Khojki
Script details
See all script details: code, region, status and more
| Code | Khoj |
| Script type | abugida |
| Region | Indic |
| Status | Current |
| Direction | LTR |
| Baseline | unspecified |
| Case | no |
| White space | unspecified |
| Complex behaviors | diacritics, contextual forms, required ligatures |
| OpenType code | khoj |
| ISO 15924 Numeric Code / Key | 322 (alphasyllabic) |
Script description
Khojki is a Brahmi-derived abugida related to the Sharada script.
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It is used by the Khoja people - an ethnic group of largely Ismaili Shia Muslims - for recording religious literature in the Sindhi language. Khojki has been used since at least the 16th century, originally for manuscripts, but later in printed form also. The script has also been used to write other South Asian languages; however, in recent years its use has declined markedly.
Khojki is structurally similar to other Brahmic scripts. Each of the forty-three characters represents either an independent vowel, or a consonant containing the inherent vowel [a]. In addition to these, there are eight dependent vowel diacritics. These can attach to a consonant character to replace the inherent vowel with a different one. Other word-forming characters include the virama, which is written after a consonant to silence the vowel entirely, the nukta, which can be written above either vowels or consonants to represent sounds not native to the Sindhi language, and the shadda which represents geminate (long) consonants.
The script has never been standardized. In addition, it has been used by non-Sindhi speakers to represent other languages. These users have adapted the original phonetic values of some letters to fit the phonology of their own languages, resulting in inconsistency in how some sounds are represented. For example, there are two letters attested in different manuscripts as representing the dental aspirated sound [d̪h].
Khojki punctuation is largely borrowed from Latin. However, the danda and double danda are used to mark the end of a sentence, and a word separator is optionally used in between words.
Languages that use this script
| Language | Writing System Code | Writing System Status | SLDR/CLDR locale | Regional variants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gujarati | gu-Khoj | in use | gu-Khoj-IN (India) | |
| Lahnda | lah-Khoj | in use | lah-Khoj-PK (Pakistan) | |
| Punjabi, Eastern | pa-Khoj | in use | pa-Khoj-IN (India) | |
| Saraiki | skr-Khoj | in use | skr-Khoj-PK (Pakistan) | |
| Sindhi | sd-Khoj | in use | sd-Khoj-IN (India) sd-Khoj-PK (Pakistan) |
Unicode status
In The Unicode Standard, Khojki script implementation is discussed in Chapter 15: South and Central Asia-IV — Other Historic Scripts
.
Resources
- ScriptSource page for Khojki - all about scripts, languages, and writing systems
- Wikipedia article on Khojki