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Template:Contains Arabic text

Arabic abjad
Script type
Time period
400 CE to the present
DirectionRight-to-left script Edit this on Wikidata
LanguagesArabic, Persian, Kurdish, Baloch, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Malay (limited usage) and others.
Related scripts
Parent systems
Unicode
U+0600 to U+06FF

U+0750 to U+077F
U+FB50 to U+FDFF

U+FE70 to U+FEFF
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Arabic alphabet
Arabic script
History of the alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world.[1]

The alphabet was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Qurʼan, the holy book of Islam. With the spread of Islam, it came to be used to write many other languages, even outside of the Semitic family to which Arabic belongs. Examples of non-Semitic languages written with the Arabic alphabet include Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Baloch, Malay, Hausa (in West Africa), Mandinka, Swahili (in East Africa), Balti, Brahui, Panjabi (in Pakistan), Kashmiri, Sindhi (in India and Pakistan), Uyghur (in China), Kazakh (in China), Kyrgyz (in China), Azerbaijani (in Iran), Kurdish (in Iraq and Iran) and the language of the former Ottoman Empire. In order to accommodate the needs of these other languages, new letters and other symbols were added to the original alphabet.

The Arabic script is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 basic letters. Because some of the vowels are indicated with optional symbols, it can be classified as an abjad. Just as different handwriting styles and typefaces exist in the Roman alphabet, the Arabic script has a number of different styles of calligraphy, including Naskh, Nastaʿlīq, Shahmukhi, Ruq'ah, Thuluth, Kufic, Sini and Hijazi.

Consonants

Collation

Main article: Abjad numerals

There are two collating orders for the Arabic alphabet. The original abjadī order (أبجدي) derives from the order of the Phoenician alphabet, and is therefore similar to the order of other Phoenician-derived alphabets, such as the Hebrew alphabet. The abjadī order is used for numbering. In the hijāʼī order (هجائي), similarly-shaped letters are grouped together (see below). The hijāʼī order is used wherever lists of names and words are sorted, as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries.

Primary letters

The Arabic alphabet has 28 basic letters. Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages, such as the Malay Arabic script, have additional letters. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms.

Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots above or below their central part, called iʿjam. These dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters transliterated as b and t have the same basic shape, but b has one dot below, Template:Rtl-lang, and t has two dots above, Template:Rtl-lang.

Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters directly connected to the letter that immediately follows. All primary letters have conditional forms for their glyphs, depending on whether they are at the beginning, middle or end of a word, so they may exhibit four distinct forms (initial, medial, final or isolated). However, six letters have only isolated or final form, and so force the following letter (if any) to take an initial or isolated form, as if there were a word break. These forms are called:

  • Initial: at the beginning of a word; or in the middle of a word, after a non-connecting letter.
  • Medial: between two connecting letters (non-connecting letters lack a medial form).
  • Final: at the end of a word following a connecting letter.
  • Isolated: at the end of a word following a non-connecting letter; or used independently.

Some letters look almost the same in all four forms, while others show considerable variation. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), including lām-ʼalif.[2]

For compatibility with previous standards, all these forms can be encoded separately in Unicode; however, they can also be inferred from their joining context, using the same encoding. The following table shows this common encoding, in addition to the compatibility encodings for their normally contextual forms (Arabic texts should be encoded today using only the common encoding, but the rendering must then infer the joining types to determine the correct glyph forms, with or without ligation).

The transliteration given is the widespread DIN 31635 standard, with some common alternatives. See the article Romanization of Arabic for details and various other transliteration schemes.

Regarding pronunciation, the phonetic values given are those of the pronunciation of literary Arabic, the standard which is taught in universities. In practice, pronunciation may vary considerably between the different varieties of Arabic. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the article Arabic phonology.

