Shina is one of the few Dardic languages with a written tradition. However, it was an unwritten language until a few decades ago. Only in the late 2010s has Shina orthography been standardized and primers as well as dictionaries endorsed by the territorial government of
Gilgit-Baltistan have been published. Since the first attempts at accurately representing Shina's phonology in the 1960s, there have been several proposed orthographies for the different varieties of the language. Debates have centered on how to write several retroflex sounds not present in
Urdu, and whether vowel length and tone should be represented. There are two main orthographic conventions now, one in Pakistani-controlled areas of
Gilgit-Baltistan and in
Kohistan, and the other in Indian-controlled area of
Dras,
Ladakh. Below, the alphabet has been standardized, documented, and popularized thanks to the efforts of literaturists such as Professor Muhammad Amin Ziya, Shakeel Ahmad Shakeel, and Razwal Kohistani. The alphabet established by these individuals has been developed for all Shina language dialects, including the Gilgit dialect and the
Kohistani dialect. There are minor differences, such as the existence of the letter in
Kohistani dialect of Shina. Furthermore, variations and personal preferences can be observed across Shina documents. For example, it is common to see someone use instead of for , or use
sukun (
U+0652) instead of
small sideway noon (U+08FF) to indicate short vowels. However, these variations are no longer an issue. Another issue is that of how to write loanwords that use letters not found in Shina language, for example letters "", which all sound like [s] in Shina. Some documents preserve the original spelling, despite the letters being homophones and not having any independent sound of their own, similar to orthographic conventions of
Persian and
Urdu. Whereas other documents prefer to rewrite all loanwords in a single Shina letter, and thus simplify the writing, similar to orthographic conventions of
Kurdish and
Uyghur. Shina vowels are distinguished by length, by whether or not they're nasalized, and by tone. Nasalization is represented like other Perso-Arabic alphabets in Pakistan, with
Nun Ghunna (). In Shina, tone variation only occur when there is a long vowel. There are conventions unique to Shina to show the three tones. In Shina conventions, specific diacritics are shown in conjunction with the letters
alif,
waw,
buṛi ye, and
ye (), as these letters are written down to represent long vowels. The diacritics
inverted damma (U+0657) and
superscript alef (U+0670) represent a rising tone and a falling tone respectively. Another diacritic, a
small sideway noon (U+08FF) is used to represent short vowels when need be.
Consonants Below table shows Shina consonants. ==See also==