Learn Punjabi ਕ਼ Kakka Pair Bindi

[Ambarsaria]

Isn't the difference between 'kakka' and 'kakaa with bindi' the same as 'kaaf' and 'qaaf' of Persian/Arabic/Shahmukhi???

Aristotle ji thanks for your post. I made feeble attempts to learn Urdu as my father was fully functional in it. It is a wonderful language. But it was not to be and I learned only Punjabi.

Many people, including Punjabi speaking have difficulty pronouncing certain letters.

ਕ -- Kakka -- It has not f, h or other vowly sound component in it.

I don't even know what bindi at the bottom of this sounds like because I did not even know that such has started to exist. As there were only the following five when I learned Punjabi few decades ago,

ਸ਼ ਖ਼ ਗ਼ ਜ਼ ਫ਼

Now bindi is appearing under Kakka, Lalla, etc., and I do not know who is the authority to introduce these as Alphabet? Functionally for me it appears as to just muddy the waters and denigrate Punjabi alphabet.

'kaaf' and 'qaaf' can be clearly sounded and written with existing Alphabet without the need for any Bindi as in "ਕਾਫ" and "ਕਆਫ".

Sat Sri Akal.

 

[aristotle]

Functionally for me it appears as to just muddy the waters and denigrate Punjabi alphabet.

The fate of all this is most probably going to be the same as accent marks of Arabic script, multitudes of them exist but are seldom used, and wherever they are used things become complicated.
I remember an article by (now deceased) Hari Ratan Yukta in Rozana Spokesman a few years back in which he opined that 'Lalla with bindi' is not only meaningless but also a mark of our ignorance.
Gurmukhi is not a primitive script in which every alphabet has to be 'upgraded' with a bindi. For me. the main USP of Gurmukhi is WYSIWUG (what you see is what you get) and we should uphold that, at least to some extent.
Anyways you see, these bindi formulations aren't commonly used, not even in linguistic works sometimes.
:interestedmunda:

 

[Serjinder Singh]

May I add my few cents on this very interesting issue. The number of letters in Gurmukhi script, or whatever it was called during Guru Nanak Dev ji's time was apparently 35 (see the 'Patti' bani by Guru Nanak Dev ji in Raag Asa). There was no bindi for nasalisation but the 'Tippi' sign on top was there in use. In fact the 'Bindi' sign was used between the letters to represent the modern 'Kanna' sign.<?"urn:fficeffice" />
<o> </o>
The paireen bindis began to be used during the later part of nineteenth century to accurately represent the Farsi/Arabic sounds. For insatance the 'z' sound could not be accurately represented by any Gurmukhi letters. Guru Nank Dev ji used alternate words for 'Kagaz' meaning paper due to lack of z sounding letter in Gurmukhi. The words used are 'Kagad' or even 'Kagal' in Asa di var.
<o> </o>
The Kakkey paireen bindi is invented to represent the ‘Q’ letter of English and Arabic’Farsi as compared to the ‘K’ sound of English. In Arabic/Farsi/Urdu similar to the English ‘Q’ and ‘K’ there are two letters both known as ‘Kaaf’ but written differently. These are ک and ق to represent ‘K’ and ‘Q’ respectively. The sound of the letter ਕ in the Arabic/Farsi/Urdu word ਕਤਲ is like the ‘q’ in English and is written as قتل whereas the sound of ਕ in ਕਮਲ written as کمل is like the letter ‘K’ in English.
<o> </o>
‏May be the scholars, perhaps at Panjabi University Patiala have introduced the ‘kakkey paireen bindi’ sign to represent the equivalent of ‘Q’ letter of English or the Kaaf letter ق of Arabic/Farsi/Urdu.
<o> </o>
<o> </o>
I say this because the ‘Lalley paireen bindi’ ਲ਼ was also introduced by linguists at Patiala to represent the retroflex lalla sound in Panjabi that is not represented in Gurmukhi. The difference between ਲ and ਲ਼ is that the former is the usual ‘L’ sound whereas the Lalley paireen bindi is the ‘L’ sound pronounced by folding the tongue backwards and the ਲ਼ pronounced by throwing the tongue forward towards the upper front teeth. The South Indian languages all have a letter in their alphabets to represent this sound as do Marathi and Gujerati. However Panjabi has no letter for this sound despite the fact that Panjabis speak this sound significantly.
<o> </o>
To illustrate this we can look at the following two tuks from Gurbani on SGGS page 74:
ਸੁਣਿ ਗਲਾ ਗੁਰ ਪਹਿ ਆਇਆ ॥
and
ਦੇਹੁ ਦਰਸੁ ਸੁਖਦਾਤਿਆ ਮੈ ਗਲ(ਲ਼) ਵਿਚਿ ਲੈਹੁ ਮਿਲਾਇ ਜੀਉ ॥੧੫॥
<o> </o>
The word ਗਲਾ means the plural of ਗਲ that means ‘talks’
Whereas the word ਗਲ in the second tuk means ‘neck’. The second pronunciation does not sound like the usual L in English. It is a reteroflex sound not the straight dental sound spoken by touching the tip of the tongue to the root area of upper frontal teeth.
<o> </o>
The retroflex sounding other letters in Gurmukhi is as follows:
The English ‘N’ sounds in Punjabi are:
<o> </o>
Nonrmal non-retroflex ‘N’ is ਨ
Whereas the retroflex ‘N’ sound is ਣ
<o> </o>
Similarly the English ‘R’ sounds in Punjabi are:
<o> </o>
Normal non-retroflex ‘R’ is ਰ
<o> </o>
Whereas the retroflex sound ‘R’ is ੜ
<o> </o>
Humbly
Serjinder Singh