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

(The letters followed by an asterisk (*) are not connected to the letter following them -from the left side)

General
Unicode 		Contextual forms Name Translit. Phonemic Value (IPA)
Isolated Final Medial Initial
0627
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8D
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		ʾalif ʾ / ā various, including /aː/
0628
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8F
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE90
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE92
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE91
Template:Rtl-lang 		bāʾ b /b/, also /p/ in some loanwords
062A
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE95
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE96
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE98
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE97
Template:Rtl-lang 		tāʾ t /t/
062B
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE99
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE9A
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE9C
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE9B
Template:Rtl-lang 		ṯāʾ ṯ /θ/
062C
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE9D
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE9E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA0
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE9F
Template:Rtl-lang 		ǧīm ǧ (also j, g) [ɡ~dʒ~ʒ]
062D
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA1
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA2
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA4
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA3
Template:Rtl-lang 		ḥāʾ ḥ /ħ/
062E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA5
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA6
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA8
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA7
Template:Rtl-lang 		ḫāʾ ḫ (also kh, x) /x/
062F
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEA9
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEAA
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		dāl d /d/
0630
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEAB
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEAC
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		ḏāl ḏ (also dh, ð) /ð/
0631
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEAD
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEAE
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		rāʾ r /r/
0632
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEAF
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB0
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		zāī z /z/
0633
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB1
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB2
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB4
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB3
Template:Rtl-lang 		sīn s /s/
0634
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB5
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB6
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB8
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB7
Template:Rtl-lang 		šīn š (also sh) /ʃ/
0635
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEB9
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEBA
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEBC
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEBB
Template:Rtl-lang 		ṣād ṣ /sˁ/
0636
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEBD
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEBE
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC0
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEBF
Template:Rtl-lang 		ḍād ḍ /dˁ/
0637
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC1
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC2
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC4
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC3
Template:Rtl-lang 		ṭāʾ ṭ /tˁ/
0638
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC5
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC6
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC8
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC7
Template:Rtl-lang 		ẓāʾ ẓ [ðˁ~zˁ]
0639
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEC9
Template:Rtl-lang 		FECA
Template:Rtl-lang 		FECC
Template:Rtl-lang 		FECB
Template:Rtl-lang 		ʿayn ʿ /ʕ/
063A
Template:Rtl-lang 		FECD
Template:Rtl-lang 		FECE
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED0
Template:Rtl-lang 		FECF
Template:Rtl-lang 		ġayn ġ (also gh) /ɣ/ (/ɡ/ in many loanwords)
0641
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED1
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED2
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED4
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED3
Template:Rtl-lang 		fāʾ f /f/, also /v/ in some loanwords
0642
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED5
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED6
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED8
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED7
Template:Rtl-lang 		qāf q /q/
0643
Template:Rtl-lang 		FED9
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEDA
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEDC
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEDB
Template:Rtl-lang 		kāf k /k/
0644
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEDD
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEDE
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE0
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEDF
Template:Rtl-lang 		lām l /l/, ([lˁ] in Allah only)
0645
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE1
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE2
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE4
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE3
Template:Rtl-lang 		mīm m /m/
0646
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE5
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE6
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE8
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE7
Template:Rtl-lang 		nūn n /n/
0647
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEE9
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEEA
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEEC
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEEB
Template:Rtl-lang 		hāʾ h /h/
0648
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEED
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEEE
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE8E
Template:Rtl-lang 		wāw w / ū /w/ / /uː/, sometimes /u/, /o/ and /oː/ in loanwords
064A
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEF1
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEF2
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEF4
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEF3
Template:Rtl-lang 		yāʾ y / ī /j/ / /iː/, sometimes /i/, /eː/ and /e/ in loanwords

Further notes

  • Initially, the letter ʾalif indicated the glottal stop [ʔ], as in Phoenician. Today it is used, together with yāʾ 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, so ʾalif now serves either as a long vowel or as graphic support for certain diacritics (madda and hamza).
  • Letters lacking an initial or medial version are never connected to the following letter, even within a word. As to the hamza, it has only a single form, since it is never connected to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes combined with a wāw, yāʾ, or ʾalif, and in that case the carrier behaves like an ordinary wāw, yāʾ, or ʾalif.

In academic work, the glottal stop [ʔ] is transliterated with the right half ring sign (ʾ), while the left half ring sign (ʿ) represents a different pharyngeal, pharyngealized glottal, or epiglottal sound.

Modified letters

The following are not individual letters, but rather different contextual variants of some of the Arabic letters.

