Punjabi Huinga ki te kōrero

Mo Punjabi kupu ki te kōrero

Punjabi is the rare Indo-Aryan language that is genuinely tonal, and that single feature dominates its text-to-speech: historical voiced-aspirate consonants collapsed and left behind low, high and level tones on neighbouring syllables, so the same sequence of letters can mean different things depending on pitch, and a voice that ignores tone will be misunderstood. The Indian standard is written in Gurmukhi, an abugida with its own letterforms, the gemination marker addhak that doubles a consonant, and nasalization signs the engine must read. Correctly reconstructing tone from spelling — since the tone is a relic of consonants that are no longer pronounced as written — is the hardest and most Punjabi-specific synthesis problem. The language also has the usual Indo-Aryan inherent-vowel and conjunct-consonant handling. A large share of demand is cultural and religious: Gurmukhi is the script of Sikh scripture, so kirtan and gurbani-adjacent content, alongside Punjabi music, film and a huge Canadian, British and American diaspora media market, all rely on natural Punjabi audio.