joined up: every letter changes shape at the start, middle or end of a word, and the font draws the right shape, so you only ever copy the plain letters on this page. Ten letters never join to the letter after them: ا د ڈ ذ ر ڑ ز ژ و ے. Urdu is traditionally set in Nastaʿlīq, the hanging calligraphic style in which each word slopes from top right down to the line at its left end; in a font made for Arabic the same letters sit flat in Naskh, which Urdu readers find stiff.

Urdu letters for its own sounds: ٹ ڈ ڑ, ں, ھ and ے

Urdu has three retroflex sounds, said with the tongue curled back, and writes them by putting a small ط on top of an existing letter: ٹ ṭe from ت, as in ٹوپی ṭopī (cap); ڈ ḍāl from د, as in ڈاک ḍāk (post); and ڑ ṛe from ر, as in بڑا baṛā (big) and لڑکا laṛkā (boy). No Urdu word begins with ڑ.

ں, nūn ghunna, is a nūn without its dot that writes no n at all, only a nasal vowel, like the French bon: میں maiṉ (I; in), ہاں hāṉ (yes), نہیں nahīṉ (no). It stands at the end of words; inside a word the same nasal is written with an ordinary dotted ن, as in ہنسنا hãsnā (to laugh), and some dictionaries and primers put the small mark ٘ over it.

Urdu has two letters for h. ہ, choṭī he or gol he, is the h of ہم ham (we) and also writes the final -a of words such as بچہ bachcha (child) and the little word کہ ki (that). ھ, do-chashmī he, the two-eyed he, is never h on its own: it follows a consonant to make it aspirated, said with a puff of breath, as in بھائی bhāī (brother), پھول phūl (flower), گھر ghar (home) and ٹھیک ṭhīk (fine). Keep them apart: کہنا kahnā (to say) has an h, کھانا khānā (food) a kh.

There are also two letters for y. ی, choṭī ye, writes y and ī anywhere in a word; ے, baṛī ye, only ends a word and writes -e or -ai. The difference carries grammar: لڑکی laṛkī is a girl, لڑکے laṛke boys; ہے hai means is. Three everyday Urdu letters look like Arabic ones but are different characters: ہ U+06C1 is not the Arabic ه U+0647, ی U+06CC is not ي U+064A, and ک U+06A9 is not ك U+0643. Text typed on an Arabic keyboard can look nearly right, then fail in search, sorting and Nastaʿlīq fonts, so copy from this page or use an Urdu keyboard.

Urdu aerab: zabar, zer, pesh and the hamza letters

Everyday Urdu writes consonants and long vowels and leaves the short vowels to the reader. The marks that spell them out are the aerāb (اعراب): zabar َ for a, zer ِ for i, pesh ُ for u, jazm ْ for no vowel and tashdīd ّ for a doubled consonant, as in ابّا abbā (father). Primers, the Quran, dictionaries and words that could be misread use them, and a zer writes the Persian-style izāfat that links two words: جشنِ آزادی jashn-e āzādī, the celebration of independence.

Arabic loanwords bring a few more. Do zabar ً writes -an in adverbs such as فوراً fauran (at once) and تقریباً taqrīban (about); do zer ٍ and do pesh ٌ appear only in Arabic phrases. Khaṛā zabar ٰ, the standing zabar, writes a long ā in spellings kept from Arabic: اعلیٰ a'lā (excellent), عیسیٰ Īsā, موسیٰ Mūsā. Khaṛī zer ٖ and ulṭā pesh ٗ, the standing zer and the upside-down pesh, mark a long ī and ū, mostly in the Quran as it is printed in South Asia. Mad ٓ is the wave that turns ا into آ.

آ, alif mad, writes a long ā at the start of a word: آپ āp (you), آج āj (today), آم ām (mango). Hamza ء marks a break between two vowels and usually sits on a seat: ئ in آئیے āiye (please come), کئی kaī (several) and گئے gaye (went); ؤ in a few Arabic words such as مؤنث mu'annas (feminine); and ۂ on the final he of a word joined by izāfat, as in نغمۂ دل naghma-e dil (song of the heart). ۓ is a one-character form of ئے found in a lot of typed Urdu. ۃ, a round he with two dots, survives in Arabic religious words such as صلوٰۃ salāt (prayer) and زکوٰۃ zakāt (alms).

Urdu punctuation marks, numbers 1 to 10 and Urdu symbols: ۔ ؟ ۱ ؐ ؔ

Urdu ends a sentence with its own full stop, ۔ (ḳhatma), a short dash on the line instead of a dot; typing the Latin . in its place is a common slip in typed Urdu. The comma ، (sakta), the semicolon ؛ (vaqfa) and the question mark ؟ (savāliya nishān) are turned to face right to left. The exclamation mark is the usual !, and quotations go between “ ”, the vāvain.