 

[spnadmin]

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 Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji...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

Gyani ji - To inject some light humor and a different slant on your questions too!

It is becoming clearer the WHY of pair bindi. But the WHO? Professor Kahan Singh Nabha?

I came to the sorry state of needing to know, know badly, about the pair bindi. No longer could I avoid learning them. They still don't make a lot of sense to me. They also add a problem to learning a new language that was not there in the first place ... because Guru Angaad as you say did not use them. Too much rote memorization takes learning a language away from understanding the logic of a language. And it is the logic of a language that the human mind uses to decode that which he/she has not seen before. A dependable rule is used to interpret a new situation. Not the case with bindis.

Here is what I found out, from another reliable forum.

Where in Indic languages they have been historically used

"languages owing origin to sanskrit. it is found in marathi (spoken in maharashtra ) and drawidian (southern indian languages). In hindi, only some kaidas (primers) have it. in written hindi it is seldom used. in punjabi we find it in latter day paintee, (thirty five word primer) only, almost never came across in real print."

Me speaking: Except I am finding that newspapers use them all the time in headlines.

How they are used in Punjabi:

"Putting bindi below a letter in punjabi ascribes stressed voice to the letter, as described by the linguist. For other pairi bindi letters, as said above, these are stressed syllables, normally used in persiam script (used to write urdu)" and

A scholar who has written on the topic

"Bhai Kahan Singh NABHA has written in his treatise clearly, that he has used these forms to explain words having origin in other language, and punjabi as written in gurmukhi script does not require these letters. "

A funny comment on the same thread where all posters were irritated with pair bindi:

"It would not surprise me if in the last forty years it was some academic from Patiala uni who created it because that's the prime place of learning of the Punjabi language and that department has done a lot of great work. However I have never understood how lalla pair bindi differs from a standard lalla. "

This same poster sheds some light on the problem with pair bindi:

"I read Urdu/ farsi script as well as Gurmukhi and can understand aira, haha and tatta having pair bindis as this would more accurately place some pronunciations that are Arabic or Farsi in origin. But then we would need an alternative sassa for the Arabic s (suad) if we were going down that road and we already have sasse pair bindi for the sh sound - so we may need to introduce sasse pair double-bindi?"

Another poster explains that bindi crept in stages. They did not enter Punjabi all at once, but the first few were originally introduced by Professor Kahan Singh Nabha.

 

[Serjinder Singh]

