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Triple Conjunct Consonants


johnyork

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What is the correct way to type triple conjunct consonants in Gurmukhi script?

ਸ੍ਤ੍ਰੀਤ = (str)eet (triple)

ਸ੍ਤੇਤ = (st)ate (double)

As you can see in the above example, I was not able to successfully type triple conjunct consonants for the word "street". Is this possible in unicode?

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For street I would go for: ਸਠ੍ਰੀਠ myself. The ਠ here is an 'aspirated hard T'

For state I would go with ਸਟੇਟ - here the ਟ is an 'unaspirated hard T'

The ਤ you've used is a very soft T that isn't used in English.

Edited by dalsingh101
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There is another alternative for street - but it uses a subscript letter (those small ones at the foot of the letter), which now seems to have become obsolete (for reasons unknown to me). I don't think this letter is included in the unicode, but I could be wrong. The subscript letter is a small hard T at the foot of the S.

See attached image for alternate spelling of street.

post-3203-0-71358500-1360062833_thumb.pn

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dalsingh101, sorry, I should have explained I was just using those words as examples. Your letter choices may be better, but once again, I was just using those as examples to assist in explaining my question.

What I am trying to ask in my question is how to form "triple conjunct consonants", which are used extensively in the English language.

The small subscript symbol you are talking about is a "halant" (some confuse it with an "udaat" which is used in the SGGS) and it is still used for loan words. However, if you enter it via any text editor, it will remove the "halant" if possible if there is an assigned subscript (paireen haha, paireen rara, etc.).

Even in your spelling of street "ਸਠ੍ਰੀਠ", the letters (ਸ[ਠਰ]/ਸਠ੍ਰ) are not displayed as "3 letter cluster" (you have a single letter followed by a 2 letter cluster). It would be read as "Satreet". You could put a "halant" on your "ਸ" which is what I did in my example, and it would serve the purpose of giving the reader the ability to properly pronounce the word "street" without having any previous knowledge of this word. However, it is not "clean" grammar to me and I am not satisfied with the way it displays.

In Tibetan script, I can type "triple conjunct consonants" and you can also type them in Devanagari as clusters are joined horizontally and not via subscript symbols like Gurmukhi.

This may be a limitation of Gurmukhi when it is used to write certain loan words and a reader will just have to know how to pronounce the word. The same as a reader in English just has to know that the letters "str" in the word street are a cluster.

The motivation for asking this question is that on paper, I can write nice clean looking "triple conjunct consonants". I just put "2" subscript symbols side by side below the the 1st letter of the 3 letter cluster. I was unable to find any example of my style of writing online, so I was lead to believe that it simply doesn't exist. Maybe "double conjunct consonants" are the maximum when writing in Gurmukhi.

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I've never seen more than a single subscript symbol being used with a single letter, I'm no expert but you 're probably right, Gurmukhi doesn't appear to allow for triple conjunct consonants (not that I have a clear idea of what these are mind you!)

You seem to be an expert linguist? Have you been studying Gurmukhi long?

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ddalsingh101, thanks for the help on this. I have had some difficulty getting good answers on some of my questions. I am just an individual who likes learning. It only seems as though I am an expert because I have read a lot of information relating to languages and I can recall some of it and simply repeat what I have read.

I could read and write in Devanagari and I knew Devanagari descended from Gupta just as Gurmukhi did. So I thought I could easily learn to write in Gurmukhi and on occasion I get motivated to understand it once and for all and not have to ask Khalsas in the Gurdwara (or Kukas in the Dharamshala). So, in summary, I accomplished what I set out to do and that was to teach myself to read and write in Gurmukhi. For me, attempting to write loanwords that are not standardized forces you to learn to write as you have to comprehend the writing system to spell words that you have never seen spelled before (in the script you are learning).

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dalsingh101, here is an example of "triple conjunct consonants". I have typed the word "script" in Devanagari.

स्क्रिप्ट = script (displays properly and can not be misread)

ਸਿ्ਕ्ਰਪ੍ਟ = script (to me, this looks better than this => ਸਿ੍ਕ੍ਰਪ੍ਟ)

However, it is incorrect and I accept that Gurmukhi is Gurmukhi and it is what it is.

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^^^^

Very interesting.

Whilst I could see why 'SCRipt' would be a triple conjunct consonant (tcc), I couldn't do the same for the word 'state'?

It appears as if, generally Panjabi words have more 'gaps' between the phonemes of words than words of other languages - which have a number of words using ttc?

It goes some way to explain the often exaggerated, staccato delivery of English words by native Panjabi speakers.

Please do continue to share your experiences/understanding of the language with us.

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dalsingh101, triple conjunct consonants are simply a cluster (or group of consonants/letters) which has 3 letters.

A normal cluster is just 2 letters like "(St)ate" which is a "2 letter cluster".

An example of triple conjunct consonants is "(Str)eet" because there are (3 ie. triple) consonants used to make the cluster.

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Dal Singh Ji, my use of the phrase/word "triple conjunct consonants" is from verbage from linguistic research. It is not an accepted standardized word. In normal discussion of "consonant clusters", there is usually no mention if it is 2 consonants joined or 3 consonants joined. A linguist would simply explain if the cluster he or she was discussing had 2 or 3 consonants involved.

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