The nuqta (, , ) from ; sometimes also spelled nukta) is a diacritic mark that was introduced in Devanagari and some other Indic scripts to represent sounds not present in the original scripts. It takes the form of a dot placed below a character. This idea is inspired from the Arabic script; for example, there are some letters in Urdu that share the same basic shape but differ in the placement of dots(s) or nuqta(s) in the Perso-Arabic script: the letter ع ain, with the addition of a nuqta on top, becomes the letter غ g͟hain. Use in Devanagari Perso-Arabic consonants The term () is itself an example of the use of the nuqta. Other examples include ; and , a combination of a Perso-Arabic (āġā) and a Turko-Mongolic (k͟hān) honorific. The nuqta, and the phonological distinction it represents, is sometimes ignored in practice; e.g., being simply spelled as . In the text Dialect Accent Features for Establishing Speaker Identity, Manisha Kulshreshtha and Ramkumar Mathur write, "A few sounds, borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic, are written with a dot (bindu or nuktā). Many people who speak Hindi as a second language, especially those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak conventional Hindi (also called Khariboli), or speak in one of its dialects, pronounce these sounds as their nearest equivalents." For example, these rural speakers will assimilate the sound ɣ (Devanagari: ग़; Urdu: ) as ɡ (Devanagari: ग; Urdu: ). With a renewed Hindi–Urdu language contact, many Urdu writers now publish their works in Devanagari editions. Since the Perso-Arabic orthography is preserved in Nastaʿlīq script Urdu orthography, these writers use the nuqta in Devanagari when transcribing these consonants. Sometimes, व़ is used to explicitly represent the /w/ consonant and to differentiate it from /v/ consonant व. Dravidian consonants Devanagari also includes coverage for the Dravidian consonants /ɻ/; /r/ and /n/. (Respectively, these letters modify /ɭ/; /ɾ/ and /n̪/). An example is . Dardic consonants For example, the letters and are used in Devanagari to write the Kashmiri alveolar affricates and respectively. Eastern Indo-Aryan letters To represent the Eastern Nagari letter representing /ɔ/, the consonant is used in Devanagari. In Maithili, there are four non-syllabic vowels: i̯, u̯, e̯, o̯ written in Devanagari as य़, व़, य़ॆ, व़ॊ. But colloquially, these are written without nuqta. Similar diacritics Sindhi's and Saraiki's implosives are accommodated in Devanagari