Arabic alphabet

Categories: Arabic alphabet | Abjad writing systems

The Arabic Alphabet
History · Adaptations Phonology · Transliteration Diacritics · Writing of the hamza Numerals · Numeration

ar:قالب:أبجدية عربية

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History of the Alphabet
Wadi el-Hol 19th c. BC Proto-Canaanite 14th c. BC Ugaritic 13th c. BC Phoenician 11th c. BC Paleo-Hebrew 9th c. BC Samaritan 6th c. BC Aramaic 9th c. BC Hebrew 3rd c. BC Avestan 3th c. Brāhmī 3rd c. BC Syriac 2nd c. BC Arabic 4th c. Greek 8th c. BC Old Italic 8th c. BC Runes 2nd c. Latin 7th c. BC Gothic 4th c. Armenian 405 Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic 10th c. South Arabian 9th c. BC Ethiopic 3rd-4th c.
Meroitic 3rd c. BC

The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing in the Arabic language.

Because the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, is written with this alphabet, its influence spread with that of Islam. As a result, the Arabic alphabet is used to write many other languages—many other languages belonging to language families other than Semitic, the family Arabic belongs to. For example, Persian and Urdu languages. In order to accommodate the phonetics of other languages, the alphabet has been adapted by the addition of letters and other symbols. (See #Arabic alphabets of other languages below).

The alphabet presents itself in different styles such as Nasta'līq, Thulthī, Kūfī and others (see Arabic calligraphy), just like different handwriting styles and typefaces for the Roman alphabet. Superficially, these styles appear quite different, but the basic letterforms remain the same.

Contents 1 Structure of the Arabic alphabet 1.1 Abjadi order 2 Presentation of the alphabet 2.1 Primary letters 2.2 Other characters 2.2.1 Notes 2.2.1.1 Writing the hamza 2.2.1.2 Ligatures 2.3 Diacritics 2.3.1 Vowels 2.3.2 Other Symbols and Signs 2.3.2.1 Shadda 2.3.2.2 Sukūn 3 Rules for hamza 3.1 Summary 3.2 Detailed Description 4 Arabic numerals 5 History 6 Arabic alphabets of other languages 6.1 Current uses of the alphabet for other languages 6.2 Former uses of the alphabet for other languages 7 Computers and the Arabic alphabet 7.1 Arabic keyboard layout 8 See also 9 External links

Structure of the Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is written from right to left and is composed of 28 basic letters. Adaptations of the script for other languages such as Persian and Urdu have additional letters. There is no difference between written and printed letters; the writing is unicase (i.e. the concept of upper and lower case letters does not exist). On the other hand, most of the letters are attached to one another, even when printed, and their appearance changes as a function of whether they connect to preceding or following letters. Some combinations of letters form special ligatures.

The Arabic alphabet is an "impure" abjad—short vowels are not written, though long ones are—so the reader must know the language in order to restore the vowels. However, in editions of the Qur'an or in didactic works a vocalization notation in the form of diacritic marks is used. Moreover, in vocalized texts, there is a series of other diacritics of which the most modern are an indication of vowel omission (sukūn) and the lengthening of consonants (šadda).

The names of Arabic letters can be thought of as abstractions of an older version where the names of the letters signified meaningful words in the Proto-Semitic language.

There are two orders for Arabic letters in the alphabet, the original Abjadī أبجدي order matches the ordering of letters in all alphabets derived from the Phoenician alphabet, including the English ABC. The standard order used today, and shown in the table is the Hejā'ī هجائي order, where letters are grouped according to their shape.

Abjadi order

The special Abjadī order (or two slightly variant orders) was devised by matching an Arabic letter of the fully consonant-dotted 28-letter Arabic alphabet to each of the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet (in their old Phoenician/Hebrew/Aramaic alphabetic order) — leaving six remaining Arabic letters at the end. The Abjadī order is not a simple historically-continuous preservation of the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, since it contains a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter semkat/samekh ס, yet no letter of the Arabic alphabet historically comes from ס. Similarly, the Abjad orders include in their first 22 positions some letters (ش and ض) which did not exist until the Arabic alphabet was expanded by consonant dotting.

