The nukta ़ is a dot placed below a Devanagari consonant. It extends the basic alphabet with letters needed especially for Perso-Arabic and Urdu-associated vocabulary and, in the case of फ़, many English loans. This page covers क़ q, ख़ x, ग़ ġ, ज़ z, फ़ f. These are real Devanagari letters in use, not decorative variants of क ख ग ज फ.
Contemporary speakers and publications vary greatly in retaining the dot and its associated pronunciation. This page teaches the careful written contrasts and the guide's fixed romanization; detailed mergers in ordinary speech belong on the nukta-pronunciation page.
Five extended letters
| Base | With nukta | Romanization | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| क k | क़ | q | क़ानून qānūn “law” |
| ख kh | ख़ | x | ख़बर xabar “news” |
| ग g | ग़ | ġ | ग़लत ġalat “wrong” |
| ज j | ज़ | z | ज़मीन zamīn “land” |
| फ ph | फ़ | f | फ़ोन fon “phone” |
The guide reserves q x ġ z f for these dotted letters. Plain ख remains kh, and plain फ remains ph. This lets the romanization preserve a contrast that ad-hoc English spellings often erase.
क़ानून सब पर लागू होता है।
qānūn sab par lāgū hotā hai.
The law applies to everyone.
यह ख़बर सही नहीं है।
yah xabar sahī nahīṃ hai.
This news isn't correct.
मुझसे ग़लती हो गई।
mujhse ġaltī ho gaī.
I made a mistake.
ज़रा फ़ोन उठाइए।
zarā fon uṭhāie.
Please answer the phone.
These words are not automatically formal merely because they came through Persian or Arabic. ख़बर, ग़लत, ज़रा, ज़मीन, and फ़ोन are ordinary contemporary vocabulary. Register belongs to the word and context, not to the dot itself.
The productive spelling pattern
The pattern is visually regular: start with the base consonant and add nukta below. Vowel signs then attach to the resulting consonant in the normal way:
| Full consonant | With vowel sign | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| क़ qa | क़ी | qī |
| ख़ xa | ख़ु | xu |
| ग़ ġa | ग़ो | ġo |
| ज़ za | ज़े | ze |
| फ़ fa | फ़ै | fai |
The letter remains part of the lexical stem when Hindi morphology adds endings. Feminine ख़बर xabar forms plural ख़बरें xabreṃ; feminine फ़ाइल fāil forms फ़ाइलें fāileṃ; masculine क़ानून qānūn forms oblique plural क़ानूनों qānūnoṃ.
इन फ़ाइलों में पुरानी ख़बरें हैं।
in fāiloṃ meṃ purānī xabreṃ haiṃ.
These files contain old news reports.
The nukta does not assign gender or control agreement. ख़बर and फ़ाइल are feminine, while क़ानून and फ़ोन are masculine in their usual readings; those facts belong to the whole noun.
Careful spelling and common dotless spelling
Hindi often permits two written practices. Careful dictionaries, edited prose, and writing that wishes to preserve the loan consonant use क़ ख़ ग़ ज़ फ़. Informal writing and many mainstream publications frequently omit the nukta: कानून, खबर, गलत, जमीन, फोन. These dotless spellings are established variants, not five universal errors.
Pronunciation varies too. Some speakers preserve f and z regularly but merge q with k, x with kh, or ġ with g; other speakers preserve more of the set. The guide romanizes the careful dotted spelling as q x ġ z f so that learners can see what the text encodes. It does not claim that every speaker maintains all five distinctions in every setting.
Minimal spelling contrasts
Adding nukta can create a different word. राज rāj means “rule; reign” (formal/historical), while राज़ rāz means “secret.”
उस राजा का राज बीस साल चला।
us rājā kā rāj bīs sāl calā.
That king's reign lasted twenty years. (historical)
यह राज़ किसी को मत बताना।
yah rāz kisī ko mat batānā.
Don't tell anyone this secret. (informal)
Another contrast is फन phan “a snake's expanded hood” versus फ़न fan “art; skill” (Urdu-influenced/literary). Here plain फ ph and dotted फ़ f are not interchangeable in careful spelling.
साँप ने फन उठा लिया।
sā̃p ne phan uṭhā liyā.
The snake raised its hood.
वह संगीत के फ़न में माहिर है।
vah saṅgīt ke fan meṃ māhir hai.
She is skilled in the art of music. (Urdu-influenced/literary)
The pair खाना khānā “food; to eat” and ख़ाना xānā “house; place,” the latter usually occurring in compounds such as डाकख़ाना ḍākxānā “post office,” likewise isolates plain ख from ख़.
Short reading line
क़रीब की दुकान पर क़ासिम ने ख़बर पढ़ी, ग़ज़ल सुनी और फ़ोन ख़रीदा।
qarīb kī dukān par qāsim ne xabar paṛhī, ġazal sunī aur fon xarīdā.
At a nearby shop, Qasim read the news, listened to a ghazal, and bought a phone.
