Note on Transliteration

Darvazah uses transliteration as little as possible. We have found that using Roman (English) transliteration creates confusion when trying to learn Urdu. You should learn the Urdu alphabet as soon as you can. However, for the purposes of this alphabet module, we use the standard Urdu to English transliteration with the following exceptions:

1. We do not use small dots below letters to indicate retroflex letters. Instead, we put the word “retroflex” before the name of the letter.
2. We do not use diacritic symbols to distinguish between the different versions of ‘s”, “t”, etc. These are all pronounced the same in Urdu.
3. We use “ay” at the end of words rather than the letter “e” to represent final BADI YAY (as in the letter names “BAY”, “PAY”, “SAY”, “HAY”, etc.)
4. We use “ee” instead of “i” to represent the sound of CHHOTI YAY  in the middle of words. We use “i” at the end of words for final CHHOTI YAY.
5. We use “ch” instead of “c” to represent the sound of “CHAY”. Aspirated CHAY is represent by “chh.”
6. There is no easy way to dinstinguish aspirated “kh” (کھ) from the frictive “kh” (خ). There are several other letter pairs like this as well. Since they are represented by different letters in Urdu, learn the Urdu letters as soon as possible.