The most common Abjad sequence is:

أ ب ج د ﻫ و ز ح ط ي ك ل م ن س ع ف ص ق ر ش ت ث خ ذ ض ظ غ

This is commonly vocalized as follows:

• abjad hawwaz HuTTi kalaman sa'faS qarashat thakhadh DaZagh.

Another vocalization is:

• abujadin hawazin HuTiya kalman sa'faS qurishat thakhudh DaZugh

Another (probably older) Abjad sequence, now mainly confined to the Maghreb, is:

أ ب ج د ﻫ و ز ح ط ي ك ل م ن ص ع ف ض ق ر س ت ث خ ذ ظ غ ش

which can be vocalized as:

• abujadin hawazin HuTiya kalman Sa'faD qurisat thakhudh Zaghush

(As used here, the capital letters represent the "emphatic" and pharyngeal consonants, while the digraphs sh, th, kh, dh and gh represent single letters. The final 'in' represents tanwīn, a feature of Arabic grammar.) Differences emerge starting at the fifteenth letter (where there are different Arabic substitutes for Aramaic semkat/samekh). Any of these "alphabetical orders" can be used for the purpose of numbering, or in the branch of numerology called isopsephy (see Abjad numerals).

Presentation of the alphabet

The following table provides all of the Unicode characters for Arabic, and none of the supplementary letters used for other languages. Current browser technology still has not caught up, so some of these forms may not display correctly. The table also shows some of the many Latin-alphabet characters that have been used. There are at least a half dozen standards for transliterating Arabic characters. Multiple methods have proliferated due to various conflicting goals. See the article Arabic transliteration for more on this topic and the different transliteration methods.

To complicate the entire question still further, there are regional differences in the way Arabic speakers pronounce the various letters, even when speaking the standard, literary language (Fusha). This chart only attempts to set forth the "standard" pronunciation as taught in universities. The phonetic equivalents are given in the Continental version of the International Phonetic Alphabet. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the article Arabic phonology.

Primary letters

Stand-alone	Initial	Medial	Final	Name	Transliteration	Phonetic Value (IPA)
ﺀ	أ ؤ إ ئ ٵ ٶ ٸ, etc.			hamza	ʼ / ʾ / ’	[ʔ]
ﺍ	—		ﺎ	ʼalif	ā / ʼ / ʾ / ’	various, including [aː]
ﺏ	ﺑ	ﺒ	ﺐ	bāʼ	b	[b]
ﺕ	ﺗ	ﺘ	ﺖ	tāʼ	t	[t]
ﺙ	ﺛ	ﺜ	ﺚ	ṯāʼ	ṯ / th	[θ]
ﺝ	ﺟ	ﺠ	ﺞ	ǧīm, jīm, gīm	ǧ / j / g	[ʤ] / [ɡ]
ﺡ	ﺣ	ﺤ	ﺢ	ḥāʼ	ḥ / ħ	[ħ]
ﺥ	ﺧ	ﺨ	ﺦ	ḫāʼ	ḫ / kh / x	[x]
ﺩ	—		ﺪ	dāl	d	[d]
ﺫ	—		ﺬ	ḏāl	ḏ / dh / ð	[ð]
ﺭ	—		ﺮ	rāʼ	r	[r]
ﺯ	—		ﺰ	zāy	z	[z]
ﺱ	ﺳ	ﺴ	ﺲ	sīn	s	[s]
ﺵ	ﺷ	ﺸ	ﺶ	šīn	š / sh	[ʃ]
ﺹ	ﺻ	ﺼ	ﺺ	ṣād	ṣ	[sˁ]
ﺽ	ﺿ	ﻀ	ﺾ	ḍād	ḍ	[dˁ]
ﻁ	ﻃ	ﻄ	ﻂ	ṭāʼ	ṭ	[tˁ]
ﻅ	ﻇ	ﻈ	ﻆ	ẓāʼ	ẓ / ḍh	[ðˁ] / [zˁ]
ﻉ	ﻋ	ﻌ	ﻊ	ʻayn	ʻ / ʿ / ‘ / c / 9	[ʕ] / [ʔˁ]
ﻍ	ﻏ	ﻐ	ﻎ	ġayn	ġ / gh	[ɣ] / [ʁ]
ﻑ	ﻓ	ﻔ	ﻒ	fāʼ	f	[f]
ﻕ	ﻗ	ﻘ	ﻖ	qāf	q	[q]
ﻙ	ﻛ	ﻜ	ﻚ	kāf	k	[k]
ﻝ	ﻟ	ﻠ	ﻞ	lām	l	[l], [lˁ] (in Allah only)
ﻡ	ﻣ	ﻤ	ﻢ	mīm	m	[m]
ﻥ	ﻧ	ﻨ	ﻦ	nūn	n	[n]
ﻩ	ﻫ	ﻬ	ﻪ	hāʼ	h	[h]
ﻭ	—		ﻮ	wāw	w , ū	[w] , [uː]
ﻱ	ﻳ	ﻴ	ﻲ	yāʼ	y , ī	[j] , [iː]

