Re: Pashto (Arabic based alphabets)

[N.R.Liwal]

---- Original Message ----- >In Pashto they call it "Pashto Alefbe" having 15 Extra Characters. My Pashto informants call it "dI paxto alifbe", saying it has 10 extra letters. I think Russians call Pashto,  Paxto? in roman script some people write Pashto as Pakhtu, Pushtu and Pukhtu (based on dialects),  But standard is Pashto (sh = U+0634, while ) and Pashtun who speak Pashto. Letter "dze" is represented in Unicode by U+0681 "Arabic letter heh with hamza above", though the sign above heh is not exactly hamza. It is a zigzag-like sign of the same height as hamza, but they are well distinguished. My informants could not recall any special name for it. If you use "heh with hamza above", people usually accept it as a substitute, saying that "computer is not able to build a real Pashto letter" (?!). I could not find such a letter in Unicode. I would be glad to hear some comments on it. U+0681 is called now (ZEEM actually that is Pashto Jeem, before it was called Dze), I have recently published a Pashto Alefbe chart, Pashto Alefbe as work book, having 45 Pashto Characters, with their Pashto names, sort order and shapes, we have added other required punctions and other marks, now that is accepted as Standared Pashto Chracter Set, Zeem is now accepted as "Heh with hamza above".   Currently Pashto is spoken by More then 100 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and around the world.   Liwal