Learn Punjabi ਕ਼ Kakka Pair Bindi

I only knew about ਸ਼ ਖ਼ ਗ਼ ਜ਼ ਫ਼ ਲ਼ (the 6 pair bindis).However, I was doing some research and found ਕ਼

It appears to be used tomake a "q" sound like in "queen". Does anyone know if this is a valid letter of Gurmukhi. Maybe it was a letter that was added, but never made it to the standardized version?

Gurmukhi has 41 letters per my Gurmukhi text book. This would make it 42 letters.

I am not sure about either ਲ਼ or the ਕ਼.

This would be interesting to find out. I can ask my aunt who has done Masters in Punjabi..

johnyork ji

You ask some pointedly good questions.. questions that force me to thinking and research.

Kanwaljitji

The book Complete Punjabi says this about lala pair bindi:

"More recently, an extra character ਲ਼ was introduced, though it has not become popular and hence will not be included in this book."

So apparently it exists but not widely used.

Johnji

In An Introduction to the Sacred Language of the Sikhs and Complete Punjabi there is no sign of kaka pair bindi. Only khakha pair bindi like your example. But perhaps it's another new addition.

WHO or what "Authority" adds Bindis or letters to Languages ?? esp Punjabi/Gurmukhi ??
Can anybody shed some light on this aspect...
We all know that the First person to do some STANDARDISATION to the existing Script was GURU ANGAD JI..and thats why the Present Script is known as GURMUKHI...even though the SCRIPT precedes even Guru nanak ji...
BUT the Bindi Letters are NOT used in SGGS...they came later to accommodate F{censored}E and Arabic words...but how and when and who first began using them..???

I will be researching this also..
Thanks

I was wondering myself how it happened that the script would be made-up, reinvented as we go along. It sounded odd. But not an expert, I kept my mouth shut on this point until liberated by Gyani's last revelation which spurred me on.

The bindis, my understanding, are optional even in ordinary Punjabi writing, and are more common in Hindi. (Urdu is part of the Hindi/Hindustani language family, and thus we might see them in Shahmukhi.)

Also the bindis, again my flawed understanding, are paired with vowels. On this point I could use instruction.

johnyork ji. As I said your threads stimulate a lot of reflection. Let's see how far we get with this, and I know I will learn a lot.

One example i know is like this...

From early times...The PUNJABI spoken and written in the MAJHA REGION (Amrtisar/lahore/Gurdaspur region) was the DEFACTO "Queens PUNJABI"...used in Academic circles and all books exams etc......

BUT in 1947..when Punjab was divided...and the MAJHA REGION that came into Indian Punajb was so small...and the MALWA REGION overtook in terms of population...writers and novelists esp JASWANT SINGH KANWAL born in MALWA began to use MALWA PUNJABI extensively in their books poems newspapers etc...slowly the MALWAII PUNJABI has become the Defacto "Queens Punjabi"...and its acceptable now as the lingua franca of the Punjabis...one example: in Majha the word 25 is spelt and pronounced PANJHEE...but in Malwa its spelt and pronounced PACHEE....when I sat for my Gyani exam in the early 70's it was taught that I should never use the word Pachee or it would be marked spelling error...( I am malwaii..and studied under Malwaii teachers in a malwaii majority Kuala Lumpur School !!)..and that i should always write PANJHI...
This is how Langauge changes...

So NOW..with the PREPONDERANCE of HINDI in PUNJAB..maybe..the HINDI COLOUR is also spreading to PUNJABI...creeping influence...already many words in the PUNJABI newspapers are HINDI words..and HINDI GRAMMAR is applied to Punajbi sentences..as MEIN GUSSAH Hun..(Hindi) MEINU GUSSAH AA GIYAH (Punjabi) Gussa-Gusseh..is Punjabi..while the Hindi word doesnt change in Noun or adjective form...

Unfortunately Complete Punjabi doesn't dwell on the subject. It says:

Adminji, further in the book it says that bindee (and tippee) serve to add a nasal sound to vowels.

So it would appear, bindee in the foot is for consonants, and above the line is for vowels.

Now this gets more fascinating by the minute (of course only a geek like me would think it is fascinating, but I do). Thanks Ishna ji.

I am wondering how this is moving johnyork ji's query along. If he needs it for a course, an assignment, does it help at all?