Letters lacking an initial or medial version are never tied to the following letter, even within a word. As to ﺀ hamza, it has only a single graphic, since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes 'seated' on a waw, ya or alif, and in that case the seat behaves like an ordinary waw, ya or alif.

Technically, hamza is not a letter, but a diacritic.

Other characters

The following are not actual letters, but rather different orthographical shapes for letters, and in the case of the lām ʼalif, a ligature.

Stand-alone	Initial	Medial	Final	Name	Trans.	Value
ﺁ	—		ﺂ	ʼalif madda	ʼā	[ʔaː]
ﺓ	—		ﺔ	tāʼ marbūṭa	h or t / Ø / h / ẗ	[a], [at]
ﻯ	—		ﻰ	ʼalif maqṣūra	ā / ỳ	[aː]
ﻻ	—		ﻼ	lām ʼalif	lā	[laː]

Notes

The ʼalif maqṣūra, commonly using Unicode 0x0649 (ى) in Arabic, is sometimes replaced in Persian or Urdu, with Unicode 0x06CC (ی), called "Farsi Yeh". This is appropriate to its pronunciation in those languages. The glyphs are identical in isolated and final form (ﻯ ﻰ), but not in initial and medial form, in which the Farsi Yeh gains two dots below (ﯾ ﯿ) while the ʼalif maqṣūra has neither an initial nor a medial form.

Writing the hamza

Initially, the letter ʼalif indicated an occlusive glottal, or glottal stop, transcribed by [ʔ], confirming the alphabet came from the same Phoenician origin. Now it is used in the same manner as in other abjads, with yāʼ and wāw, as a mater lectionis, that is to say, a consonant standing in for a long vowel (see below). In fact, over the course of time its original consonantal value has been obscured, since ʼalif now serves either as a long vowel or as graphic support for certain diacritics (madda or hamza).

The Arabic alphabet now uses the hamza to indicate a glottal stop, which can appear anywhere in a word. This letter, however, does not function like the others: it can be written alone or on a support in which case it becomes a diacritic:

• alone: ء ;
• with a support: إ, أ (above and under a ʼalif), ؤ (above a wāw), ئ (above a yāʼ without points or yāʼ hamza).

The details of writing of the hamza are discussed below, after that of the vowels and syllable-division marks, because their functions are related.

Ligatures

The only compulsory ligature is lām+'alif. All other ligatures (yaa - mīm, etc.) are optional.

