Arabic alphabet

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Arabic abjad

Type

Abjad

Spoken languages

Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Baloch, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Malay (limited usage) and others.

Time period

400 CE to the present

Parent systems

Proto-Canaanite
 → Phoenician
  → Aramaic
   → Nabataean or Syriac
    → Arabic abjad

Unicode range

U+0600 to U+06FF
U+0750 to U+077F
U+FB50 to U+FDFF
U+FE70 to U+FEFF

ISO 15924

Arab (#160)

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
Arabic alphabet
ﺍ    ﺏ    ﺕ    ﺙ    ﺝ    ﺡ
ﺥ    ﺩ    ﺫ    ﺭ    ﺯ     س
ﺵ    ﺹ    ﺽ    ﻁ    ﻅ    ﻉ
ﻍ    ﻑ    ﻕ    ﻙ    ﻝ
ﻡ    ﻥ    ه‍    ﻭ    ﻱ
History · Transliteration
Diacritics · Hamza ء
Numerals · Numeration
v • d • e

The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing languages such as Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Urdu, and others. Arabic is written from right to left, and is written in a cursive style of script. There are 28 basic letters in the Arabic alphabet. Just as different handwriting styles and typefaces exist in the Roman alphabet, there are Arabic scripts in a number of different Arabic calligraphy styles, including nasḫ, nastaʿlīq, šahmuḫi, ruqʼah, thuluth, kufic, and hejazi. After the Latin alphabet, the Arabic writing system is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world.[1]

The alphabet was first used to write texts in Arabic — most importantly, 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, Balti, Brahui, Panjabi (in Pakistan), Kashmiri, Sindhi (in Pakistan), Uyghur (in China), Kazakh (in China), Kyrgyz (in China), Azerbaijani (in Iran), Kurdish (in Iraq and Iran) and was used in the Ottoman Empire in the past, too. In order to accommodate the needs of these other languages, new letters and other symbols were added to the original alphabet. (See Use of the Arabic script for languages other than Arabic below.)

Contents

[edit] Structure

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

Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters directly connected to the letter that immediately follows. Each individual letter can have up to four distinct forms, based on its position within in the word. These forms are:

  • 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 variety. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), including lām-ʼalif.[2] Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots above or below their central part, called iʼjam. The dots are an integral part of the letter, not diacritics, because they distinguish completely different letters (and sounds). For example, the Arabic letters transliterated as b and t have the same basic shape, but b has one dot below, ب‎, and t has two dots above, ت‎.

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).

[edit] Sorting

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 the next section). The hijāʼī order is used wherever lists of names and words are sorted, as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries.

Modern software packages, such as word processors, lack the capability of sorting or generating numbered lists according to the Abjadi order.

[edit] Letters and letter variants

The following table provides all of the Unicode characters for Arabic, and none of the supplementary letters used for other languages. 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 standard pronunciation of literary Arabic, the Dachsprache which is taught in universities. Actual pronunciation between the varieties of Arabic may vary widely. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the article Arabic phonology.

[edit] Primary letters

The Arabic script is cursive, and 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.

For compatibility with previous standards, Unicode can encode all these forms separately; however, these forms can be inferred from their joining context, using the same encoding. The table below 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). There are 29 primary letters.

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.

