# Urdu, Hindi: 'Jammu' spelled जम्मू in Hindi but جموں in Urdu - why the difference?



## marrish

Hi,

This thread is about the spelling and pronunciation of the geographical proper name which in English is written Jammu.

While in Hindi it is consistently spelled जम्मू _jamm__uu_ (जम्मू और कश्मीर), in Urdu the regular spelling is جمّوں _jamm__uuN__ (جموں و کشمیر __)_.

Why is the name of the South Asian region 'Jammu' spelled differently?

On the net it's practically impossible to find any instances of _jammuuN_ in Hindi, and _jammuu_ (without the final _-N)_ in Urdu is, in the same manner, virtually never used (with literally one or two exceptions when a Hindi name of an institution is transcribed into Urdu script, without having been translated).

I'm also wondering about the pronunciation of 'Jammu' in the respective languages, does it always mirror this sharp difference in spelling?


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## Qureshpor

Well Urdu Lughat provides meaning for "jammuuN" as being equivalent to "jaaman/jaamun". Apparently the Jammu area is covered with this fruit tree. So, could this be the origin of the place name?
Urdu Lughat
Others say that the place is named after Raja Jumbu Lochan. It would be interesting to know what the place name is in Kashmiri.

McGregor gives the etymology of "jaamun" as "jambuuna". 

जामुन jāmun [*_jambūna-_], m. the rose-apple (_gulāb jāmun_) tree, _Eugenia jambolana_, or _Syzygium jambolanum_, and its fruit.

So, if Jammu is connected with this tree, then the "n" is there.

Final conjecture. Perhaps we are nasalising a long vowel as in "dunyaaN" in place of "dunyaa". How often do you hear "dunyaa"?


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## marrish

Nice suggestion to explain this disparity from the angle of two different [folk?] etymologies being taken into account.

I wanted to know how it's referred to by the inhabitants, the only piece of information I managed to get hold of is a stub article in Kashmiri on Wikipedia:

جۄم تہٕ کٔشِیر - Wikipedia The last letter is 'm'!

It's right, e.g. Punjabi nasalises _dunyaa_ and even _taraH_ gets nasalised, so this process might be very likely at work around those areas and have affected this word. _(dunyaa _without any nasal is still alive!)

I'm curious what the reference to Jammu was in Persian-language sources.


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## desi4life

The proposed etymology of "jāmun" as "*jambūna" is just an extended form of "jambu" as indicated by McGregor:

जंबू jambū [ad. _jambu-_], f. the rose-apple (= जामुन).

And the gender for this fruit's name appears to be variable in usage as dictionaries differ on it.

But I don't know for certain if the fruit name or the name of a king (the name Jambu Lochan would also be related to the fruit as the fruit is of prominence in Hindu tradition, cf. jambudvīpa as a name for India) is connected to the geographic name Jammu.

P.S. The local language of Jammu is Dogri, which is closely related to Punjabi (sometimes called a dialect of Punjabi). In 19th century Punjabi, the name of the fruit and the geographic name are mentioned by Singh as "jammū" or "jammūṅ", but in contemporary Indian Punjabi "jammū" is used:

JAMMÚ ਜੱਮੂ _s. m_. The name of a city in the hills, the capital of the Jammú and Kashmír State; the name of a tree and its fruit. See _Jámaṉ_.

JAMMÚṆ ਜੱਮੂੰ _s. m_. The name of a city in the hills, the capital of the Jammú and Kashmír State; the name of a tree and its fruit. See _Jámaṉ_.


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## Qureshpor

Qureshpor said:


> Final conjecture. Perhaps we are nasalising a long vowel as in "dunyaaN" in place of "dunyaa". How often do you hear "dunyaa"?


A better example may be "dono" and "donoN" and you will find both written formats in Urdu.

I found a 24 page Geography book entitled "Muxtasar JuGhrafiyah- Hind-i-Jadiid" in Urdu by Girdhari Lal Khatri, published in 1917 in Delhi. On pages 21- 22, there is a very short section on Kashmir and on page 22 "JammuuN/Jammu" is written as "Jammuun" (جمون). The nasal nuun is clearly indicated elsewhere.


