The Gurmukhi Alphabet: All 35 Akhar (Plus 6 Modern Additions)

There are thirty-five traditional Gurmukhi consonants. Most learners know that in the abstract. Fewer know that those thirty-five are organized into seven rows of five — a structure called the painti (ਪੈਂਤੀ) — and that the rows follow an exact logic inherited from ancient Brahmi: start at the back of the throat, move forward to the lips, and work your way along every stop and fricative your mouth can produce. Once you see the grid, you stop memorizing and start reading.

The Varga Structure: Why 7 Rows of 5?

Gurmukhi belongs to the Brahmic family of scripts, which developed a phonetically organized consonant table over two millennia ago. Sanskrit grammarians sorted consonants by place of articulation (where in the mouth the sound is made) and manner of articulation (how the airflow is stopped or released). Gurmukhi inherited that organization wholesale.

Each of the first five rows is a varga (ਵਰਗ) — a class of five consonants sharing the same place of articulation:

Row	Place of articulation	Punjabi term
1	Velars / gutturals — back of throat	Kanthiya
2	Palatals — hard palate	Talavia
3	Retroflexes — tongue curled back	Murdhania
4	Dentals — tongue at upper teeth	Dantia
5	Labials — lips	Oshthia

Within each row, the five letters follow the same pattern: voiceless unaspirated → voiceless aspirated → voiced unaspirated → voiced aspirated → nasal. In Hindi and Sanskrit the distinction between voiced unaspirated and voiced aspirated is fully audible. In Punjabi, the historically-aspirated members of each row have shifted into tone markers — a phenomenon covered in depth in Punjabi's three-tone system.

Row by Row: The 35 Akhar

All 35 letters with their standard romanization and approximate sound for English speakers. IPA is included where approximation alone would mislead.

Row 1 — Gutturals (Kanthiya Varga)

Gurmukhi	Roman	Sound	Note
ਕ	k	k in king	Voiceless unaspirated
ਖ	kh	k in khan (breathy)	Voiceless aspirated
ਗ	g	g in go	Voiced unaspirated
ਘ	gh	written gh, spoken as k with low tone	Historical voiced aspirate → low tone marker
ਙ	ṅ	ng in sing	Nasal; rare at word start

ਙ appears almost exclusively mid-word, holding a nasal before a guttural: ਸੰਗ (saṅg /saŋg/, company).

Row 2 — Palatals (Talavia Varga)

Gurmukhi	Roman	Sound	Note
ਚ	c / ch	ch in chair	Voiceless unaspirated affricate
ਛ	ch	ch in church, breathy	Voiceless aspirated
ਜ	j	j in jump	Voiced unaspirated
ਝ	jh	written jh, spoken as c with low tone	Historical voiced aspirate → low tone marker
ਞ	ñ	ny in canyon	Palatal nasal; rare at word start

Row 3 — Retroflexes (Murdhania Varga)

This row causes the most difficulty for English speakers. Retroflex consonants require curling the tongue tip back toward the roof of the mouth. English has no retroflex stops — its t and d are alveolar, produced with the tongue at the ridge just behind the upper teeth. Punjabi retroflexes land further back, against the hard palate.

Gurmukhi	Roman	Sound	Note
ਟ	ṭ	t with tongue curled back	Voiceless retroflex unaspirated
ਠ	ṭh	th with tongue curled back, breathy	Voiceless retroflex aspirated
ਡ	ḍ	d with tongue curled back	Voiced retroflex unaspirated
ਢ	ḍh	written ḍh, spoken as ṭ with low tone	Historical voiced aspirate → low tone marker
ਣ	ṇ	n with tongue curled back	Retroflex nasal

The easiest way to find the retroflex position: say a very American English r (as in butter) and notice where your tongue curls. From there, tap the roof of the mouth — that contact is ਟ or ਡ.

Row 4 — Dentals (Dantia Varga)

Gurmukhi	Roman	Sound	Note
ਤ	t	t with tongue at teeth	Voiceless dental unaspirated
ਥ	th	t at teeth, breathy	Voiceless dental aspirated
ਦ	d	d at teeth	Voiced dental unaspirated
ਧ	dh	written dh, spoken as t with low tone	Historical voiced aspirate → low tone marker
ਨ	n	n — standard nasal	Dental nasal

The dental t (ਤ) sounds softer than the English t. Think of Italian tutto or Spanish todo for the correct tongue position — resting against the back of the upper teeth rather than the alveolar ridge.

Row 5 — Labials (Oshthia Varga)

Gurmukhi	Roman	Sound	Note
ਪ	p	p in spin (unaspirated)	Voiceless labial unaspirated
ਫ	ph	p in pit (with puff of air)	Voiceless labial aspirated
ਬ	b	b in bad	Voiced labial unaspirated
ਭ	bh	written bh, spoken as p with low tone	Historical voiced aspirate → low tone marker
ਮ	m	m — standard	Labial nasal

A useful check: every row ends in a nasal. ਙ ਞ ਣ ਨ ਮ. That pattern alone helps you recall which nasal belongs to which row.

Rows 6 and 7 — The Additional Consonants

Beyond the five classical vargas, Gurmukhi adds two more rows of sounds that do not fit neatly into the Brahmic articulatory scheme:

Gurmukhi	Roman	Sound	Note
ਯ	y	y in yes	Palatal approximant
ਰ	r	r (flapped, not English r)	Alveolar flap
ਲ	l	l	Lateral
ਵ	v	v/w (between the two)	Labiodental approximant
ੜ	ṛ	retroflex flap	Retroflex flap
ਸ	s	s in sun	Sibilant
ਹ	h	h in hat (or a tone marker)	Voiceless glottal fricative

ੜ (ṛ) is the letter in ਘੋੜਾ (ghoṛā [kòɽɑːˈ], horse) — the famous minimal triplet with ਕੋੜਾ (koṛā, whip) and ਕੋੜ੍ਹਾ (koṛhā, leper). Three words, same vowels, same retroflex flap. Nothing but tone and this letter separating them.