General
Unicode		 Contextual forms Name Translit. Phonemic Value (IPA)
Isolated Final Medial Initial
0627
ا‎		 FE8D
ﺍ‎		 FE8E
ﺎ‎		 — ʼalif ʾ / ā various, including /aː/
0628
ب‎		 FE8F
ﺏ‎		 FE90
ﺐ‎		 FE92
ﺒ‎		 FE91
ﺑ‎		 bāʼ b /b/
062A
ت‎		 FE95
ﺕ‎		 FE96
ﺖ‎		 FE98
ﺘ‎		 FE97
ﺗ‎		 tāʼ t /t/
062B
ث‎		 FE99
ﺙ‎		 FE9A
ﺚ‎		 FE9C
ﺜ‎		 FE9B
ﺛ‎		 ṯāʼ ṯ /θ/
062C
ج‎		 FE9D
ﺝ‎		 FE9E
ﺞ‎		 FEA0
ﺠ‎		 FE9F
ﺟ‎		 ǧīm ǧ (also j, g) [ʤ] / [ʒ] / [ɡ]
062D
ح‎		 FEA1
ﺡ‎		 FEA2
ﺢ‎		 FEA4
ﺤ‎		 FEA3
ﺣ‎		 ḥāʼ ḥ /ħ/
062E
خ‎		 FEA5
ﺥ‎		 FEA6
ﺦ‎		 FEA8
ﺨ‎		 FEA7
ﺧ‎		 ḫāʼ ḫ (also kh, x) /x/
062F
د‎		 FEA9
ﺩ‎		 FEAA
ﺪ‎		 — dāl d /d/
0630
ذ‎		 FEAB
ﺫ‎		 FEAC
ﺬ‎		 — ḏāl ḏ (also dh, ð) /ð/
0631
ر‎		 FEAD
ﺭ‎		 FEAE
ﺮ‎		 — rāʼ r /r/
0632
ز‎		 FEAF
ﺯ‎		 FEB0
ﺰ‎		 — zāī z /z/
0633
س‎		 FEB1
ﺱ‎		 FEB2
ﺲ‎		 FEB4
ﺴ‎		 FEB3
ﺳ‎		 sīn s /s/
0634
ش‎		 FEB5
ﺵ‎		 FEB6
ﺶ‎		 FEB8
ﺸ‎		 FEB7
ﺷ‎		 šīn š (also sh) /ʃ/
0635
ص‎		 FEB9
ﺹ‎		 FEBA
ﺺ‎		 FEBC
ﺼ‎		 FEBB
ﺻ‎		 ṣād ṣ /sˁ/
0636
ض‎		 FEBD
ﺽ‎		 FEBE
ﺾ‎		 FEC0
ﻀ‎		 FEBF
ﺿ‎		 ḍād ḍ /dˁ/
0637
ط‎		 FEC1
ﻁ‎		 FEC2
ﻂ‎		 FEC4
ﻄ‎		 FEC3
ﻃ‎		 ṭāʼ ṭ /tˁ/
0638
ظ‎		 FEC5
ﻅ‎		 FEC6
ﻆ‎		 FEC8
ﻈ‎		 FEC7
ﻇ‎		 ẓāʼ ẓ /ðˁ/ / /zˁ/
0639
ع‎		 FEC9
ﻉ‎		 FECA
ﻊ‎		 FECC
ﻌ‎		 FECB
ﻋ‎		 ʿayn ʿ /ʕ/
063A
غ‎		 FECD
ﻍ‎		 FECE
ﻎ‎		 FED0
ﻐ‎		 FECF
ﻏ‎		 ġayn ġ (also gh) /ɣ/
0641
ف‎		 FED1
ﻑ‎		 FED2
ﻒ‎		 FED4
ﻔ‎		 FED3
ﻓ‎		 fāʼ f /f/
0642
ق‎		 FED5
ﻕ‎		 FED6
ﻖ‎		 FED8
ﻘ‎		 FED7
ﻗ‎		 qāf q /q/
0643
ك‎		 FED9
ﻙ‎		 FEDA
ﻚ‎		 FEDC
ﻜ‎		 FEDB
ﻛ‎		 kāf k /k/
0644
ل‎		 FEDD
ﻝ‎		 FEDE
ﻞ‎		 FEE0
ﻠ‎		 FEDF
ﻟ‎		 lām l /l/, ([lˁ] in Allah only)
0645
م‎		 FEE1
ﻡ‎		 FEE2
ﻢ‎		 FEE4
ﻤ‎		 FEE3
ﻣ‎		 mīm m /m/
0646
ن‎		 FEE5
ﻥ‎		 FEE6
ﻦ‎		 FEE8
ﻨ‎		 FEE7
ﻧ‎		 nūn n /n/
0647
ه‎		 FEE9
ﻩ‎		 FEEA
ﻪ‎		 FEEC
ﻬ‎		 FEEB
ﻫ‎		 hāʼ h /h/
0648
و‎		 FEED
ﻭ‎		 FEEE
ﻮ‎		 — wāw w / ū /w/ / /uː/
064A
ي‎		 FEF1
ﻱ‎		 FEF2
ﻲ‎		 FEF4
ﻴ‎		 FEF3
ﻳ‎		 yāʼ y / ī /j/ / /iː/
Notes
  • Initially, the letter ʼalif indicated the glottal stop [ʔ], as in Phoenician. Today it is used, together 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, so ʼalif now serves either as a long vowel or as graphic support for certain diacritics (madda and hamza).
  • The Arabic alphabet now uses ﺀ‎, the hamza, to denote the glottal stop, which can appear anywhere in a word. This letter, however, does not function like the others: it can be written alone or with a carrier, in which case it becomes a diacritic:
    • alone: ء‎ ;
    • with a carrier: إ, أ‎ (above and under a ʼalif), ؤ‎ (above a wāw), ئ‎ (above a dotless yāʼ or yāʼ 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, yāʼ, or ʼalif, and in that case the carrier behaves like an ordinary wāw, yāʼ, or ʼalif.

