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In Gurmukhi alphabet, there are 35 main letters. 5 extra words are developed later by putting the dots underneath the letters to accommodate Sanskrit and Persian/Arabic sounds. Besides these letters in the Gurmukhi alphabets, we also have letters for soft sounds such as “half-haha” and “half-rara” developed by placing half half letter underneath or at the base of the letter.

Likewise, Urdu alphabets are the one which are the same as those used in Farsi writing. Farsi alphabets are borrowed from Arabic alphabets. Arabic alphabets were modified to take care of the Persian sounds by adding extra letters for the pronunciation of the sounds like “jay, key, zee, ess, tee”, etc to represent harsh, normal and soft sounds such as jeem, zoaad, zoy, ze, zzey including many sounds of “s”, “k”and “t”.

Again Urdu alphabets borrowed all the Persian sounds and Urdu alphabets were modified to accommodate Sanskrit alphabets sounds by adding ,”do-chashmi he” to make sounds like:”sh, kh,gh,bh,th” etc.

Similarly these 5 sounds in PUNJABI and Urdu were reflected in English used in India by the East India Company by adding the letter “h” to these 5 Roman words that is : “sh,kh,th,gh,bh”. In real Roman alphabets, these modified letters do not exist.

(Mohindar Singh / Feb 6, 2018)