General
Unicode 		Conditional forms Name Translit. Phonemic Value (IPA)
Isolated Final Medial Initial
0622
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE81
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE82
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE82
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE82
Template:Rtl-lang 		ʾalif madda ʾā /ʔaː/
0629
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE93
Template:Rtl-lang 		FE94
Template:Rtl-lang 		— [[Tāʾ marbūṭa|Template:Rtl-lang]] h or
t / h / ẗ 		/a/, /at/
0649
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEEF
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEF0
Template:Rtl-lang 		— ʾalif maqṣūra
(Arabic; see note below) 		ā / ỳ /a/
0649
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEEF
Template:Rtl-lang 		FEF0
Template:Rtl-lang 		FBE9
Template:Rtl-lang 		FBE8
Template:Rtl-lang 		yeh
(Persian, Urdu;
see note below) 		ī / ỳ /iː/

The "shortened alif" (ʾalif maqṣūra), commonly encoded as Unicode 0x0649 (Template:Rtl-lang) in Arabic, is sometimes replaced in Persian or Urdu, with Unicode 0x06CC (ی), called "Persian yeh", in accordance with its pronunciation in those languages. The glyphs are identical in isolated and final form (ﻯ ﻰ), but not in initial and medial position, where the Persian yeh gains two dots below (ﻳ ﻴ). The ʾalif maqṣūra has neither an initial nor a medial form in very old unicode, though from Unicode 3.0 and later, an ʾalif maqṣūra with all positions is provided.

Although this is the common situation, the problem is not so simple, as computers recognize the "three yehs" (0x064A, 0x0649, 0x06CC) as different letters though may have identical shapes in some forms. No solution has been met yet as of May 2009. A version of an Arabic standard parallel from Unicode is proposed.[3]

Ligatures

The only compulsory ligature is lām + ʼalif. All other ligatures (yāʼ + mīm, etc.) are optional.

  • (isolated) lām + ʼalif (lā /laː/):
Template:Rtl-lang
  • (final) lām + ʼalif (lā /laː/):
Template:Rtl-lang

Unicode has a special glyph for the ligature allāh (“God”), U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM:

Template:Rtl-lang

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 Allāh, because it should compose a small ʼalif sign above a gemination šadda sign. Compare the display of the composed equivalents below (the exact outcome will depend on your browser and font configuration):

  • lām, (geminated) lām (with implied short a vowel, reversed) hāʼ :
Template:Rtl-lang
  • ʼalif, lām, (geminated) lām (with implied short a vowel, reversed) hāʼ :
Template:Rtl-lang

Gemination

Further information: [[:Shadda]]

The šadda, or shadda ( Template:Rtl-lang ّ ), is a diacritic which marks the gemination (doubling) of a consonant. A kasra ( Template:Rtl-lang ّ ) may be written between the consonant and the šadda rather than under the consonant. The w-shaped šadda sign is derived from beginning of a small letter šīn.

General
Unicode 		Name Transliteration
0651
Template:Rtl-lang ّ 		šadda (consonant doubled)

Nunation

Further information: [[:Nunation, ʾIʿrāb]]
Tanwīn letters:
Template:Rtl-lang used to write the grammatical endings -an, -in and -un, respectively, for desinences with nunation in indefinite state in Arabic. The sign Template:Rtl-lang is most commonly written in combination with Template:Rtl-lang ʼalif ‎ (Template:Rtl-lang) or [[Ta' marbuta|Template:Rtl-lang]] (tāʼ marbūṭa).

Vowels

The Arabic alphabet is an "impure" abjad. Long vowels are written, but short ones are not, so the reader must be familiar with the language to understand the missing vowels. However, in editions of the Qurʼan and in didactic works, vocalization marks are used, including the sukūn for vowel omission and the šadda for consonant gemination (consonant doubling).

Short vowels

Further information: Arabic diacritics

In everyday use handwriting, general publications, and street signs short vowels are generally not written in Arabic. Prints of Qurʼan cannot be adorned by the religious institutes that reviews them unless short vowels are properly marked, and it is generally preferred and customary to mark them whenever Qurʼan is cited in print. Children's books and school books for little children and Arabic language teaching in general have diacritics to varying degrees of observation. These are known as vocalized texts.

The Arabic writing system can not be considered complete without the diacritical marking of short vowels as they are an essential part of it in its developed state, conveying information not coded in any other way. Just like dotted letters, diacritical marking were a later addition to writing system.

Short vowels are occasionally marked where the word would otherwise be ambiguous and could not be resolved simply from context, or simply wherever they are aesthetically pleasing.

Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable, called harakat. All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; in Arabic, words like "Ali" or "alif", for example, start with a consonant: ʻAliyy, ʼalif.