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## marrish

desi4life said:


> In 19th century Punjabi, the name of the fruit and the geographic name are mentioned by Singh as "jammū" or "jammūṅ", but in contemporary Indian Punjabi "jammū" is used:
> 
> JAMMÚ ਜੱਮੂ _s. m_. The name of a city in the hills, the capital of the Jammú and Kashmír State; the name of a tree and its fruit. See _Jámaṉ_.
> 
> JAMMÚṆ ਜੱਮੂੰ _s. m_. The name of a city in the hills, the capital of the Jammú and Kashmír State; the name of a tree and its fruit. See _Jámaṉ_.


I appreciate this as a very valuable contribution, throwing light on the issue from the angle of Punjabi in historical perspective, coincidental with the period of independence of the region.


Qureshpor said:


> I found a 24 page Geography book entitled "Muxtasar JuGhrafiyah- Hind-i-Jadiid" in Urdu by Girdhari Lal Khatri, published in 1917 in Delhi. On pages 21- 22, there is a very short section on Kashmir and on page 22 "JammuuN/Jammu" is written as "Jammuun" (جمون). The nasal nuun is clearly indicated elsewhere.


This 1917 geographic publication from Delhi again serves as prime attestation to the state of affairs in the said period in the standard Delhi Urdu language. The importance of this line of thinking cannot be understated as Urdu used to be the official language of both places and I may believe it has still held that position in Jammu and Kashmir.


Qureshpor said:


> Final conjecture. Perhaps we are nasalising a long vowel as in "dunyaaN" in place of "dunyaa". How often do you hear "dunyaa"?


My conjecture was initially that perhaps ں (N) was just a kind of euphonic embellishment to separate the two و's in جموں و کشمیر!!! in script and possibly in pronunciation but realised with your first post that it can't have anything to do with the script. <Bhai Maya Singh> has also attested the nasality for 'Jammu' on its own, (of course....) 

The new example you cited of _donoN_ and _dono_ is very convincing. Indeed, both forms are found in Urdu from the 18th to early 20th century.


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## desi4life

I've learned that in Jammu's native language of Dogri the spelling used is "jammū".


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## marrish

Excellent, thanks! And what about the pronunciation, I mean is the spoken word always "jammū"?


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## desi4life

marrish said:


> Excellent, thanks! And what about the pronunciation, I mean is the spoken word always "jammū"?



Yes, that's how I heard it pronounced.


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## hindiurdu

Long time since I've been here 



Qureshpor said:


> Final conjecture. Perhaps we are nasalising a long vowel as in "dunyaaN" in place of "dunyaa". How often do you hear "dunyaa"?



This is kind of correct. In fact, regardless of how it's written, native Dogri speakers will often (I think mostly) say JammūN (I am only telling a partial truth, more on that in a second).



Qureshpor said:


> It would be interesting to know what the place name is in Kashmiri.



Jom(u), but that final -u is pronounced quite faintly, and informally, that o can vary from 'a' to 'o'. So, it can easily sound like Jom in flow.

Urelated to main question. Here is where I lied about both Dogri and Kashmiri. You remember that discussion we had on Punjabi y/zh allophony? Something like this happens here too. j > y/zh. You will hear lots of people say ZhammuN/YammuN (Dogri) and Zhom(u)/Yom(u) (Kashmiri). To be honest, this feels like the actual native pronunciation to me. For educated people, you will hear them say "J" in English/Hindi/Urdu and then suddenly change to Y/Zh when they switch to native language. Disclaimer is that iirc, with Rafi, we had differing perceptions where I heard shades of zh but Qureshpor sahab didn't. Same might happen here though I personally think this is more pronounced. Also, Dogri and Kashmiri have something of a continuum between them with a bunch of dialects strung in between (such as Rambani). Never have paid attention to how this varies between them.

Potentially related to main question. The number eleven is gyaaraah in Urdu/Hindi but YaaNraaN in Dogri and, come to think of it, a lot of people in places like Delhi (Punjabis?) say gyaaraaN, not gyaaraah.


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## Qureshpor

Welcome back @hindiurdu. Thank you for your detailed answer. It seems that the Urdu written format and pronunciation is in line with the native Dogri pronunciation barring the j/zh difference.

