Nuqta

Nuqtā (Hindi-Urdu नुक़्ता, نقطہ, from the Arabic nuqta نقطة "dot"), also spelled Nuktā, is a term for a diacritic mark introduced in Devanāgari (and some other Indian scripts) used to represent sounds from other languages which do not have a native character. It takes the form of a dot placed below a character. Also, in the Urdu script, there "are some letters in Urdu that share the same basic shape but differ in the placement of dots(s) or nuqta(s)", e.g. the letter ع ain, with the addition of a nuqta, becomes the letter غ g͟hain.,

Examples from Devanāgari, the script used to write Hindi, are: क़ qa, ख़ kḫa, ग़ ġa, ज़ za, ड़ da, ढ़ ṛha, फ़ fa, झ़ zha, modifying क ka, ख kha, ग ga, ज ja, ड ḍa, ढ ḍha, फ pha, झ jha, respectively. These phonemes have marginal existence in Hindi, occurring in some Perso-Arabic loanwords. The term nuqtā नुक़्ता itself is an example; other examples include क़िला (قلعہ) qilā "fortress", and आग़ा ख़ान Āgā Khān (آغا خان, combination of a Perso-Arabic (aga) and a Turko-Mongolic (khan) honorific, now the title of the leader of the Nizari Ismaili sect.