Short vowels
(fully vocalised text) 		Name Trans. Value
064E
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		fatḥa a /a/
064F
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		ḍamma u /u/
0650
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		kasra i /i/

Long vowels

A long a following a consonant other than a hamza is written with a short a sign on the consonant plus an ʾalif after it; long i is written as a sign for short i plus a yāʾ; and long u as a sign for short u plus a wāw. Briefly, aʾ = ā, iy = ī and uw = ū. Long a following a hamza may be represented by an ʾalif madda or by a free hamza followed by an ʾalif.

In the table below, vowels will be placed above or below a dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or a šadda sign. For clarity in the table below, the primary letter on the left used to mark these long vowels are shown only in their isolated form. Please note that most consonants do connect to the left with ʾalif, wāw and yāʾ written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the letter yāʾ in the last row may connect to the letter on its left, and then will use a medial or initial form. Use the table of primary letters to look at their actual glyph and joining types.

Long vowels
(fully vocalised text) 		Name Trans. Value
064E 0627
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		fatḥa ʾalif (ـَا) ā /aː/
064E 0649
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		fatḥa ʾalif maqṣūra (Arabic) (ـَى) ā / aỳ /a/
064E 06CC
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		fatḥa yeh (Persian, Urdu) ā / aỳ (ـَی) /a/
064F 0648
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		ḍamma wāw ū / uw (ـُو) /uː/
0650 064A
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		kasra yāʾ ī / iy (ـِي) /iː/

In unvocalized text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the consonant in question: ʾalif, ʾalif maqṣūra (or yeh), wāw, or yāʾ. Long vowels written in the middle of a word of unvocalised text are treated like consonants with a sukūn (see below) in a text that has full diacritics. Here also, the table shows long vowel letters only in isolated form for clarity.

Combinations وا and يا are always pronounced wā and yā respectively, the exception is when وا is the verb ending, where ʾalif is silent, resulting in ū.

Long vowels
(unvocalised text) 		Name Trans. Value
0627
Template:Rtl-lang 		(implied fatḥa) ʾalif ā /aː/
0649
Template:Rtl-lang 		(implied fatḥa) ʾalif maqṣūra (Arabic) ā / aỳ /a/
06CC
Template:Rtl-lang 		(implied fatḥa) yeh (Persian, Urdu) ā / aỳ /a/
0648
Template:Rtl-lang 		(implied ḍamma) wāw ū / uw /uː/
064A
Template:Rtl-lang 		(implied kasra) yāʾ ī / iy /iː/

Diphthongs

The diphthongs [ai] and [au] are represented in vocalised text as follows:

Diphthongs
(fully vocalised text) 		Name Trans. Value
064E 064A
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		fatḥa yāʾ ay /aj/
064E 0648
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		fatḥa wāw aw /aw/

Vowel omission

An Arabic syllable can be open (ending with a vowel) or closed (ending with 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 diacritic called sukūn ( Template:Rtl-lang ) to remove any ambiguity, especially when the text is not vocalized. A normal text is composed only of series of consonants; thus, the word qalb, "heart", is written qlb. The sukūn indicates where not to place a vowel: qlb could, in effect, be read qalab (meaning "he turned around"), but written with a sukūn over the l and the b (Template:Rtl-lang), it can only have the form qVlb. This is one step down from full vocalization, where the vowel a would also be indicated by a fatḥa: Template:Rtl-lang.

The Qur’an is traditionally written in full vocalization. Outside of the Qur’an, putting a sukūn above a yāʼ (representing [i:]), or above a wāw (representing [u:]) is extremely rare, to the point that yāʼ with sukūn will be unambiguously read as the diphthong [ai], and wāw with sukūn will be read [au]. For example, the letters m-w-s-y-q-ā (Template:Rtl-lang with an ʼalif maqṣūra at the end of the word) will be read most naturally as the word mūsīqā ("music"). If one were to write a sukūn above the wāw, the yāʼ and the ʼalif, one would get Template:Rtl-lang, which would be read as *mawsaykāy (note however that the final ʼalif maqṣūra, because it is an ʼalif, never takes a sukūn). The word, entirely vocalized, would be written Template:Rtl-lang in the Qur’an, or Template:Rtl-lang elsewhere. The Quranic spelling would have no sukūn sign above the final ʼalif maqṣūra, but instead a miniature ʼalif above the preceding qaf consonant, which is a valid Unicode character but most Arabic computer fonts cannot in fact display this miniature ʼalif as of 2006.