<?"urn:fficeffice" /><o> </o>
Scripts of different languages are not always perfect. The deficiencies get noticed when one comes across sounds that are new and don’t correspond to the new sounds. These new sounds mostly are noticed either when speakers come across speakers of non-native languages and cultures. Alternatively, one might find certain sounds in one’s own language that have no appropriate consonant or vowel to represent that sound in the script employed to write that native language. In the case of Panjabi language and Gurmukhi script, to write Panjabi, we have both kinds of deficiencies. This is despite the emotional notion that Gurmukhi being standardised by second Guruji or as some enthusiastic Sikhs would claim to having been invented by second Guruji both claims having no appropriate evidence to substantiate these claims.
The first kind of deficiencies for Gurmukhi were noticed when the Farsi/Arabic sounds could not be written in Gurmukhi and other Indic languages. These sounds were those corresponding to the letters of Farsi/Arabic letters, Khe, Zaal, Zey, Zuad, and Zoay, Sheen, Ghain, Fey, and Quaf for which there were no corresponding letters in Gurmukh.
For those of us who haven’t learnt Farsi or Arabic languages it would be difficult to understand the new sounds that cannot be written in Gurmukhi. However we can understand from some examples from the English script use. For instance, we have two letters in Roman alphabet, Z and J. In original Gurmukhi we can represent only the sound ‘J’ as ‘ ਜ ‘ whereas the appropriate letter for the sound of ‘Z’ does not exist in Gurmukhi. Hence, we do not see any word with a sound of ‘Z’ in Gurbani. Guru Nanak wrote numerous Farsi words in Gurbani, he had to change the original Farsi words where the words had the ‘Z’ sound in it. For example, the word Kagaz (for paper) and Kazian (for muslim religious judges) could not be written in Gurmukhi accurately. In such cases Guruji modified the word itself. Thus we find the word ‘Kagaz’ written either as Kaagad (ਕਾਗਦਿ ਕਲਮ ਨ ਲਿਖਣਹਾਰੁ ॥, Japuji) or even ‘Kaagal’ ਕਢਿ ਕਾਗਲੁ ਦਸੇ ਰਾਹੁ ॥ SGGS 471. Similarly, the word for strength in Farsi is Zore. In the absence of any ‘Z’ sound in Gurmukhi, it was written with the ‘J’ sound as ‘ਤਿਸ ਤੇ ਭਾਰੁ ਤਲੈ ਕਵਣੁ ਜੋਰੁ॥ The word for Muslim religious judges in Farsi is Qazian but Guru Nanak Dev ji wrote it as ‘Kadiaan’ in Japuji thus, ਵਖਤੁ ਨ ਪਾਇਓ ਕਾਦੀਆ ਜਿ ਲਿਖਨਿ ਲੇਖੁ ਕੁਰਾਣੁ
The sound of ‘Z’ in Arabic is represented by four different letters Zaal, Zey, Zuad, and Zoay depending on the context and historical spellings of the word. However, all the four letters sound just like ‘Z’ hence all the corresponding Arabic/Farsi words are written in Gurmukhi as ‘J’ in old Gurmukhi literature. But over the past century or longer the modification ‘ਜ਼ ‘ Jajjey paireen bindi has been used.
It must be remembered that the ‘paireen bindi (dot under the letter) does not change any stress etc in the sound of the letter concerned but is a new sound altogether but similar to the letter under which the dot is placed.
Other letters and sounds in this category are ‘Sh’ as in ‘She’, ‘Kh’ as in Scottish word ‘Loch for a lake’ or German word ‘auch’ for ‘also’. In original Gurmukhi we had only the letter ‘ਖ’ but the ‘Khakkhey paireen bindi in now being used. Same is the situation with the soft form ‘Sh’ sound instead of the only harsh sound known to Gurmukhi ie ‘ਛ’. The ‘Sh’ sound is very soft where the ‘ਛ’ is harsh. We these days often write ‘chh’ to represent this harsh sound in Roman script. During the last 125 years the Gurmukhi writers invented ‘Sassey paireen bindi ‘ਸ਼’ for this sound. Same kind of logic is for using ‘paireen bindi’ for Arabic/Farsi sound for ‘ ‘F’ in Gurmukhi.
The Kakkey paireen bindi is just an extension of the same process to differentiate the ‘K’ sound of English from that of ‘Q’. In Arabic/Farsi we have two kinds of ‘G’ sounds. One is the usual ‘G’ as in God and in Gurmukhi it is written as simple ‘ਗ’but another one is for the sound of Arabic/Farsi sound of letter ‘Ghain’ one uses ‘ਗ਼’ as for words ‘Moghul’ etc.
I have, in another post in this very thread discussed the ‘Lalley Paireen Bindi’ issue to overcome the lack of appropriate letter to write for the retroflex lalla sound ie ‘ਲ਼’
Humbly
Serjinder Singh

 

[spnadmin]

Serjinder ji

I think the fundamental question is why the bindi was even needed. One poster pointed out that if we are headed in this direction, more bindis will be needed.

When a bindi changes a letter's sound in most cases it is next to inaudible, if it can be heard at all. Borrowing words from other languages has continued in all centuries and in all languages. Few English speakers realize that coffee is an Arab word that begins with 'q' قهوة‎, qahwah. We are none the worse for not realizing it. The 'c' in coffee and the 'q' in qahwah sound almost alike, and even catch in the throat a little when pronounced.