Some fonts include a Salla-llahu 'alayhi wasallam glyph:

Image:Sall-allahu-alayhi-wasallam.png

Muslims normally use this phrase after any mention of the prophet Muhammad.

Fonts also include a special glyph for the word "li-llah", which means "to God."

Image:Allah glyph.png

Combined with the letter 'alif, it becomes Allah:

The latter is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word "Allah". Compare the display below, which depends on your browser and installed fonts:

للّٰه

Alternatively, some fonts may be designed to replace the sequence lam-lam-hā' or alif-lam-lam-hā' to the ligature U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM, but this seems to depend on the font, with Arial, Bitstream Cyberbit and Times New Roman, as examples of the former, and Arial Unicode MS as an example of the latter. This is probably because some font designers interpret U+FDF2 as "li-llah", and others as "Allah" and so design the glyph and replacement mapping as such.

lam-lam-hā':

alif-lam-lam-hā':

U+FDF2:

Diacritics

Vowels

Arabic short vowels are generally not written, except sometimes in sacred texts (such as the Qurʼan) and didactics, which are known as vocalised texts. Occasionally short vowels are marked where the word would otherwise be ambiguous and cannot be resolved simply from context.

Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable. (All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; contrary to appearances: there is a consonant at the start of a name like Ali — in Arabic ʻAlī — or a word like ʼalif.)

Long "a" following a consonant other than hamzah is written with a short-"a" mark on the consonant plus an alif after it (ʼalif). Long "i" is a mark for short "i" plus a yaa yāʼ, and long u is mark for short u plus waaw, so aā = ā, iy = ī and uw = ū);

Long "a" following a hamzah sound may be represented by an alif-madda or by a floating hamzah followed by an alif.

In an un-vocalised text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the consonant in question (alif, yaa, waaw). Long vowels written in the middle of a word are treated like consonants taking sukūn (see below) in a text that has full diacritics.

For clarity, vowels will be placed above or below the letter د dāl so it is necessary to read the results [da], [di], [du], etc. Please note, د dāl is one of the six letters that do not connect to the left, and is used in this demonstration for clarity. Most other letters connect to ʼalif, wāw and yāʼ.

Simple vowels	Name	Trans.	Value
دَ	fatḥa	a	[a]
دِ	kasra	i	[i]
دُ	ḍamma	u	[u]
دَ‌ا	fatḥa ʼalif	ā	[aː]
دَ‌ى	fatḥa ʼalif maqṣūra	ā / aỳ	[aː]
دِ‌ي	kasra yāʼ	ī / iy	[iː]
دُ‌و	ḍamma wāw	ū / uw	[uː]

tanwiin letters:
ً, ٍ, ٌ	used to produce the grammatical endings /an/, /in/, and /un/ respectively. ً is usually used in combination with ا ‎ (اً) or taa marbuta.

Other Symbols and Signs

Shadda

ّ šadda marks the gemination (doubling) of a consonant; kasra (when present) moves to between the shadda and the geminate (doubled) consonant.

Sukūn

An Arabic syllable can be open (ended by a vowel) or closed (ended by a consonant).

• open: CV[consonant-vowel] (long or short vowel)
• closed: CVC (short vowel only)

When the syllable is closed, we can indicate that the consonant that closes it does not carry a vowel by marking it with a sign called sukūn, which takes the form "°", to remove any ambiguity, especially when the text is not vocalised: it's necessary to remember that a standard text is only composed of series of consonants; thus, the word qalb, "heart", is written qlb. Sukūn allows us to know where not to place a vowel: qlb could, in effect, be read /qVlVbV/, but written with a sukūn over the l and the b, it can only be interpreted as the form /qVlb/ (as for knowing which vowel to use, the word has to be memorised); we write this قلْبْ.

You might think that in a vocalised text sukūn is not necessary, because the lack of vowel after a consonant might be signalled by simply not writing any mark above it, so قِلْبْ would be redundant. That is not so because such a convention ("lack of any vowel mark means lack of vowel sound") does not exist: k + u + t + b may indeed be read "kutib". Such a rule would make sense if everybody writing a vowel mark were forced to write all vowel marks in the same word, and that is not the case. In fact, you may write as many or as few of the vowel marks as you like.