No sukūn is placed on word-final consonants, even if no vowel is pronounced, because fully vocalised texts are always written as if the ʼiʻrāb vowels were in fact pronounced. For example, ʼAḥmad zawǧ šarr, meaning “Ahmed is a bad husband”, for the purposes of Arabic grammar and orthography, is treated as if still pronounced with full ʼiʻrāb, i.e. ʼAḥmadu zawǧun šarrun with the complete desinences.

General
Unicode 		Name Translit. Phonemic Value (IPA)
0652
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		sukūn (no vowel with this consonant letter or
diphthong with this long vowel letter) 		Ø / /a͡-/
0670
Template:Rtl-lang◌ 		ʾalif above (no vowel with next final consonant letter or
diphthong with next final long vowel letter) 		Ø / /a͡-/

The sukūn is also used for transliterating words into the Arabic script. The Persian word Template:Rtl-lang (mâsk, from the English word "mask"), for example, might be written with a sukūn above the Template:Rtl-lang to signify that there is no vowel sound between that letter and the Template:Rtl-lang.

Additional letters

Additional modified letters, used in non-Arabic languages, or in Arabic for transliterating foreign words, include:

Sometimes used in Arabic

  • ﭪ - Vā', sometimes used to represent the letter V when transliterating foreign words in Arabic. Also used in writing dialects with that sound.[4] Normally the letter ف - Fā' is used to transliterate the V letter. It's also used as Pa in the Jawi script. In Tunisia a character similar to Vā' in its initial and medial forms, is sometimes used to represent the phoneme g. In final and isolate form it has the form ڨ which resembles the letter Qāf whence it is derived.
  • ﭖ - Pā', represents the sound [p] in Persian, Kurdish, and Urdu; sometimes used to represent the letter P when transliterating foreign words in Arabic, although Arabic nearly always substitutes B for P in the transliteration of foreign terms. Normally the letter ب - Bā' is used to transliterate the P letter. So, "7up" can be transcribed as سفن أب or سڤن أﭖ.
  • ﭺ - Chā', used to represent the [tʃ] ("ch") phoneme; sometimes used when transliterating foreign words in Arabic, although Arabic usually substitutes other letters in the transliteration of foreign terms. Normally the combination تش - tā' and šīn are used to transliterate the [tʃ] ("ch") sound.

It's also used in several other languages like Persian, Kurdish... Ca in the Jawi script

  • گ - Gāf, used to represent the [g] phoneme (as in "get"). Normally used in Persian, Kurdish. Often foreign words with the G sound are transliterated in Arabic with ك (kāf), غ (ġayn) or ج (ǧīm), which may or may not change the original sound, (in Egyptian Arabic ج is usually read as a hard "G" (get), which also creates a confusion when the original sound is like the English [dʒ] (j) phoneme (as in "job")). Mainly in use in Iraq (which is adjacent to a Persian-speaking aera), among other things to write out the Baghdad dialect, which like most Bedouine dialects contains this sound.[4]

Used only in languages other than Arabic

  • ݐ - used to represent the equivalent of the Latin letter Ƴ in some African languages such as Fulfulde; not used in Arabic
  • ڳ - represents a variety of G in Sindhi
  • ݣ - Gaf, represents G in informal Moroccan Arabic, as well as officially to transliterate the letter G in many city names such as Agadir (أݣادير), and family names such as El Guerrouj (الݣروج).
  • ۋ - represents V in Kyrgyz, Uyghur, and Old Tatar; and W in Kazakh; also formerly used in Nogai

Numerals

Main article: Arabic numerals

There are two kinds of numerals used in Arabic writing; standard numerals (predominant in the Arab World), and Eastern Arabic numerals (used in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). In Arabic, the former are referred to as "Indian numbers" (arqām hindiyyah, Template:Rtl-lang). Arabic (or Hindu-Arabic) numerals are also used in Europe and the rest of the Western World in a third variant, the Western Arabic numerals, even though the Arabic alphabet is not. In most of present-day North Africa, the usual western numerals are used; in medieval times, a slightly different set was used, from which Western Arabic numerals derive, via Italy. Like Arabic alphabetic characters, Arabic numerals are written from right to left, though the units are always right-most, and the highest value left-most, just as with Western "Arabic numerals". Telephone numbers are read from left to right.

