Nuqta

Use in Devanagari

Perso-Arabic consonants

The term nuqtā (नुक़्ता) is itself an example of the use of the nuqta. Other examples include क़िला (Urdu: قلعہ), qilā, 'fortress'; and आग़ा ख़ान (Urdu: آغا خان), Āġā K͟hān, a combination of a Türko-Mongolic (āġā) and a (k͟hān) honorific.

The nuqta, and the phonological distinction it represents, is sometimes ignored in practice; e.g., क़िला qilā being simply spelt as किला kilā. In the text Dialect Accent Features for Establishing Speaker Identity, Manisha Kulshreshtha and Ramkumar Mathur write, "A few sounds, borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic, are written with a dot (bindu or nuqtā). Many people who speak Hindi as a second language, especially those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak conventional Hindi (also called Khaṛībōlī), or speak in one of its dialects, pronounce these sounds as their nearest equivalents." For example, these rural speakers will assimilate the sound (Devanagari: ग़; Nastaliq: غ) as ɡ (Devanagari: ग; Nastaliq: گ).

With a renewed Hindi–Urdu language contact, many Urdu writers now publish their works in Devanagari editions. Since the Perso-Arabic orthography is preserved in Nastaʿlīq script Urdu orthography, these writers use the nuqta in Devanagari when transcribing these consonants.

Dravidian consonants

Devanagari also includes coverage for the Dravidian consonants ऴ, ḻa ; ऱ, ṟa and ऩ, ṉa , modifying ळ, ḷa ; र, ra and न, na , respectively. An example is तमिऴ् (Tamil: தமிழ்), tamiḻ.

Dardic consonants

For example, the letters च़ and छ़ are used in Devanagari to write the Kashmiri alveolar affricates ژ and ژھ , respectively.

Eastern Indo-Aryan letters

In Maithili, the four non-syllabic vowels , , , are formally written in Devanagari as य़, व़, य़ॆ and व़ॊ, respectively (though these are often colloquially written without nuqta, as य, व, यॆ and वॊ).

The Bengali–Assamese script has ড় ঢ় য়, which are variations of ড ঢ য; however, ব and র are completely different in nature.

Old Nepali Letters

In Old Nepali language texts, a nuqta-like diacritic is often found on similar glyphs or glyphs that have undergone phonological shifts. There are two use cases found for it:

• The glyph व़ was used to represent the phoneme , while the glyph व was instead used to represent the phoneme .
• The glyph य़ was used to represent the phoneme , while the glyph य was used to represent the phoneme . Many words that contained the also shifted in pronunciation to , following a common trend in Indo-Aryan languages.