In the Qurʼan, however, all vowel marks must be written: there, sukuun over a letter (other than the alif indicating long "a") indicates that it is pronounced but not followed by a short vowel, while the lack of any sign over a letter (other than alif) indicates that the consonant is not pronounced.

Outside of the Qurʼan, putting a sukuun above a yaa' which indicates long ee, or above a waaw which stands for long oo, is extremely rare, to the point that yaa with sukuun will be unambiguously read as the diphthong ai (as in English "eye") and waaw with sukuun will be read au (as in English "cow").

So, the word zauǧ, "husband", can be written simply zwǧ : زوج (which might be also read "zooj" if such a word existed); or with sukūn زوْجْ which is unambiguously "zowj"; or with sukūn and vowels: زَوْج.

The letters mwsyqā (موسيقى with a ʼalif maqṣūra at the end of the word) will be read most naturally as the word "mooseekaa" ("music"). If you were to write sukuuns above the waaw, yaa and alif, you'd get وْسيْقىْ, which looks like "mowsaykay" (note that an ʼalif maqṣūra is an alif and never takes sukūn).

You cannot place a sukuun on the final letter ǧ of "zawǧ" even if you don't pronounce a vowel there, because fully vocalised texts are always written as if the ighraab vowels were in fact pronounced, and this word can never have a sukuun as an ighraab. Let's take the sentence "aḥmad zawǧ šarr", meaning "Ahmed is a bad husband". The theoretical pronunciation with the ighraab vowels is "aḥmadun zauǧun šarrun". Interestingly, regardless of the fact that most people say "aḥmad zauǧ šarr", you cannot write the mark for sukuun over that j; you either leave it markless, or use the mark for "un". By the same token, you can leave the final r of this sentence either completely unmarked or topped with a shadda plus "un", but a sukuun never belongs there, regardless of the fact that the only correct pronunciation of "šarrun" at the end of an utterance is "šar".

Rules for hamza

Summary

• Initial hamza is always written over or under an alif. Otherwise, surrounding vowels determine the seat of the hamza – but, preceding long vowels or diphthongs are ignored (as are final short vowels).
• /i/ over /u/ over /a/ if there are two conflicting vowels that “count”; on the line if there are none.
• As a special case, /aa’a/, /uu’a/ and /aw’a/ require hamza on the line, instead of over an alif as you would expect from rule #1. (See III.1b below.)
• Two adjacent alifs are never allowed. If the rules call for this, replace the combination by a single alif-madda.

Detailed Description

• Logically, hamza is just like any other letter, but it may be written in different ways. It has no effect on the way other letters are written. In particular, surrounding long vowels are written just as they always are, regardless of the “seat” of the hamza – even if this results in the appearance of two consecutive waws or yaas.
• Hamza can be written in four ways – on its own (“on the line”) or over an alif, waw, or yaa, called the “seat” of the hamza. When written over yaa, the dots that would normally be written underneath disappear.
• When, according to the rules below, an hamza with an alif seat would occur before another alif, instead a single alif is written with the madda symbol over it.
• The rules for hamza depend on whether it occurs as the initial, middle, or final letter (not sound) in a word. (Thus, final short inflectional vowels do not count, but when –an is written as alif-tanwiin, it does count and the hamza is considered middle.)

I. If the hamza is initial:

• It is always written on an alif – over it if the following sound is /a/ or /u/, under it if /i/ follows.
• If long /aa/ follows, alif-madda will occur.

II. If the hamza is final:

• If a short vowel precedes, the hamza is written over the letter (alif, waw, or yaa) corresponding to the short vowel.
• Otherwise (i.e. long vowel, diphthong or consonant preceding), the hamza is written on the line.