Western
(Maghreb, Europe)		 Eastern
(Egypt, Mideast)		 Eastern/Indian
(Persian, Urdu)
0 ٠ ۰
1 ١ ۱
2 ٢* ۲
3 ٣ ۳
4 ٤ ۴
5 ٥ ۵
6 ٦ ۶
7 ٧ ۷
8 ٨ ۸
9 ٩ ۹

*The standard form of the numeral ٢ is slightly different in Egypt.

In addition, the Arabic alphabet can be used to represent numbers (Abjad numerals). This usage is based on the abjadī of the alphabet. Template:Rtl-lang 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
Evolution of early Arabic calligraphy (9th - 11th century). The Basmala was taken as an example, from kufic Qur’an manuscripts. (1) Early 9th century. script with no dots or diacritic marks [1]; (2) and (3)9th - 10th century under Abbasid dynasty, the Abu al-Aswad's system establish red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel. Later, a second black dots system was used to differentiate between letters like "fāʼ" and "qāf" [2] [3]; (4) 11th century, In Al Farāhídi's system (system we know today) dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels [4].

The Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabataean alphabet used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic. The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late fourth-century inscription from Jabal Ramm (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 language had fewer phonemes than the Arabic, and some originally distinct Aramaic letters had become indistinguishable in shape, so that in the early writings 15 distinct letter-shapes had to do duty for 28 sounds; cf. the similarly ambiguous Pahlavi alphabet.) 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 Qur’an were frequently memorized; this practice, which is still widespread among many Muslim communities today, probably arose partially from a desire to avoid the great ambiguity of the script. (see Arabic Unicode)

Later still, vowel marks and the hamza were introduced, beginning some time in the latter half of the seventh century, preceding 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 indicated nunation. 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 printing presses

Although Napoleon Bonaparte generally is given the credit with introducing the printing press to the Arab world upon invading Egypt in 1798, and he did indeed bring printing presses and Arabic script presses, to print the French occupation's official newspaper Al-Tanbiyyah (The Courier), the process was started several centuries earlier.

Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1450 was followed up by Gregorio de Gregorii, a Venetian, who in 1514 published an entire prayer book in Arabic script entitled Kitab Salat al-Sawa'i intended for the eastern Christian communities. The script was said to be crude and almost unreadable.

Famed type designer Robert Granjon working for Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici succeeded in designing elegant Arabic typefaces and the Medici press published many Christian prayer and scholarly Arabic texts in the late sixteenth century.

The first Arabic books published using movable type in the Middle East were by the Maronite monks at the Maar Quzhayy Monastery in Mount Lebanon. They transliterated the Arabic language using Syriac script. It took a fellow goldsmith like Gutenberg to design and implement the first true Arabic script movable type printing press in the Middle East. The Greek Orthodox monk Abd Allah Zakhir set up an Arabic language printing press using movable type at the monastery of Saint John at the town of Dhour El Shuwayr in Mount Lebanon, the first homemade press in Lebanon using true Arabic script. He personally cut the type molds and did the founding of the elegant typeface. He created the first true Arabic script type in the Middle East. The first book off the press was in 1734; this press continued to be used until 1899.[5][6]

Languages written with the Arabic alphabet

Worldwide use of the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet world distribution.
Arabic alphabet world distribution.
 →  Countries where the Arabic script is the only official orthography
 →  Countries where the Arabic script is used officially alongside other orthographies.

The Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages besides Arabic, including Persian, Kurdish, Malay, and Urdu, which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology. For example, the Arabic language lacks a voiceless bilabial plosive (the [p] sound), so many languages add their own letter to represent [p] in the script, though the specific letter used varies from language to language. These modifications tend to fall into groups: all the Indian and Turkic languages written in Arabic script tend to use the Persian modified letters, whereas Indonesian languages tend to imitate those of Jawi. The modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars.

In the case of Kurdish, vowels are mandatory, making the script an abugida rather than an abjad as it is for most languages. Kashmiri and Uyghur, also, write all vowels.

Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, developed with the penetration of Islam. To a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb (for instance the position of the dots in the letters fāʼ and qāf). Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language. The term Ajami, which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign", has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages.