Urdu digits are ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹. They are the same Unicode characters as the Persian ones, and a font set to Urdu draws ۴ ۶ ۷ in their Urdu shapes. One to ten are ایک ek, دو do, تین tīn, چار chār, پانچ pānch, چھ chhe, سات sāt, آٹھ āṭh, نو nau, دس das. Digits run left to right inside the right-to-left line: ۱۴ اگست ۱۹۴۷ء. In Pakistan the Western 0–9 are just as common on prices, phone numbers and number plates. ٪ is percent, and ٫ and ٬ are the decimal and thousands separators.

Two letters double as year marks: ء after a year of the common era stands for عیسوی īsavī, and ھ after a year of the Islamic calendar for ہجری hijrī, so 1947 is ۱۹۴۷ء and an Islamic year is written like ۱۴۴۸ھ.

Urdu writing shows respect with small signs that sit over a name. After the Prophet's name comes ؐ or the whole phrase as one character, ﷺ, ṣallallāhu ʿalaihi wa sallam (God bless him and grant him peace): محمدؐ. ؑ, ʿalaihis-salām (peace be upon him), follows other prophets and the imams: حضرت علیؑ; ؓ, raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu (may God be pleased with him), follows the Prophet's Companions: حضرت عمرؓ; and ؒ, raḥmatullāh ʿalaih (God's mercy upon him), follows revered scholars, saints and poets who have died: علامہ اقبالؒ. Paste the sign straight after the last letter of the name and it lands on top of it. ﷽ is Bismillāh ir-Raḥmān ir-Raḥīm in a single character, often set at the head of a letter or a book.

Urdu poetry has marks of its own. A poet names himself or herself in the last couplet of a ghazal by a pen name, the takhalluṣ, and printed Urdu puts the sign ؔ over it: غالبؔ for Mirza Ghalib, فیضؔ for Faiz Ahmad Faiz, فرازؔ for Ahmad Faraz. ؎ introduces a couplet quoted inside prose and ؏ a single line of verse, a miṣraʿ. These are the signs people look for when they search for Urdu symbols to copy and paste for shayari.

How to type Urdu on a keyboard, in MS Word and on a phone

Windows: open Settings, Time & language, Language & region, add Urdu (اردو) and switch with Windows + Space; the on-screen keyboard shows where each letter sits. Many Pakistani typists prefer a phonetic layout instead, with ب on B, پ on P and س on S; free ones such as the CRULP Urdu Phonetic keyboard can be installed alongside. Mac: System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources, then add Urdu; the Keyboard Viewer in the menu bar shows the layout.

MS Word: with the Urdu keyboard on, set the paragraph to right-to-left (the paragraph button with the arrow pointing left) and choose a Nastaʿlīq font: Windows ships one called Urdu Typesetting, and Jameel Noori Nastaleeq and Noto Nastaliq Urdu are free downloads. Urdu newspapers and books have long been set in InPage, a dedicated Urdu page-layout program. In Photoshop, Illustrator and video editors, switch on the Middle Eastern or World-Ready text engine, or pasted Urdu falls apart into single letters running the wrong way; on web pages, mark Urdu text with lang="ur" dir="rtl".

Phones: add Urdu in Gboard's language settings, or on an iPhone in Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards, Add New Keyboard; WhatsApp and every other app then types Urdu. آ, the hamza letters and the aerab marks sit on a long-press or the second page, depending on the keyboard. Without an Urdu keyboard, many people chat in Roman Urdu, Urdu spelled in Latin letters: kya haal hai? (how are you?).

Where Urdu is spoken: Pakistan, India and abroad

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan, where it is official alongside English, and one of the 22 languages listed in India's constitution, official in Jammu and Kashmir and an additional official language in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Telangana. CLDR estimates that around 310 million people use it: about 240 million in Pakistan, where most people grow up speaking Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki or Balochi and use Urdu as the language everyone shares, and about 70 million in India. Large communities live in the United Kingdom (around 2.4 million), Canada (around 430,000), Mauritius (around 70,000) and the Gulf. The Pakistan and India collections gather each country's flag, food and festival emoji.

Pakistan's currency is the rupee, written Rs or روپے and coded PKR; Unicode's general rupee sign ₨ serves it and the Mauritian rupee, while the Indian rupee has had its own sign, ₹, since 2010.

Spoken Urdu and Hindi are close enough that their speakers understand each other in everyday talk, and Bollywood films and songs are in this shared Hindustani. In writing they part ways: Hindi uses Devanagari and takes its learned words from Sanskrit, Urdu the Perso-Arabic script and words from Persian and Arabic. Pakistan's other languages write the same script with letters of their own: see the Shahmukhi Alphabet (Punjabi), Sindhi, Saraiki, Pashto, Balochi, Kashmiri, Brahui, Khowar and Balti collections, and the Persian, Arabic and Hindi collections for the neighbours.

A few emoji travel with Urdu messages: 🌙 for the crescent moon that marks the start of Ramzan and Eid (the night before Eid is chānd rāt, the night of the moon), 🕌 and 🤲 for Friday greetings and a duʿā, a prayer, 🌹 for the gul of the ghazal, the rose its nightingale sings to, 📖 and 🖋️ for shayari and Nastaʿlīq calligraphy, and ☕ for chai.