The Alphabets of Gujarati: A Beginner's Guide

Language not just the way for people to communicate and convey meaning to each other. It is also very much a part of the cultural heritage of a people. It is the way that stories, customs, rituals and values are transmitted down the ages; from one to the next generation. Written language is a vehicle for that transmission. Though Indian culture has a very strong oral tradition, written language has played a vital role in preserving and passing down ancient texts. Given the importance of written language, the alphabets of Gujarati are vital for the beginner to recognise, comprehend and learn.

The Gujarati script is Devanagari – with some changes

Gujarati script or Gujǎrātī Lipi is a variation of the Devanagari script. As soon as you look at the word itself, ગુજરાતી, this becomes obvious. The person who can read and write Hindi can real this word – almost.

ગુજરાતી (in Gujarati script)

गुजराती (in Hindi script)

Except for the letter ‘જ’ (ज), the letters are more or less comprehensible to the Hindi reader. This is in spite of the differences in the way those letters are written. Notice how the Gujarati letters are rounder and have more curves than Hindi.

Also immediately noticeable is the fact that the Gujarati script has no “shirorekhā” or top line. So, a lot of people who are able to write both Gujarati and Hindi, find (as I do) that writing Gujarati is a bit faster than writing Hindi since there is no need to use the top line. Old Gujarati texts were used to have the “shirorekhā” which in later texts disappeared, presumably for greater speed and ease of writing.

Why Devanagari is central to so many Indian languages

Devanagari or Devanāgarī is to Indian languages what the Roman or Latin script is to European and other languages. While an estimated 150 languages worldwide use the Roman alphabet, it is thought that Devanagari is used for about 120 languages. The Devanagari script was developed about 1200 years ago and was developed into its present form about a thousand years ago. Today Hindi is the most widely spoken language that uses this script.

However numerous other languages such as Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Marathi, Sanskrit, Maithili, Magadhi, also use the same script. The Nepali language also uses this script. There are some languages that use scripts that appear very different from Devanagari, but in fact are similar. These include Gurmukhi (Punjabi) and the Bengali-Assamese languages. The alphabets of Gujarati are also Devanagari, and can be easily recognised as such – much more so than Gurmukhi and Bengali-Assamese languages.

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The alphabets of Gujarati

Unlike the English (Roman or Latin) script, which typically uses several letters to create a syllable, the Gujarati script is what is known as an Abugida writing system. So while in English, we put several letters together to create a word that sounds different from the individual letters, the Gujarati script is read as it is written. Each written symbol is a syllable that consists of a consonant and its vowel. Another difference from the Roman script is that there are no upper and lower case letters.

As English learners are taught A for Apple, Gujarati learners may be taught:

ક થી કમળ (K for Kamal, which is lotus)

Now each of those letters ક, મ, and ળ are read exactly as they sound. As in, they sound the same whether they are read as individual letters of the alphabet or whether they form part of a word. In the Gujarati script, there is a set of vowel letters and a set of consonant letters. When writing Gujarati, the vowel sounds are added to each consonant letter by way of additional symbols and then this combination gives us a full syllable.

Hence Gujarati follows the principles of an Abugida writing system. It derives from the Nagari script, which is thought to be the precursor to current day Devanagari. Let us try and understand the Gujarati script in the context of Devanagari.

Consonants

Below is the list of Gujarati consonants:

Vowels

Below is a list of Gujarati vowels:

Some modern scholars add one or two letters to this list of consonants and vowels, while some reorder the list slightly. However, this is largely accepted as the basic Gujarati alphabet. This is also the Gujarati alphabet of consonants and vowels that I learned in school, beginning class III.

Matra

The Gujarati script uses the vowels by themselves or consonants along with specific symbols to denote the vowel as shown below:

• ા - aa
• િ – e (short sound)
• ી – ee (long sound)
• ◌ુ - oo (short sound)
• ◌ૂ – ooo (long sound)
• ◌ૃ – ru
• ◌ે - ae
• ◌ૈ - ay
• ો - o
• ૌ – au
• ◌ં - um
• ઃ - ahh

 The way the Gujarati alphabet is read is very different from English, so learning to read and write can be a bit of a challenge. It is therefore a great idea to engage a Gujarati tutor to help explain precisely how this works; particularly if the learner is not conversant with other Indian language scripts.