Languages currently written with the Arabic alphabet

Today Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and China are the main non-Arab states using the Arabic alphabet to write one or more official national languages, including Persian, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Uyghur.

The Arabic alphabet is currently used for:

Middle East and Central Asia

  • Kurdish in Northern Iraq, Northwest Iran, and Northeast Syria. (In Turkey, the Latin alphabet is used for Kurdish);
  • Official language Persian and regional languages including Azeri, Kurdish and Baluchi in Iran;
  • Official languages Dari (which differs to a degree from Persian) and Pashto and all regional languages including Uzbek in Afghanistan;
  • Tajik also differs only to a minor degree from Persian, and while in Tajikistan the usual Tajik alphabet is an extended Cyrillic alphabet, there is also some use of Arabic-alphabet Persian books from Iran; in the southwestern region of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China Arabic script is the official one (like for Uyghur in the rest of Xinjiang);
  • Garshuni (or Karshuni) originated in the seventh century AD, when Arabic was becoming the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent, but Arabic script was not yet fully developed and widely read. There is evidence that writing Arabic in Garshuni influenced the style of modern Arabic script. After this initial period, Garshuni writing has continued to the present day among some Syriac Christian communities in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Levant and Mesopotamia.
  • Uyghur changed to Roman script in 1969 and back to a simplified, fully voweled, Arabic script in 1983;
  • Kazakh is written in Arabic in Pakistan, Iran, China, and Afghanistan; and
  • Kyrgyz is written in Arabic by the 150,000 in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China.

East Asia

South Asia

Southeast Asia

Africa

Languages formerly written with the Arabic alphabet

Speakers of languages that were previously unwritten used Arabic script as a basis to design writing systems for their mother languages. This choice could be influenced by Arabic being their second language, the language of scripture of their faith, or the only written language they came in contact with. Additionally, since most education was once religious, choice of script was determined by the writer's religion; which meant that Muslims would use Arabic script to write whatever language they spoke. This led to Arabic script being the most widely used script during the Middle Ages. See also Languages of Muslim countries.

In the 20th century, the Arabic script was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet in the Balkans, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, while in the Soviet Union, after a brief period of Latinization,[7] use of the Cyrillic alphabet was mandated. Turkey changed to the Latin alphabet in 1928 as part of an internal Westernizing revolution. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the Turkic languages of the ex-USSR attempted to follow Turkey's lead and convert to a Turkish-style Latin alphabet. However, renewed use of the Arabic alphabet has occurred to a limited extent in Tajikistan, whose language's close resemblance to Persian allows direct use of publications from Iran.[8]

Most languages of the Iranian languages family continue to use Arabic script, as well as the Indo-Aryan languages of Pakistan and of Muslim populations in India, but the Bengali language of Bangladesh is written in the Bengali alphabet.

Africa

Europe

Central Asia and Russian Federation

Southeast Asia

South Asia

Middle East

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.

Unicode

Main article: Arabic Unicode

As of Unicode 5.0, the following ranges encode Arabic characters:

The basic Arabic range encodes the standard letters and diacritics, but does not encode contextual forms (U+0621–U+0652 being directly based on ISO 8859-6); and also includes the most common diacritics and Arabic-Indic digits. U+06D6 to U+06ED encode Qur'anic annotation signs such as "end of ayah" ۝ۖ and "start of rub el hizb" ۞. The Arabic Supplement range encodes letter variants mostly used for writing African (non-Arabic) languages. The Arabic Presentation Forms-A range encodes contextual forms and ligatures of letter variants needed for Persian, Urdu, Sindhi and Central Asian languages. The Arabic Presentation Forms-B range encodes spacing forms of Arabic diacritics, and more contextual letter forms.

