Te

Te makes a dental t or त sound. It follows the same pattern as be and pe; that is, it belongs to the be series. It is written with two dots side by side, above the main line:

Here are some words with te:

تِل

til ‘sesame’

بات

bāt ‘thing’

بُت

but ‘idol’

Mīm

Mīm sounds like m or म:

Mīm looks a bit different in calligraphy as opposed to handwriting. Because ordinary pens draw lines with more or less constant thickness, the head of a handwritten mīm is typically drawn as a counterclockwise loop. The tail of the independent or final mīm drops below the baseline.

We can write some words:

کم

kam ‘less, little’

تُم

tum ‘you’

ململ

malmal ‘muslin cloth’

کُمکُم

kumkum ‘saffron’

تمام

tamām ‘all’

Urdu letters sometimes change their shapes somewhat depending on the context. In these words, you can see that a calligraphic mīm can sometimes be a little hard to spot in the initial or medial form. You can recognize it, though, because it’s the only letter that appears as a thickened bump hanging below the main line.

You might also notice that the initial te in tum and tamām looks a little different from usual: the be-series tooth has been smoothed out so that the pen immediately goes downward to form the mīm. We will occasionally point out these variations when they’re important for reading; for a more comprehensive view of them, consult the chart in Appendix C.

Jīm

The letter jīm sounds like j or ज:

In jīm, the verticality of Urdu script is especially noticeable. In the final form, for instance, the pen enters the head from above, and the bowl curves below the baseline. Make sure the back corner of the head is pointed rather than rounded.

Let’s look at some words:

جج

jaj ‘judge’

آج

āj ‘today’

جب

jab ‘when’

Sometimes the head of the jīm touches the line below it:

کاجل

kājal ‘kohl, eyeshadow’

جام

jām ‘traffic jam’

Che

Another letter in the jīm series is che. It sounds like ch or च:

Che is written just like jīm, but with three dots below the head instead of one:

چال

chāl ‘trick’

چچا

chachā ‘uncle’

لالچ

lālach ‘greed’

چم چم

chamcham ‘chamcham’ (a type of sweet)

More diacritics

In addition to zer, zabar, and pesh, there are two more optional diacritics that we can use to clarify pronunciation. When a consonant is doubled—that is, pronounced longer than usual—we can mark it with a tashdīd, which looks a bit like a small w above the consonant:

چمّچ

chammach ‘spoon’

کچّا

kachchā ‘raw’

اَبّا

abbā ‘father’

Note that the tashdīd works differently than double consonants in Hindi script, where chammach, for instance, is written चम्मच, with a half म् joined to a full म. In Urdu, by contrast, the consonant is only written once.

Sometimes, we want to specify that a consonant is not followed by any vowel at all, as with the halant (्) that marks a half consonant in Hindi script. We can use a sukūn (also called jazm) for this purpose. This symbol can take three different forms, all written above the consonant: a small circle, a circumflex (or caret), or something like an apostrophe:

ﹾ      ْ      ۡ

In the latter case, be careful not to confuse the sukūn with a pesh. You can tell them apart because only the pesh has a loop. Here are a couple of examples:

پتْلا

patlā ‘thin’

بْلاگ

blāg ‘blog’

Review

Exercises