Ishna said:

Unfortunately Complete Punjabi doesn't dwell on the subject. It says:

... At one time there were only 35 letters in the Punjabi script, but later five more letters were added in order to accommodate Urdu sounds correctly. This need arose because of the many loan words from Urdu used in Panjabi. ...

Consonants with a dot [paireen bindee]
..............
​

Adminji, further in the book it says that bindee (and tippee) serve to add a nasal sound to vowels.

Click to expand...

Ishna ji thanks for your good contributions. Just one clarification,

• paireen bindee
  • DOES NOT, add Nasal sound and I don't think you imply so but just in case it adds to discourse here.
  • It rather changes the letter pronunciation quite significantly and differently as follows with generally a back of the throat rasping "ah" sound at the end of the consonant,

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  ਸ਼​
  </td> <td style="padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  Sussay paer bindi​
  </td> <td style="width:.95in;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt" width="91">
  shaa​
  </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:1"> <td style="background:#CCCCCC;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  ਖ਼​
  </td> <td style="padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  Khukhay paer bindi​
  </td> <td style="width:.95in;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt" width="91">
  kha​
  </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:2"> <td style="background:#CCCCCC;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  ਗ਼​
  </td> <td style="padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  Guggay paer bindi​
  </td> <td style="width:.95in;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt" width="91">
  gaah​
  </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:3"> <td style="background:#CCCCCC;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  ਜ਼​
  </td> <td style="padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  Jujjay paer bindi​
  </td> <td style="width:.95in;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt" width="91">
  Jzah​
  </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:4;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes"> <td style="background:#CCCCCC;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  ਫ਼​
  </td> <td style="padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt">
  Phuphay paer bindi​
  </td> <td style="width:.95in;padding:3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt" width="91">
  fah​
  </td> </tr> </tbody></table>

The above is Majha circa 1950s and soon after partition before Gyani Jarnail Singh ji Malwa identified influence mundahug.

Never heard of any other letters with "pairee bindees" till this thread but at the present stage of systematic destruction of Punjabi all is possible and much more will come. Quite disgusting it is from where I observe and how I feel!

Sat Sri Akal.

Hey everyone, thanks for all the replies. I was only inquiring because I was learning about Gurmukhi, that was all. I simply wanted a solid list of letters and couldn't make up my mind about this ਕ਼ Kakka pair bindi.

I can tell everyone this about it though, to kind of give some resolution. It is definitly not one of the official 35 original letters and not even part of the later revised edition that included the 6 pair bindis (making it 41 total)(I think we all knew this anyway).You will never see it in the Guru Granth, etc..

I was just curious. You have to admit, the English "Q" sound is not represented by any of the current 41 letters of Gurmukhi. Probably, my opinion only, someone added it just for loanwords. Who ever this person was probably didn't have any authority to do so, so it was never accepted (this is just a wild guess).

And the most solid information I have on ਕ਼ Kakka pair bindi is that it does not exist in the IPA library. However, the standardized 41 letters are all represented in the IPA library. If ਕ਼ Kakka pair bindi was the real deal, it would be in that library.

Not to complicate things though, the bindi (below) and the ਕ (Kakka) both exist in the IPA library, so you can type it. I tried to ask one of the Khalsas about this and he told me he never heard of it and that is as far as I have went with this besides my own personal research.

(Sorry to detour briefly from the main thread for personal clarification, please)

Ambarsaria ji

I may not have made my post clear, or else I am muddled up.

My understanding was that bindee did add nasalisation when it is placed above the line, with a vowel, as in:

ਮਿਠਿਆਈਆਂ mithiaaeeaan sweets

Is that correct or am I bamboozled?

However, when placed below a consonant it changes the sound as you described, for instance 's' as in English 'snake' would become 'sh' as in English 'shake'.

Pair bindi (below the consonant) is for aspiration.

Ishna ji you are mostly correct and there was no key error in your post. I simply added an elaboration.

I hope the following also adds to the discourse.

Ishna said:

(Sorry to detour briefly from the main thread for personal clarification, please)

Ambarsaria ji

I may not have made my post clear, or else I am muddled up.

My understanding was that bindee did add nasalisation when it is placed above the line, with a vowel, as in:

ਮਿਠਿਆਈਆਂ mithiaaeeaan sweets

Click to expand...