Arabic[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+060x  ؀   ؁   ؂   ؃   ؄   ؅  ؆ ؇ ؈ ؉ ؊ ؋ ، ؍ ؎ ؏
U+061x ؐ ؑ ؒ ؓ ؔ ؕ ؖ ؗ ؘ ؙ ؚ ؛  ALM  ؝ ؞ ؟
U+062x ؠ ء آ أ ؤ إ ئ ا ب ة ت ث ج ح خ د
U+063x ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ػ ؼ ؽ ؾ ؿ
U+064x ـ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ى ي ً ٌ ٍ َ ُ
U+065x ِ ّ ْ ٓ ٔ ٕ ٖ ٗ ٘ ٙ ٚ ٛ ٜ ٝ ٞ ٟ
U+066x ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٪ ٫ ٬ ٭ ٮ ٯ
U+067x ٰ ٱ ٲ ٳ ٴ ٵ ٶ ٷ ٸ ٹ ٺ ٻ ټ ٽ پ ٿ
U+068x ڀ ځ ڂ ڃ ڄ څ چ ڇ ڈ ډ ڊ ڋ ڌ ڍ ڎ ڏ
U+069x ڐ ڑ ڒ ړ ڔ ڕ ږ ڗ ژ ڙ ښ ڛ ڜ ڝ ڞ ڟ
U+06Ax ڠ ڡ ڢ ڣ ڤ ڥ ڦ ڧ ڨ ک ڪ ګ ڬ ڭ ڮ گ
U+06Bx ڰ ڱ ڲ ڳ ڴ ڵ ڶ ڷ ڸ ڹ ں ڻ ڼ ڽ ھ ڿ
U+06Cx ۀ ہ ۂ ۃ ۄ ۅ ۆ ۇ ۈ ۉ ۊ ۋ ی ۍ ێ ۏ
U+06Dx ې ۑ ے ۓ ۔ ە ۖ ۗ ۘ ۙ ۚ ۛ ۜ  ۝  ۞ ۟
U+06Ex ۠ ۡ ۢ ۣ ۤ ۥ ۦ ۧ ۨ ۩ ۪ ۫ ۬ ۭ ۮ ۯ
U+06Fx ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹ ۺ ۻ ۼ ۽ ۾ ۿ
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Unicode code point U+0673 is deprecated as of Unicode version 6.0

See also the notes of the section on modified letters.

Keyboards

Arabic keyboard layout

Keyboards designed for different nations have different layouts so that proficiency in one style of keyboard such as Iraq's does not transfer to proficiency in another keyboard such as Saudi Arabia's. Differences can include the location of non-alphabetic characters such as '

All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g., for the URL in a web browser. Thus, each Arabic keyboard has both Arabic and Roman characters marked on the keys. Usually the Roman characters of an Arabic keyboard conform to the QWERTY layout, but in North Africa, where French is the most common language typed using the Roman characters, the Arabic keyboards are AZERTY.

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 range Arabic presentation forms A (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) contain ligatures while the range Arabic presentation forms B (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contains the positional variants. 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.[10][11]

There are competing online tools, e.g. Yamli editor, allowing to enter Arabic letters without having Arabic support installed on a PC and without the knowledge of the layout of the Arabic keyboard. [12]

Handwriting recognition

The first software program of its kind in the world that identifies Arabic handwriting in real time has been developed by researchers at Ben-Gurion University.

The prototype enables the user to write Arabic words by hand on an electronic screen, which then analyzes the text and translates it into printed Arabic letters in a thousandth of a second. The error rate is less than three percent, according to Dr. Jihad El-Sana, from BGU's department of computer sciences, who developed the system along with master's degree student Fadi Biadsy.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Arabic Alphabet". Enclopaedia Britannica online. Retrieved 2007-11-23.
  2. ^ Rogers, Henry (2005). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Blackwell Publishing. p. 135.
  3. ^ Unicode problems; Arabic on Linux
  4. ^ a b http://www1.ccls.columbia.edu/~cadim/ArabicDialectTutorialAMTA2006.pdf
  5. ^ Arabic and the Art of Printing — A Special Section, by Paul Lunde
  6. ^ A Bequest Unearthed, Phoenicia, Encyclopedia Phoeniciana
  7. ^ Alphabet Transitions — The Latin Script: A New Chronology — Symbol of a New Azerbaijan, by Tamam Bayatly
  8. ^ Tajik Language: Farsi or Not Farsi? by Sukhail Siddikzoda, reporter, Tajikistan.
  9. ^ Chechen Writing
  10. ^ For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at The Unicode website
  11. ^ See also MULTILINGUAL COMPUTING WITH ARABIC AND ARABIC TRANSLITERATION Arabicizing Windows Applications to Read and Write Arabic & Solutions for the Transliteration Quagmire Faced by Arabic-Script Languages and A PowerPoint Tutorial (with screen shots and an English voice-over) on how to add Arabic to the Windows Operating System.
  12. ^ Yamli in the News
  13. ^ Israel 21c

Online Arabic keyboards

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.

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