III. If the hamza is middle:

• If a long vowel or diphthong precedes, the seat of the hamza is determined mostly by what follows:

• If /i/ or /u/ follows, the hamza is written over yaa or waw, accordingly.
• Otherwise, the hamza wants to be written on the line. If a yaa precedes, however, this would conflict with the stroke joining the yaa to the following letter, so the hamza is (in print, at least) written over yaa.

• Otherwise, both preceding and following vowels have an effect on the hamza.

• If there is only one vowel (or two of the same kind), that vowel determines the seat (alif, waw, or yaa).
• If there are two conflicting vowels, /i/ takes precedence over /u/, /u/ over /a/.
• Alif-madda will occur if appropriate.

• Not surprisingly given the complexity of these rules, there is some disagreement.

• Barron’s "201 Arabic Verbs" follows these rules exactly (although the sequence /uu’uu/ does not occur; see below).
• John Mace’s "Teach Yourself Arabic Verbs and Essential Grammar" presents alternative forms in almost all cases when hamza is followed by a long /uu/. The motivation appears to be to avoid two waws in a row. Generally, the choice is between the form following the rules here, or an alternative form using hamza over yaa in all cases. Example forms are /mas’uul/, /yajii’uuna/, /yashaa’uuna/. Exceptions:

• In the sequence /uu’uu/, e.g. /yasuu’uuna/, the alternatives are hamza on the line, or hamza over yaa, when the rules here would call for hamza over waw. Perhaps the resulting sequence of three waws would be especially repugnant?
• In the sequence /yaqra’uuna/, the alternative form has hamza over alif, not yaa.
• The forms /yabTu’uuna/, /ya’uubu/ have no alternative form. (But note /yaqra’uuna/ with the same sequence of vowels!)

• Haywood and Nahmad’s "A new Arabic grammar" doesn’t write the paradigms out in full but in general agrees with John Mace’s book, including the alternative forms – and sometimes lists a third alternative where the entire sequence /’uu/ is written as a single hamza over waw instead of as two letters.
• "Al-Kitaab fii Ta:allum ..." presents paradigms with hamza written the same way throughout, regardless of what the rules above say. Thus /yabda’uuna/ with hamza only over alif, /yajii’uuna/ with hamza only over yaa, /yaqra’iina/ with hamza only over alif although this is not allowed in any of the previous three books. (This appears to be an over-generalization on the part of the Al-Kitaab writers.)

Arabic numerals

There are two kinds of numerals used in Arabic writing; standard Arabic numerals, and "East Arab" numerals, used in Iran, Pakistan and India. In Arabic, these numbers are referred to as "Indian numbers" (أرقام هندية). In most of present-day North Africa, the usual Western numerals are used; in medieval times, a slightly different set (from which, via Italy, Western "Arabic numerals" derive) was used. Unlike Arabic alphabetic characters, Arabic numerals are written from left to right.

Standard numerals ٠ 0 ١ 1 ٢ 2 ٣ 3 ٤ 4 ٥ 5 ٦ 6 ٧ 7 ٨ 8 ٩ 9

EastArab numerals ۰ 0 ۱ 1 ۲ 2 ۳ 3 ۴ 4 ۵ 5 ۶ 6 ۷ 7 ۸ 8 ۹ 9

In addition, the Arabic alphabet can be used to represent numbers (Abjad numerals), a usage rare today. This usage is based on the Abjadi order of the alphabet. ʼalif is 1, ب bāʼ is 2, ج ǧīm is 3, and so on until ي yāʼ = 10, ك kāf = 20, ل lām = 30, ... ر rāʼ = 200, ..., غ ġayn = 1000. This is sometimes used to produce chronograms.