I feel marrish Saahib's question has been answered. I am sure he'll come back to offer his views.


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## marrish

QP SaaHib, my question has been answered indeed with big thanks to @hindiurdu SaaHib! As soon as there is internet in Jammu, we might even get an answer from a native speaker of Dogri.

Now that we have detailed information about the pronunciation in Dogri, I would also like to know, @hindiurdu, what the situation is regarding the spelling in this language. Thanks!


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## DSingh

Jammu is spelled जम्मू <jammuu> in Dogri. There is no nasal vowel N in the spelling. Speech varies; some don't pronounce a nasal vowel in जम्मू but some do (also the case in several other words that don't have a nasal vowel in the spelling). The  ज is often pronounced as य but this is not universal. In the Old Dogri script, the same character was used for <j> and <y>, an indication these two sounds have not been fully differentiated.


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## marrish

DSingh said:


> Jammu is spelled जम्मू <jammuu> in Dogri. There is no nasal vowel N in the spelling. Speech varies; some don't pronounce a nasal vowel in जम्मू but some do (also the case in several other words that don't have a nasal vowel in the spelling). The ज is often pronounced as य but this is not universal. In the Old Dogri script, the same character was used for <j> and <y>, an indication these two sounds have not been fully differentiated.


Thank you.


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## Qureshpor

Qureshpor said:


> ....I found a 24 page Geography book entitled "Muxtasar JuGhrafiyah- Hind-i-Jadiid" in Urdu by Girdhari Lal Khatri, published in 1917 in Delhi. On pages 21- 22, there is a very short section on Kashmir and on page 22 "JammuuN/Jammu" is written as "Jammuun" (جمون). The nasal nuun is clearly indicated elsewhere.


marrish SaaHib, I was looking at a book called KhumKhana-e-Kaifi (by PanDit Brijmohan Dattaatriya "Kaifi") published in 1924 in Lahore. The author is described as "Assistant Foreigh Secretary of the State of Jammuun and Kashmir". "Jammuun" is written with a fuk "nuun" and not with a nasal. Elsewhere in the book, the nasal nuun is indicated by a dotless nuun as is the modern practice. Therefore, the earlier reference that I provided of the 1917 book is not one of. This implies that in Urdu, somewhere along the timeline, there has been a change from "Jammuun" to "JammuuN". But still I have no idea how the full "n" or the nasal "n" has been dropped in Hindi if the original word had a full "n".

The author was a poet, linguist, dramatist and a novelist in Urdu language and his ancestors came from Kashmir.


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## desi4life

In the old convention of the Dogri script as shown on page 29, figure 14 of the following document with text dated 1923 Samvat (1866 AD), Jammu was written “jamuu” (or “yamuu”), and on page 33, figure 19 as “jammuu” (or “yammuu”). In the Persian script it was written “jammuun”: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db4b/211fedf56a887d33ca51b06542bc9cd5484e.pdf.

In the newer convention of the Dogri script, as shown in the following article, Jammu is written “jammuu” (with germinated m): Dogri script finds place on signposts at Jammu railway station

So Hindi adopted the Dogri spelling (the native language of the region), and Urdu adopted the Persian spelling (the former administrative language of the region) with change from n>N.

Just like the fruit name jambu/jambuu/jambula/jambuuna (mentioned by Turner), the name of the region also has pronunciation variants presumably from early times and thus jammuu/jammuun/jammuuN.


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## Qureshpor

desi4life said:


> In the old convention of the Dogri script as shown on page 29, figure 14 of the following document with text dated 1923 Samvat (1866 AD), Jammu was written “jamuu” (or “yamuu”). In the Persian script it was written “jammuun”: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db4b/211fedf56a887d33ca51b06542bc9cd5484e.pdf.
> 
> In the newer convention of the Dogri script, as shown in the following article, Jammu is written “jammuu” (with germinated m): Dogri script finds place on signposts at Jammu railway station
> 
> So Hindi adopted the Dogri spelling (the native language of the region), and Urdu adopted the Persian spelling (the former administrative language of the region) with change from n>N.
> 
> Just like the fruit name jambu/jambuu/jambula/jambuuna (mentioned by Turner), the name of the region also has pronunciation variants presumably from early times and thus jammuu/jammuun/jammuN.


