he fact that the alphabet of a language could be a contentious issue may be surprising for a large number of Pakistanis, given that we seldom dive deeply into the linguistics of Urdu or other languages of the country that we naturally acquire from our surroundings.

In contrast, we tend to remember much of the linguistic knowledge of English as we acquire it as a foreign language. We have no doubts that the number of letters in the English alphabet starting from A and ending at Z is 26.

However, this is not the case for Urdu, as there is no consensus on the number of letters comprising the Urdu alphabet.

In his new book on the Urdu alphabet and orthography, Urdu Imla Aur Huroof-i-Tahajji: Lisaniyati Tanazur (Urdu orthography and alphabet from a linguistic perspective), linguist Dr Rauf Parekh makes a case for a 54-letter set of the Urdu alphabet.

Like his other work on various aspects of Urdu linguistics, Dr Parekh’s new book contains numerous references to previous work on the subject.

The book mentions the count made by a large number of linguists and literary scholars from the era of Inshallah Khan Insha to the present. Deputy Nazeer Ahmed, for example, held that there were 39 letters in the Urdu alphabet. Syed Ahmed Dehlvi suggests 55.

For Fateh Muhammad Jalandhari and Maulvi Abdul Haq, the count is 51 and 50, respectively. Ismail Meerthi initially believed 35 to be the correct count of the Urdu alphabet but later extended it to 41. Gopi Chand Narang believed the number should be 39, Gyan Chand Jain 45, Farman Fatehpuri 51 and Shan-ul Haq Haqqee, 53.

A major reason for the variance in the opinions of scholars is the phenomenon of aspirated sounds in Urdu, which are absent in the Arabic and Persian languages, whose script has become the basis of the Urdu script.

Aspirated sounds are produced while simultaneously throwing air out of the chest. For example, Bay, becomes Bhay when pronounced in an aspirated manner. Speakers of some other languages may not easily differentiate between the sounds of Bay and Bhay, just like the speakers of Urdu, who find it challenging to distinguish between the sounds of English letters v and w. However, the Urdu speakers clearly understand the difference between Bay and Bhay and know that the meaning of a word may change if one sound is replaced by the other.

As Arabic and Persian scripts have no letters to denote aspirated sounds, Urdu linguists started using the doe chashmi Hay, which was just another form of writing Hay in Arabic or Persian. Adding doe chashmi Hai to a letter now denotes the aspirated version of the letter sound.

Most of the disagreement regarding the Urdu alphabet stems from this use of doe chashmi Hay. Some believe that attaching the doe chashmi Hay with a letter does not make it a separate letter of the alphabet. Hence, they count Bay as a letter but not Bhay.

Others insist that since the addition of the do chashmi Hay changes the phoneme (distinct unit of sound), all such additions, like Bhay, Phay, Jhay, Chhay, etc., should be treated as discrete letters. Interestingly, if this rule is applied to English, the number of English letters will grow substantially as many sounds in English are represented by two-letter combinations, e.g. the sound of ‘sh’ in ship and ‘th’ in three.

Dr Parekh identifies a mistake commonly made by Pakistanis in English. He explains that the word ‘alphabet’ means the complete set of letters of any language and its individual members should be called letters. 

Dr Parekh belongs to the latter group. Even in this group, there is some disagreement regarding the number of aspirated sounds in Urdu that deserve a separate letter. Whereas sounds denoted by Bhay, Jhay etc are universally agreed upon as distinct sounds of Urdu, others like the Mhay (aspirated version of Urdu letter Meem) or Nhay (aspirated version of Urdu letter Noon) have not been universally acknowledged.

Using the theory of ‘minimal pairs’ the author believes that Mhay and Nhay are also separate letters in Urdu. He also calls for writing common second and third-person pronouns like tumhara, tumhen, unhen, etc with do chashmi Hai rather than the tooti Hai. Although there is a point to Dr Parekh’s suggestion, the element of convention cannot be ignored easily. Conventionally, these pronouns are not written with doe chashmi Hay.

Other reasons sources of disagreement over the Urdu alphabet pertain to the status of Alif Mamdooda, commonly known as Alif Mad, Hamza and Noon Ghunna.

Some scholars treat Hamza as a form of Alif that comes in the middle of words and not as a separate letter. This opinion seems to have some merit but Dr Parekh is among those who consider Hamza as a separate letter.

Regarding Noon Ghunna, Dr Parekh has an interesting take. He writes that due to issues arising out of Urdu typing, Noon Ghunna has been included as a separate letter. He writes that Noon Ghunna is not a separate phoneme but adds a nasal quality to the vowel sound that precedes it.

However, that nasal quality does change the meaning of a word so Noon Ghunna must be a part of the Urdu alphabet even if there were no issues arising out of Urdu typing.

Dr Parekh has also sought to point out a common mistake. He explains that the word ‘alphabet’ means the complete set of letters of a language and its individual members should be called letters. Therefore, it is not correct to say that A is the first alphabet of English. Instead, A is the first letter of the English alphabet.

Although the book covers a large number of issues related to the Urdu alphabet and orthography, the author has no comment on the use of letters that denote similar sounds. For example, in Urdu, Seen, Suaad and Say are often pronounced like the ‘s’ in English. In Arabic, of course, they have distinct sounds. Likewise, the difference in Arabic between Zay, Zaal, Zuay and Zuaad is less clear in Urdu speech where they all end up being pronounced mostly like the English Z.

There have been calls for retaining only one of the letters in Urdu and letting go the rest. It would have been nice to have Dr Parekh’s view on the subject.

The book will be a great read for anyone interested in Urdu orthography. It also has an interesting chapter on the issues that arise while transliterating English words in Urdu. As Urdu does not have all the sounds in English, especially some vowel sounds, it becomes a problem writing English words that Urdu has absorbed. For example, we tend to pronounce ‘ball’ the way it is pronounced in English but write it as if it were pronounced baal.

Urdu Imla Aur Haroof-i-Tahajji

Lisaniyati Tanazur

Author: Dr Rauf Parekh

Pages: 224

Price: Rs 700

The reviewer may be reached at bilal89ahmed@gmail.com