History

Main article: History of the Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabatean alphabet used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic, itself descended from Phoenician. The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late fourth-century inscription from Jabal Ram (50 km east of Aqaba), but the first dated one is a trilingual inscription at Zebed in Syria from 512. However, the epigraphic record is extremely sparse, with only five certainly pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions surviving, though some others may be pre-Islamic. Later, dots were added above and below the letters to differentiate them (the Aramaic model had fewer phonemes than the Arabic, and some originally distinct Aramaic letters had become indistinguishable in shape, so in the early writings 15 distinct letter-shapes had to do duty for 28 sounds!) The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic papyrus (PERF 558), dated April 643, although they did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts like the Qurʼan were frequently memorized; this practice, which survives even today, probably arose partially from a desire to avoid the great ambiguity of the script.

Yet later, vowel signs and hamzas were added, beginning sometime in the last half of the seventh century, roughly contemporaneous with the first invention of Syriac and Hebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned by an Umayyad governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u, and doubled dots gave tanwin. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by al-Farahidi.

Arabic alphabets of other languages

Arabic script is not used solely for writing Arabic, but for a variety of languages. In each language, it has been modified to fit the language's sound system. There are sounds not found in Arabic, but found in, for instance, Persian, Malay and Urdu: such sounds don't correspond to any sound from the Arabic system of sounds for which the Arabic alphabet can be used. For example, the Arabic language lacks a [p] sounding letter, so many languages add their own letter for [p] in the script, though the symbol used may differ between languages. These modifications tend to fall into groups: all the Indian and Turkic languages written in Arabic tend to use the Persian modified letters (and those are the languages that are “geographically closer” to Persia), whereas West African languages tend to imitate those of Ajami, and Indonesian ones those of Jawi. A writing system in which the Persian modified letters are used is called Perso-Arabic script by the scholars.

Generally, in countries where national education is effective and where the national language is written in Arabic script, Arabic script is also used to write the other languages used in that country.

Current uses of the alphabet for other languages

The Arabic alphabet is currently used for:

• Kurdish and Turkmen in Northern Iraq. (In Turkey, the Latin alphabet is now used for Kurdish);
• Official language Persian and regional languages including Azeri, Sorani-Kurdish and Baluchi in Iran;
• Official languages Dari and Pashto and regional languages including Uzbek in Afghanistan;
• Official language Urdu and regional languages including Punjabi (where the script is known as Shahmukhi), Sindhi, Kashmiri, and Baluchi in Pakistan;
• Urdu and Kashmiri in India (see List of national languages of India);
• Uyghur (changed to Roman script in 1969 and back to a simplified, fully voweled, Arabic script in 1983), Kazakh and Kyrgyz by a minority of Kyrgyz in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China;
• Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi is co-official in Brunei, and used for religious purposes in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore;
• Comorian (Comorian) in the Comoros, currently side by side with the Latin alphabet (neither is official);
• Hausa for many purposes, especially religious (known as Ajami);
• Mandinka, widely but unofficially; (another alphabet used is N'Ko)
• Wolof (at zaouias), known as Wolofal.
• Tamazight and other Berber languages were traditionally written in Arabic in the Maghreb. There is now a competing 'revival' of neo-Tifinagh.

Former uses of the alphabet for other languages

In the past, it has also been used to represent other languages. Most education was once religious instead of governmental and uniform within a state, so choice of script was determined by the user's religion and Muslims would use Arabic script to write any language they used. See also Languages of Muslim countries.