Scripts of different languages are not always perfect. The deficiencies get noticed when one comes across sounds that are new and don’t correspond to the new sounds. These new sounds mostly are noticed either when speakers come across speakers of non-native languages and cultures. Alternatively, one might find certain sounds in one’s own language that have no appropriate consonant or vowel to represent that sound in the script employed to write that native language. In the case of Panjabi language and Gurmukhi script, to write Panjabi, we have both kinds of deficiencies.

You say all languages have deficiencies. Why cure Punjabi and the Gurmukhi script by making it more like another deficient language. I did not know that Arabic or Urdu are our betters.

A little humor needs to be injected into the discussion. Academics are famous for their efforts to change anything beautiful in its simplicity. into something very complicated.

Like many other things about Sikhi, the invention of Gurmukhi was to turn something that was complicated and turn it into something that is beautifully simple.

I have great respect for academics; however, sometimes we do need to wink.

:winkingmunda:


Simplicity is good medicine, for everyone.

 

[Serjinder Singh]

spnadmin ji

"Like many other things about Sikhi, the invention of Gurmukhi was to turn something that was complicated and turn it into something that is beautifully simple.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/learn-punjabi/39661-kakka-pair-bindi-3.html#post183476"

Slight correction according to my way of thinking. Gurmukhi was not invented, it kept evolving and is still evolving. Gurmukhi existed even before Guru Nanak Dev ji. The evidence exists to prove this. Writings on a wall in a village, Hathoor, in Sangroor district of Panjab were discovered by scholar G B Singh and shown in his book 'Gurmukhi Lipi da Nikas te Vikas'. These were the writings of pilgrims coming to the tomb of Firoze Shah there and they were writing their names and dates on which they visited. Some of the dates predate Guru ji. In the northwest of India around Panjab there were three scripts being used, namely, Takari, Bhatakshari, and Gurmukhi. The word Gumukh or Gurmukhi is not solely linked to Sikh religion. It ocuurs in the writings of Nath yogi during the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. It would be instructive to read Gorakh Bani for instance, where the word Gurmukh is used frequently.

I had been trying to pinpoint where did letter Oora of Gurmukhi come from. I searched for the available samples of Takari and there it was being used exactly as in Gurmukhi in a copper plate grant document given by a raja Bahadur Singh in 1366.

It is interesting to find that even at the time of sixth Guru ji Gurmukhi writing adopted a vowel sign 'Kanaura' to indicate the vowel sign for 'au' sound. The manuscripts of Guru Granth Sahib written after the Kartarpuri bir used the new 'Kanaura' sign and it became a regular sign by the time of ninth and tenth Guru ji.

The point I want to make is that if a language does not evolve by adopting new words it stagnates and similarly a script not evolving becomes archaeic and is ultimately forgotten and overtaken by some other dominant script.

Serjinder Singh

 

[spnadmin]

spnadmin ji

"Like many other things about Sikhi, the invention of Gurmukhi was to turn something that was complicated and turn it into something that is beautifully simple. I stand by this
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/learn-punjabi/39661-kakka-pair-bindi-3.html#post183476"

Slight correction according to my way of thinking. Gurmukhi was not invented, it kept evolving and is still evolving. Gurmukhi existed even before Guru Nanak Dev ji. The evidence exists to prove this. Writings on a wall in a village, Hathoor, in Sangroor district of Panjab were discovered by scholar G B Singh and shown in his book 'Gurmukhi Lipi da Nikas te Vikas'. These were the writings of pilgrims coming to the tomb of Firoze Shah there and they were writing their names and dates on which they visited.

Some of the dates predate Guru ji. In the northwest of India around Panjab there were three scripts being used, namely, Takari, Bhatakshari, and Gurmukhi. Actually you are only proving my point.


The word Gumukh or Gurmukhi is not solely linked to Sikh religion. It ocuurs in the writings of Nath yogi during the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. It would be instructive to read Gorakh Bani for instance, where the word Gurmukh is used frequently. And this is very interesting but beside the point, and does not contradict my earlier statements.

I had been trying to pinpoint where did letter Oora of Gurmukhi come from. I searched for the available samples of Takari and there it was being used exactly as in Gurmukhi in a copper plate grant document given by a raja Bahadur Singh in 1366. Very interesting also, but a different issue.