Ishna ji thanks. However, the bindi use above the letter is not restricted to "Vowels" only. It can be appearing in other letters too.

For example the following,

• ਕਾਂ -- (kaan) -- Crow
• ਮਾਂ -- (maan) -- mother
• ਲਾਵਾਂ -- (laavan) -- The "Anand Karaj" hymns and circling the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji

johnyork has flagged good information. The "pairee bindi" I am not sure if it is aspiratory but almost all sounds are expiratory and for sure the "paireen bindi" ones.

Sat Sri Akal.

PS: johnyyork ji the Q can be sounded as "ਕਿਊ". Of course Punjabi rarely has letter to letter mapping for same pronunciation as English. It is easier to sound out English sounds in Punjabi versus the reverse as Punjabi simply has more letters and the added accents which is way more than 26 letters of English Alphabet.

I don't compose or write much in Punjabi but I use the following indirectly while composing words or simple sentences,

http://www.srigranth.org/servlet/gurbani.gurbani?Action=punjabi

Ambasaria ji

I think I was the one who thought the bindis were restricted to vowels only, then Ishna pointed out that they are used for both vowels (above letter) and consonants (below the letter).

What would help us all, some are losing track of the problem, is for someone to write a summary of the rules for bindi usage as they have surfaced in this thread. Who would have thought? This may be the longest running public discussion of "bindi" and "tippi" in the history of linguistics. icecreammunda Lot's of fun but also intricate.

johnyork said:

I only knew about ਸ਼ ਖ਼ ਗ਼ ਜ਼ ਫ਼ ਲ਼ (the 6 pair bindis).However, I was doing some research and found ਕ਼

It appears to be used tomake a "q" sound like in "queen". Does anyone know if this is a valid letter of Gurmukhi. Maybe it was a letter that was added, but never made it to the standardized version?

Gurmukhi has 41 letters per my Gurmukhi text book. This would make it 42 letters.

Click to expand...

The guttural versions of ਗ ਖ exist as ਗ਼ ਖ਼ respectively. Perhaps this is guttural version of ਕ.

There are few more sounds I discovered that aren't in our script such as soft ਜ as in the bolded 'g' in garage. 'Raj' is incorrectly pronounced witha soft 'j'.
The 'tz' sound isn't there, as in the italian 'zz' in pizza.

I am sure there are more such sounds that Punjabis use which aren't in the script. I suspect these haven't made into the standardized script because the sound is not common enough in Punjabi discourse. There isn't enough intermingling between the French and Italians and Punjabis like there was with Persians. If there was we'd see these sounds eventually having their own symbol.

Pronunciation of ਕ਼
Arabic- A'yn (ع) - YouTube

I am sorry it appears the poster is suggesting in the following that one keeps adding to the Alphabet to reflect sounds! Pretty bizarre suggestion indeed!

BhagatSingh said:

.......

I am sure there are more such sounds that Punjabis use which aren't in the script. I suspect these haven't made into the standardized script because the sound is not common enough in Punjabi discourse. There isn't enough intermingling between the French and Italians and Punjabis like there was with Persians. If there was we'd see these sounds eventually having their own symbol.

Click to expand...

My suggestion if the above post logic were to hold,

1. Letter for barking of a a Punjabi dog
   
2. A drunk Punjabi calling out "Bakkray"
   
3. Letter for the sound of a Punjabi "Passing Gas" (Bhoon lol)
4. ..... and so on

Hence the error of thesis in the post.

Single sounds are rarely used to make letters of an alphabet let alone be the basis of extending alphabet of a language.

Sat Sri Akal.


PS: Use of the letter ਸ਼ in a word ਸ਼ਹਿਨਸ਼ਾਹ -- Shehanshah -- (Emperor) possibly from Persian.

Ambarsariah Ji...lollol

Haha! You forgot "Dishum Dishum" from old bollywood movies.

Isn't the difference between 'kakka' and 'kakaa with bindi' the same as 'kaaf' and 'qaaf' of Persian/Arabic/Shahmukhi??? Obviously 'kakka with bindi' finds origin from Shahmukhi/Persian roots....
Just a thought...
ق (qaaf) = q as in queue
ک (kaaf) = k as in kilo

See: http://mylanguages.org/urdu_alphabet.php

P.S.= I am an Urdu student too