The
Urdu alphabet is the
right-to-left alphabet used for the
Urdu language. It is a modification of the
Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the
Arabic alphabet. With 38 letters, the Urdu alphabet is typically written in the
calligraphic Nasta'liq script, whereas
Arabic is more commonly in the
Naskh style. Usually, bare transliterations of
Urdū into Roman letters omit many
phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the
Roman alphabet.
[citation needed] The
National Language Authority of
Pakistan has developed a number of systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be properly read by someone already familiar with
Urdū, Persian, or Arabic for letters such as:
ژ خ غ ط ص or
ق and
Hindi for letters such as
ڑ.
[citation needed]
LetteR HeaD endz