• Afrikaans (as it was first written among the "Cape Malays");
• Albanian;
• Azeri in Azerbaijan (now written in the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet scripts in Azerbaijan);
• Belarusian (among ethnic Tatars);
• Berber in North Africa, particularly Tachelhit in Morocco (still being considered, along with Tifinagh and Latin for Tamazight);
• Bashkir (for some years: from October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
• Bosnian;
• Chaghatai across Central Asia;
• Chechen (for some years: from October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
• Chinese and Dungan, among the Chinese Hui Muslims[1];
• Fulani, where the script is known as Ajami script;
• Hebrew;
• Kazakh in Kazakhstan;
• Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan;
• Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia;
• Mozarabic, when the Moors ruled Spain (and later Aragonese, Portuguese, and Spanish proper; see aljamiado);
• Nubian;
• Polish (among ethnic Tatars);
• Sanskrit has also been written in Arabic script, though it is more well known as using Devanagari - the script also known for being currently used for writing the Hindi language.
• Swahili;
• Somali (has used the Latin alphabet since 1972);
• Songhay in West Africa, particularly in Timbuktu;
• Tatar (iske imlâ) before 1928 (changed to Latin), reformed in 1880's, 1918 (deletion of some letters);
• Turkish in the Ottoman Empire was written in Arabic script until Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the change to Roman script in 1928. This form of Turkish is now known as Ottoman Turkish and is held by many to be a different language, due to its much higher percentage of Persian and Arabic loanwords;
• Turkmen in Turkmenistan;
• Uzbek in Uzbekistan;
• All the Muslim peoples of the USSR between 1918-1928 (many also earlier), including Bashkir, Chechen, Kazakh, Tajik etc. After 1928 their script became Latin, then later Cyrillic.

Computers and the Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6 and Unicode, in the latter thanks to the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, neither of these sets indicate the form each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.

When one wants to encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The Arabic presentation forms A (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) and Arabic presentation forms B (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contain most of the characters with contextual variation as well as the extended characters appropriate for other languages. These effects are better achieved in Unicode by using the zero width joiner and non-joiner, as these presentation forms are deprecated in Unicode, and should generally only be used within the internals of text-rendering software, when using Unicode as an intermediate form for conversion between character encodings, or for backwards compatibility with implementations that rely on the hard-coding of glyph forms.

Finally, the Unicode encoding of Arabic is in logical order, that is, the characters are entered, and stored in computer memory, in the order that they are written and pronounced without worrying about the direction in which they will be displayed on paper or on the screen. Again, it is left to the rendering engine to present the characters in the correct direction, using Unicode's bi-directional text features. In this regard, if the Arabic words on this page are written left to right, it is an indication that the Unicode rendering engine used to display them is out-of-date. For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at http://www.unicode.org/

• Multilingual Computing in Arabic with Windows, major word processors, web browsers, Arabic keyboards, and Arabic transliteration fonts

Arabic keyboard layout

The Arabic Alphabet
History · Adaptations Phonology · Transliteration Diacritics · Writing of the hamza Numerals · Numeration

ar:قالب:أبجدية عربية

See also

• Arabic calligraphy - considered an art form in its own right
• Arabic numerals
• Arabic transliteration
• Arabic Chat Alphabet
• ArabTeX - provides Arabic support for TeX and LaTeX
• Jawi - an adapted Arabic alphabet for the Malay language

External links

• online Arabic Keyboard
• Arab writing and calligraphy
• Article about Arabic alphabet
• Arabic alphabet and calligraphy
• aralpha (freeware) to learn the characters
• Guide to the use of Arabic in Windows, major word processors and web browsers
• Arabic Alphabet teaching software
• Learn the Arabic Script Online

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This article contains major sections of text from the very detailed article Arabic alphabet/from the French Wikipedia, which has been partially translated into English. Further translation of that page, and its incorporation into the text here, are welcomed.

ar:أبجدية عربية ast:Alfabetu árabe ca:Alfabet àrab cs:Arabské písmo de:Arabisches Alphabet als:Arabisches Alphabet es:Alfabeto árabe eo:Araba alfabeto fa:خط عربی fr:Alphabet arabe gl:Alfabeto árabe he:אלפבית ערבי hu:Arab írás nl:Arabisch alfabet ja:アラビア文字 no:Arabisk alfabet nn:Det arabiske alfabetet pl:Alfabet arabski pt:Alfabeto árabe ro:Alfabetul arab ru:Арабский алфавит sl:Arabska abeceda sv:Arabiska alfabetet tt:Ğäräp älifbası zh:阿拉伯字母