It is interesting to find that even at the time of sixth Guru ji Gurmukhi writing adopted a vowel sign 'Kanaura' to indicate the vowel sign for 'au' sound. The manuscripts of Guru Granth Sahib written after the Kartarpuri bir used the new 'Kanaura' sign and it became a regular sign by the time of ninth and tenth Guru ji. Ditto

The point I want to make is that if a language does not evolve by adopting new words it stagnates and similarly a script not evolving becomes archaeic and is ultimately forgotten and overtaken by some other dominant script.

Serjinder Singh

My good Veer ji

Who ever argued that languages and scripts do not evolve?

Let's go back: 1) bindis under discussion are relatively recent with academia the possible point of origin; and 2) many languages have loan words and derivatives, including the English language, with no additional markings needed in their script to indicate borrowing or derivation. And their speakers and readers do just fine!

For any dialect of Italian, linguists can analyze vocabulary and locate words from Latin, words from potentially Arabic or Turkish, words from Norman French, and so forth. All the result of successive conquest. Languages change, and their script also evolves. Yet these dialects written in Roman script, do not use markers to indicate that x is from the Arabic or y is from Austrian or z is from some other language. Therefore, there is no golden rule that languages having foreign loans and derivatives absolutely need special markers.

I am not so worried that a script will become archaic. The point made is that absence of bindis did not impede written communication using Gurmukhi in the past, and its current aid to pronunciation is marginal.

Of course Gurmukhi script has evolved; it also has a beginning with Bhai Lehna/Guru Angaad. If "invented" is too whimsical a choice of words for you, let us still credit him as progenitor of a script that simplified literacy in what was a bewildering thicket of languages, dialects and scripts that eluded all but the most fortunate. As with much about Sikhi, Gurmukhi was a move to provide access to literacy, in contrast to putting literacy out of reach.

:noticekudi: I subscribe to the idea that we academics create petty fiefdoms of learning without realizing how we complicate rather than simplify. In the end, all we are talking about are a few bindis... not insurmountable... I figured it out and moved on. A little bit of irony doesn't hurt either. It makes tasks and personalities approachable.

 

[findingmyway]

I can't wait until a new letter is added to the English alphabet!!! lol

 

[Ishna]

I think the Roman alphabet does have different symbols but they're not widely used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic

I would suggest that the bindi here there and everywhere in Gurmukhi is similar to most diacritic marks in Roman - only specialised people use them and most don't even know what they mean.

 

[spnadmin]

The question being discussed is how did the use of bindis start, posed by Gyani ji. He basically wanted to know how it could be that Gurmukhi was and is readable and understandable without them.

Other claims came forward, including the idea that languages are deficient and that scripts will become archaic if they do not change.

I am left pondering how a language that is found "deficient" (Gurmukhi) becomes less "deficient" by adding bindis? How do bindis bring Gurmukhi up to speed with one or more other languages (perhaps Urdu), which would also be "deficient?" How is Arabic or Urdu less "deficient" than Gurmukhi. How does one "deficient" language borrow from another "deficient" language in order to catch up and avoid being "archaic." It does not compute.

In English diacritic marks are very rarely used. And the case is never made that the Roman alphabet will become "archaic" if they are not used. That idea is almost laughable. Languages and alphabets adapt to changing conditions all the time.

Taking a look at the Wiki link for Diacritic, one can see how esoteric to English usage most of them are. Exceptions would be accent marks for words from the French and Spanish. Directly taken not derived btw.

In Gurmukhi to the contrary bindis are frequently used and are common to find in newspaper headlines, and in many public texts, such as the newspaper article itself. They are less and less optional in Gurmukhi. And their use is not restricted to marking words from another language. As for guiding changes in pronunciation... the effect can be, as I said earlier, marginal to non-existent because of regional differences in spoken Punjabi.

So I am questioning the logic of what I am reading. Not the specifics.

 

[Ishna]

In which case I'm with Ambarsaria veerji. Who on which planet rearranges the Punjabi language in such a way? Very odd.

 

[spnadmin]

In which case I'm with Ambarsaria veerji. Who on which planet rearranges the Punjabi language in such a way? Very odd.

Yes I am with Ambarsaria ji too. His humor puts the right framework on the entire matter.

 

[spnadmin]

In which case I'm with Ambarsaria veerji. Who on which planet rearranges the Punjabi language in such a way? Very odd.

The Who is the "Uni" and the planet is "Academia."