The line contains every target value: q in क़रीब, क़ासिम; x in ख़बर, ख़रीदा; ġ in ग़ज़ल; z in the second half of ग़ज़ल; and f in फ़ोन. The perfective verbs also show ordinary Hindi grammar: with ने, पढ़ी agrees with feminine ख़बर, सुनी with feminine ग़ज़ल, and final ख़रीदा with masculine फ़ोन because each clause has an unmarked object.
Schwa deletion and conjuncts still apply
Nukta supplies a consonant identity; it does not make the script a one-letter-one-sound transcription. ख़बर is xabar, not xabara. क़ानून is qānūn, with no final a. In डाकख़ाना, the compound boundary gives ḍāk-xānā, and the final क of डाक must not disappear merely because ख़ follows it.
Conjuncts can include a nukta consonant as well. The reader must identify the base, nukta, virama, and neighboring consonant before applying the spoken schwa pattern. Lexical and morphological knowledge remain essential, especially in compounds and inflected forms.
Unicode-safe nukta
In normalized Unicode, write the base consonant followed by U+093C DEVANAGARI SIGN NUKTA: क + ़ = क़, and likewise for the other four. Older precomposed code points exist, but NFC normalization represents these letters as the decomposed base-plus-nukta sequence. A proper font renders the sequence as one visual letter.
Never use a Latin period, a bullet, or a manually positioned dot. Do not put a space between the consonant and nukta, and do not substitute Latin q, x, z, or f inside the Devanagari target. Mixed or malformed sequences can defeat search, sorting, font shaping, and TTS even when they look acceptable on one screen.
Source-language comparison
English speakers already know sounds represented by z and f, but English spelling gives no clue that Hindi ज़ is built from ज or फ़ from फ. English also usually writes kh as two letters, whereas Hindi distinguishes plain aspirated ख kh from dotted ख़ x. The Latin learner key is deliberately consistent; it is not an invitation to type Latin letters into Hindi words.
The hardest difference from English is sociolinguistic rather than articulatory: careful Hindi spelling can preserve a contrast that many fluent speakers merge. Reading competence therefore includes recognizing both dotted and accepted dotless variants.
Common Mistakes
❌ फ़ोन बंद है।
Incorrect guide reading: phon band hai. फ़ is romanized f; ph belongs to plain फ.
✅ फ़ोन बंद है।
fon band hai.
The phone is switched off.
❌ ख़बर सही है।
Incorrect guide reading: khabar sahī hai. Dotted ख़ is x, distinct from plain ख kh in the fixed key.
✅ ख़बर सही है।
xabar sahī hai.
The news is correct.
❌ क़ीमत ठीक है।
Incorrect guide reading: kīmat ṭhīk hai. Dotted क़ is q in the fixed key.
✅ क़ीमत ठीक है।
qīmat ṭhīk hai.
The price is reasonable.
❌ यह ग़लत है।
Incorrect guide reading: yah galat hai. Dotted ग़ is ġ in careful romanization.
✅ यह ग़लत है।
yah ġalat hai.
This is wrong.
❌ ज़रा रुकिए।
Incorrect guide reading: jarā rukie. Dotted ज़ is z, not j.
✅ ज़रा रुकिए।
zarā rukie.
Please wait a moment.
Key Takeaways
Nukta extends five base letters into क़ q, ख़ x, ग़ ġ, ज़ z, फ़ f. These spellings are common in neutral vocabulary as well as Urdu-associated registers. Dotless variants are widespread and often accepted, so distinguish variation from a genuine lexical contrast such as राज/राज़ or फन/फ़न. Type a genuine base-plus-nukta sequence, preserve the normal spelling through inflection, and apply conjunct parsing and schwa deletion separately.
Related Topics
- Flapped consonants ड़ and ढ़A2 — Distinguish the Hindi flaps ड़ ṛ and ढ़ ṛh from the retroflex stops ड ḍ and ढ ḍh in spelling, reading, and word formation.
- Unicode typing normalization and keyboard-safe spellingC2 — Build Hindi text from valid Unicode sequences, normalize it safely, and avoid invisible controls, Latin lookalikes, and broken combining marks.
- Inherent a and the absence of a vowel signA1 — Understand what a bare Devanagari consonant writes, when Hindi pronounces or deletes its inherent a, and how this differs from using a vowel sign or virama.
- ख़ ग़ क़ फ़ ज़ in careful and common speechA2 — Recognize and produce Hindi's five major nukta loan consonants while understanding their common word-by-word mergers with native sounds.
- Perso-Arabic and Urdu-associated vocabularyC1 — Use shared and Urdu-associated vocabulary by collocation, domain, audience, and literary stance rather than treating origin as a fixed register label.
- Sanskritic versus Urdu versus everyday vocabularyC1 — Choose among Sanskritic, Urdu-associated, and broadly everyday Hindi by domain, collocation, audience, and stance rather than by dictionary equivalence alone.