The Three Vowel-Carrier Letters: ੳ, ਅ, ੲ

Gurmukhi is an abugida: every consonant carries an inherent short a sound unless modified by a vowel sign. But what happens when a word starts with a vowel? You need somewhere to hang the vowel sign. Enter the three vowel carriers:

Gurmukhi	Name	Which vowels it hosts
ੳ	Ura	ਉ (u), ਊ (oo), ਓ (o), ਔ (au)
ਅ	Aira	ਅ (a), ਆ (aa), ਏ (e), ਐ (ai)
ੲ	Iri	ਇ (i), ਈ (ee)

These three letters produce no consonant sound of their own. They exist purely as hosts. ਅਕਾਲ (akāl, timeless) starts with ਅ because the word begins with the vowel a, which needs a carrier. ਇੱਕ (ikk, one) uses ੲ because the initial vowel is i. ਉੱਠਣਾ (uṭṭhaṇā, to rise) uses ੳ for the initial u.

For a full treatment of how vowel signs attach to consonants and change their inherent sounds, the Gurmukhi script guide covers the ten laga matra in detail.

ਮੈਂ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਸਿੱਖ ਰਿਹਾ ਹਾਂ। Maiṃ Pañjābī sikh rihā hāṃ. "I am learning Punjabi."

Count the letters in that sentence: ਮ, ਨ, ਹ, ਸ, ਕ, ਰ — six of the top ten in thirteen characters.

The 6 Modern Additions: Pair-Bindi Letters

When Punjabi absorbed words from Persian, Arabic, and later English, some sounds arrived that Gurmukhi had no letters for — the Persian z, the Arabic kh (the guttural in Bach), the English f. The solution was elegant: take an existing letter and add a subscript dot called a pair-bindi (ਪੈਰ ਬਿੰਦੀ, literally "foot-dot") underneath it.

Modified letter	Base letter	Sound	Example
ਸ਼	ਸ (s)	sh	ਸ਼ਹਿਰ (shehr, city)
ਖ਼	ਖ (kh)	kh (guttural, as in Khalid)	ਖ਼ਬਰ (khabar, news)
ਗ਼	ਗ (g)	gh (voiced guttural, as in Arabic ghain)	ਗ਼ਲਤ (ghalat, wrong)
ਜ਼	ਜ (j)	z	ਜ਼ਿੰਦਗੀ (zindagī, life)
ਫ਼	ਫ (ph)	f	ਫ਼ਰਕ (farak, difference)
ਲ਼	ਲ (l)	ḷ (retroflex l — rare)	Limited use

The pair-bindi letters are standard in formal Punjabi writing. In everyday handwriting and informal digital text, people often drop the dot: ਸ instead of ਸ਼, ਜ instead of ਜ਼. If you see ਖਬਰ and ਖ਼ਬਰ in two different newspapers, both mean khabar (news) — the difference is editorial convention. ਲ਼ is the least common of the six and appears mostly in technical linguistic writing.

The 10 Most Frequent Letters in Everyday Punjabi Text

Knowing all 35 letters is the goal. But not equally. Corpus analyses of Punjabi newspaper text — drawn from Punjabi Tribune and Jagbani archives — consistently show a cluster of consonants that dominate everyday reading material. Drilling these ten first cuts your unknown-letter encounters by more than half.

Rank	Letter	Roman	Why it is so common
1	ਨ	n	Verb endings (-nā, -nī), postpositions, negation (nahīṃ)
2	ਰ	r	Verb stems (kar, par, dar), Sanskrit and Persian loanwords
3	ਹ	h	Auxiliary verbs (hai, haan, ho), high-tone marker
4	ਕ	k	Question words (kee, kaun, kithe), common roots
5	ਵ	v/w	Postpositions (vich), conjunctions, verb forms
6	ਦ	d	Possessive postposition dā/dī/de, past-tense endings
7	ਸ	s	Pronoun sī (was), greetings (sat), verb stem sun (hear)
8	ਮ	m	First-person maiṃ (I), merā/merī (my), māṃ (mother)
9	ਗ	g	Verb form giā/gaī (went), loanwords
10	ਤ	t	Postposition tōṃ (from), pronouns tusī, temporal words

Start your drills here. Read any Punjabi sentence and these letters appear with the frequency of a, e, and t in English text.

How the Varga Grid Helps You Learn Faster

The varga structure is not just an organizational convenience. It tells you how to produce unfamiliar letters the first time you see them. When you encounter ਛ and already know ਚ, you know it is the aspirated version of the same palatal sound — add a puff of air. When you see ਠ next to ਟ, the same logic applies. The grid predicts the sound before you have drilled it.

Experienced teachers recommend learning Gurmukhi in row order — ਕ ਖ ਗ ਘ ਙ before ਪ ਫ ਬ ਭ ਮ — rather than by frequency alone. Frequency tells you where to spend most drilling time once you understand the system. The system itself is best absorbed top to bottom, row by row, so the articulatory logic becomes automatic.

For the spoken-phonology side — specifically why ਘ, ਝ, ਢ, ਧ, and ਭ sound nothing like their spellings suggest — the tones post is where that story lives. For practical phrases to pair with the letters as you drill, the essential Punjabi phrases collection gives you words built from the high-frequency letters you are already learning.

The Brightwood Apps Learn Punjabi app introduces the full 35-letter alphabet in phonetically ordered lessons with native-speaker recordings for each letter, so you hear the actual modern Punjabi sound rather than reconstructing it from a romanization approximation.