Thank you @desi4life. If we assume that Devanagri script used the Dogri word "Jamuu/Jammuu" and the Urdu script's word "Jammuun" is based on the fruit "jambuuna", one wonders in which language the word "jambuuna" comes from and how the full "nuun" became a nasal "nuun". 

The transcription for the Persian on page 29 is incorrect. It ought to be "qalamrav-i-sarkaar-i-Jammuun-o-Kashmiir. In addition, the Persian word for "half" is "niim" and not "nim". Interestingly, the address in Urdu on a card on page 33 has a lot of "nuqtas" missing.


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## marrish

Qureshpor said:


> The author is described as "Assistant Foreign Secretary of the State of Jammuun and Kashmir". "Jammuun" is written with a full "nuun" and not with a nasal. Elsewhere in the book, the nasal nuun is indicated by a dotless nuun as is the modern practice. Therefore, the earlier reference that I provided of the 1917 book is not one off. This implies that in Urdu, somewhere along the timeline, there has been a change from "Jammuun" to "JammuuN". But still I have no idea how the full "n" or the nasal "n" has been dropped in Hindi if the original word had a full "n".


Thank you for sharing this catch.
We know that in writing, there was no tradition of marking the difference between the word-final dental [n] and the nasal [N] either in Persian or Urdu, and it was only since the introduction of the dotless nuun ں in Urdu that it came to gain currency.

In Persian the dotless letter wasn't ever introduced (save in later Indo-Persian printed publications), for the modern Persian language doesn't know the nasal nuun.

Thanks to your efforts we have learned about the existence of the nasal _sound_ in Classical Persian but from what I gathered there was no instance of graphemic discrimination between the two in any script used for writing Persian, was there any?

In other words (y)our working hypothesis is this: the initial spelling of "Jammu"/"JammuuN" was Persian   


 *j-m-w-n*  ج م و ن.
The same spelling was used in Urdu but has changed to *j-m-w-N *since the modified Urdu letter "undotted nuun" came into vogue.

This mode of spelling might have had continued in the official names and titles, notwithstanding the subsequent development of the letter nuun-e-Ghunnah in Urdu.

Such spelling reforms as the "modern nasal nuun'' didn't reach all places and all literate people at the same time, I can remember some texts from late 1940s that didn't keep the distinction.

The earlier full nuun suggests in your view that the name was first pronounced with a dental and that a subsequent change in pronunciation from n to N gave rise to the modern spelling JammuuN, but it doesn't appear to me that this was necessarily the order of events, since


desi4life said:


> [...] So Hindi adopted the Dogri spelling (the native language of the region), and Urdu adopted the Persian spelling (the former administrative language of the region) with change from n>N.


...since, provided the spelling جمون *j-m-w-n* was devised in/for Persian, the (full) nuun might have stood either for a dental or a nasal, which implies equal likelihood of the pronunciation [_jammuuN]_ back then (no change in pronunciation), while the adaptation of the spelling is the result of an internal development of the Urdu script.

Was Persian the court language?

It might be certainly true that Hindi adopted the Dogri spelling, however several times in the linked paper it was stressed that the Dogri script itself was shaped/modified under the influence of Devanagari.


desi4life said:


> In the old convention of the Dogri script as shown on page 29, figure 14 of the following document with text dated 1923 Samvat (1866 AD), Jammu was written “jamuu” (or “yamuu”), and on page 33, figure 19 as “jammuu” (or “yammuu”). In the Persian script it was written “jammuun”: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db4b/211fedf56a887d33ca51b06542bc9cd5484e.pdf.


Thanks to your contribution we have now some instances of the official use - and that in different scripts/languages! The discussion has gained a lot from it; I didn't have any idea about the Dogra script. Your document is very comprehensive and informative, and above it it gathers much documentary evidence in one place. The specimens are enjoyable to look at.

I can see that under figure 14 the spelling is *ja-ma-u*. This in my opinion is corresponds exactly to the Arabic *j-m-w –* without the grapheme for the final nasalization.

I happened to find on p.22 a reproduction of Grierson's The Linguistic Study of India (1917) section on the Old Dogra script, of which the portion which is relevant to us at the moment contains the following statement:

*"Note.–Great carelessness is allowed in writing the vowels and the nasal sign. They are often omitted altogether. *​*Long and short vowels are frequently interchanged. Initial vowels are often written in the place of non-initial long *​*ones. Thus–*​*(daA) for dā; (taU) for tuuN. The letter e or ē is frequently written for i, and ō for u.*





The last letter

 in the Old convention spelling 

 <*ja-ma-U>* is in the same as the one discussed in the second example of the above note.

In light of this I think I can safely conclude that the old Dogra convention allowed for the name [_*jammuuN*_] to be spelled with the letters <*ja-ma-U*> (the final vowel letter in it is the initial form of short _u_ behaving in Dogra like the Arabic و waa'o).



desi4life said:


> In the newer convention of the Dogri script, as shown in the following article, Jammu is written “jammuu” (with germinated m): Dogri script finds place on signposts at Jammu railway station


Indeed, there is no dot for the final nasal. I saw a picture of this sign earlier but I was not certain how to read it back then . There was yet a different spelling too in another picture I saw, so I would need to look it up again, because I can't remember what that difference was.


Qureshpor said:


> The transcription for the Persian on page 29 is incorrect. It ought to be "qalamrav-i-sarkaar-i-Jammuun-o-Kashmiir. In addition, the Persian word for "half" is "niim" and not "nim". Interestingly, the address in Urdu on a card on page 33 has a lot of "nuqtas" missing.


I agree with these remarks and you are completely right to amend the classification of the language written on the said postcard.


marrish said:


> As soon as there is internet in Jammu, we might even get an answer from a native speaker of Dogri.


I'm wondering, is there any internet in Jammu&Kashmir yet? Competent institutions could be contacted for opinion on the matter.


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## desi4life

Figure 15 (page 30), figure 16 (page 31), and figure 19 (page 33) of the document (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db4b/211fedf56a887d33ca51b06542bc9cd5484e.pdf) are interesting.

Figure 15, rather than using the name "jammuu" or ""jammuuN", instead uses the presumed etymon "jambuu" written in both the Devanagari script and new convention of the Dogra script. Figure 16 also has "jambuu" written in Devanagari script.

Figure 19, with text dated 1891 AD, has both the old convention and new convention of the Dogra script. The postmark is in the old convention with the name written as "jamu" (which can be variously read as "jamuu", "jamuuN", "jammuu", "jammuuN", or with "y" instead of "j"). The inscription is in the new convention, which has more standardized graphemes, and the name is written as "jammuu" with a nasal dot used for the first "m".


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## marrish

Thank you for your input, I have acquainted myself with more specimens than the ones in the linked file, so for the sake of completeness I'm sharing one where I don't think the dot is there for the first "m", it would be hard to read it differently than j/yammuuN/jamuuN, .
Perhaps I could share some more later on.

The problem is that Dogra script doesn't use the dot for gemination of m, it actually doesn't reflect geminates at all (similarly to Urdu, unlike Hindi).


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## marrish

desi4life said:


> Figure 15, rather than using the name "jammuu" or ""jammuuN", instead uses the presumed etymon "jambuu" written in both the Devanagari script and new convention of the Dogra script. Figure 16 also has "jambuu" written in Devanagari script.


jam*buu* should be situated within the efforts of the new ruling dynasty those days at creating a "suuryavanshii" pedigree by means of a sort of a "Sanskritization" process
.


 jN buu w k sh mii r


 
jaNbuuvakashmiira



ri yaa s t jN buu v k sh mii r ti b(b) t haa



_qalamrav-e- jam(m)uun/N -o-/va kashmiir-o-tibbat-haa, sirii raamjii sahaae sTaamp_. [<-Urdu, not P.]


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## desi4life

marrish said:


> Thank you for your input, I have acquainted myself with more specimens than the ones in the linked file, so for the sake of completeness I'm sharing one where I don't think the dot is there for the first "m", it would be hard to read it differently than j/yammuuN/jamuuN, .
> Perhaps I could share some more later on.
> View attachment 46125
> The problem is that Dogra script doesn't use the dot for gemination of m, it actually doesn't reflect geminates at all (similarly to Urdu, unlike Hindi).



That’s a nice find. Where did you find that specimen?

The old convention of the Dogra script doesn’t seem to reflect germinates, but the new convention does, as shown in the pdf document with the nasal dot for germinated m (unless it was a writing mistake) or with the halant as shown in this article:Dogri script finds place on signposts at Jammu railway station


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## marrish

desi4life said:


> That’s a nice find. Where did you find that specimen?
> 
> The old convention of the Dogra script doesn’t seem to reflect germinates, but the new convention does, as shown in the pdf document with the nasal dot for germinated m (unless it was a writing mistake) or with the halant as shown in this article:Dogri script finds place on signposts at Jammu railway station



I must have followed the clue of the "philately website called “Collecting Kashmir”, maintained by Carol von der Lin" as mentioned in your paper. It is there where almost all the sources were taken from, together with their transcriptions and interpretations. It was a thoroughly professional portal, full of researched info about philately items which apparently are sold for high amounts of money at auctions, hence the precision, seems to me, but even then, there are bound to be omissions, or let me put it bluntly, plain mistakes, especially as far as the Urdu contents is concerned, to the extent that a mere address on a postcard, penned in - hmmm - _"Hindi-Urdu"_ is mistaken for Persian despite having passed under the nose of an authority on "_Hindi-Urdu_", and I quote from the document,



> "I would like to thank *Christopher Shackle (School of Oriental and African Studies, London) for reviewing this proposal.*
> This project was made possible *in part through a Google Research Award*, granted to Deborah Anderson for the Script Encoding Initiative, *and a grant from the United States National Endowment for the Humanities*..."



-


Qureshpor said:


> The transcription for the Persian on page 29 is incorrect. It ought to be "qalamrav-i-sarkaar-i-Jammuun-o-Kashmiir. In addition, the Persian word for "half" is "niim" and not "nim". Interestingly, the address in Urdu on a card on page 33 has a lot of "nuqtas" missing.



Qureshpor SaaHib, how is _niim_ _aanah_ supposed to be Persian when it is a number one example of P/U _niim_ and U./H. _aanah_?
I have seen "_paa'o aanah_" and "_niim paa'o aanah_" in the series_. _

I'm only mentioning it so that it becomes plain that there is no need to shun the word "Urdu" because doing so leads to such blunders as those similar to the example of the one single postcard/stamp evading proper description.

Urdu has been adopted as the official language of that region, having replaced Persian by the late 1880-1890, if not earlier.

The popularisation of the Dogri script proved a short-lived dud, although there was a period the _Daak_ at _JammuN_ used the script, nevertheless as you can see, it was mostly Urdu which was the current language of postal exchange, and on top of that it was frequently written in the _*shikastah*_ variety.

This style of writing is based on certain shapes of frequently used words and letter combinations in which the points play a minor role. In a way, it is the manner in which the absence of i3raab doesn't matter to the reading which is taken to the next level and extended onto the points/dots which normally enable distinguishing between some letters.

[EDIT: starting from the page which is linked to below, a lot of handwritten specimens of frequently written words in Urdu, in the running style (but the whole section is called, for some well-known reason, as PHILATELIC GLOSSARY: INDO-PERSIAN SCRIPT  But it's excellent in its contents otherwise, barring such things as the below example, amongst others, so I do recommend it to everyone (but beginners!!!) Urdu and Persian Philatelic Glossary Part A ]

I have also found the reason why they said it were **_nim_ with a "short i" (I can't see any _zer_, can you?). The (alleged) absence of the two dots for _ye_ is further theorised as if the _nuun_ were to be joining _miim_ directly, without an intervening _shoshah_ for _ye; _yet the authors/experts seem to remain completely blind to the fact that the shape alone in the _Nastaliq_ or _Shikastah_ style indicates the letter sufficiently for it to be correctly identified, for you would surely write the shape of the word _niim_ quite differently from **_nim_ or "_nam,_ for that matter. If one looks at the specimen which does display the pair of dots, one sees that there is no difference in the shape of the former, purported **_nim_.

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Perhaps it would be proper to read the dot as Nasalisation, instead of  taking it for a sign for geMination of M; just consider that the letter "S" in "xaaSS" is written double.


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