[edit] 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
آ‎		 FE81
ﺁ‎		 FE82
ﺂ‎		 — ʼalif madda ʼā /ʔaː/
0629
ة‎		 FE93
ﺓ‎		 FE94
ﺔ‎		 — ًtāʼ marbūṭa‎ h or t / h / ẗ /a/, /at/
0649
ى‎		 FEEF
ﻯ‎		 FEF0
ﻰ‎		 FBE9
ﯩ‎		 FBE8
ﯨ‎		 ʼalif maqṣūra ("broken alif") (Arabic)
(see note below)		 ā / ỳ /a/
06CC
ی‎		 FBFC
ﯼ‎		 FBFD
ﯽ‎		 FBFF
ﯿ‎		 FBFE
ﯾ‎		 yeh (Persian, Urdu)
(see note below)		 ī / ỳ /iː/

The broken alif (ʼalif maqṣūra), commonly encoded as Unicode 0x0649 (ى‎) 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 ʼalif maqṣūra has neither an initial nor a medial form in very old unicode, though from Unicode 3.0 and later, an alif maqsura with all positions is provided. Although this is the common situation, the problem is not so simple, as computers recognize the "three yeh's" 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]

[edit] Ligatures

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

  • (isolated) lām + ʼalif (lā /laː/):
ﻻ‎
  • (final) lām + ʼalif (lā /laː/):
ﻼ‎

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

ﷲ‎

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 :
لله‎
  • ʼalif, lām, (geminated) lām (with implied short a vowel, reversed) hāʼ :
الله‎

[edit] Extra letters

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

[edit] Sometimes used in Arabic

  • ﭪ - Ve, sometimes used to represent the letter V when transliterating foreign words in Arabic; also used as Pa in the Jawi script
  • ﭖ - Pe, represents the letter 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
  • ﭺ - Che, used to represent the "ch" phoneme; sometimes used when transliterating foreign words in Arabic, although Arabic usually substitutes other letters in the transliteration of foreign terms; also used in several other languages; Ca in the Jawi script

[edit] Only used in non-Arabic languages

  • ݐ - used to represent the equivalent of the Latin letter the Latin letter Ƴ in some African languages such as Fulfulde; not used in Arabic
  • ڳ - represents a variety of G in Sindhi
  • ڀ - represents an aspirated "b" ("bh") in Sindhi and Urdu
  • 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

[edit] Writing vowels

Further information: Harakat

[edit] Short vowels

Short vowels are generally not written in Arabic, except in sacred texts (such as the Qurʼan, where they must be written) and sometimes in teaching material. These are known as vocalized texts.

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; contrary to appearances, there is a consonant at the start of a name like Ali — in Arabic ʻAliyy — or of a word like ʼalif.

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

[edit] Long vowels

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

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 ʼalif, wāw and yāʼ written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the letter yāʼ 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
َا‎◌		 fatḥa ʼalif ā /aː/
064E 0649
َى‎◌		 fatḥa ʼalif maqṣūra (Arabic) ā / aỳ /a/
064E 06CC
َی‎◌		 fatḥa yeh (Persian, Urdu) ā / aỳ /a/
064F 0648
ُو‎◌		 ḍamma wāw ū / uw /uː/
0650 064A
ِي‎◌		 kasra yāʼ ī / iy /iː/

In unvocalized text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the consonant in question: ʼalif, ʼalif maqṣūra (or yeh), wāw, or yāʼ. 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.

Long vowels
(unvocalised text)		 Name Trans. Value
0627
ا‎		 (implied fatḥa) ʼalif ā /aː/
0649
ى‎		 (implied fatḥa) ʼalif maqṣūra (Arabic) ā / aỳ /a/
06CC
ی‎		 (implied fatḥa) yeh (Persian, Urdu) ā / aỳ /a/
0648
و‎		 (implied ḍamma) wāw ū / uw /uː/
064A
ي‎		 (implied kasra) yāʼ ī / iy /iː/

[edit] Diphthongs

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

Diphthongs
(fully vocalised text)		 Name Trans. Value
064E 064A
َي‎◌		 fatḥa yāʼ ay /aj/
064E 0648
َو‎◌		 fatḥa wāw aw /aw/

[edit] Sukūn and alif above

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 ( ْ‎ ) 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 (قلْبْ‎), 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: قَلْبْ‎.

The Qur’an is traditionally written in full vocalization. Outside of the Qur’an, putting a sukūn above a yāʼ — which represents [i:] —, or above a wāw — which stands for [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 (موسيقى‎ 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 موْسيْقىْ‎, 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 مُوْسِيْقَى‎ in the Qur’an, or مُوسِيقَى‎ 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.)

A sukūn is not 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.

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

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

[edit] Other diacritics

[edit] Gemination

Further information: Shadda

The šadda, or shadda ( ّ‎ ّ ), marks the gemination (doubling) of a consonant. A kasra ( ِ‎ ّ ) 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 is Translit.
0651
ّ‎ ّ		 šadda (consonant doubled)

[edit] Nunation

Further information: Nunation, ʼIʻrāb
Tanwīn letters:
ـًـٍـٌ‎ used to write the grammatical endings -an, -in and -un, respectively, for desinences with nunation in indefinite state in Arabic. The sign ًـً‎ is most commonly written in combination with ا‎ ʼalif ‎ (ـًا‎) or ًtāʼ marbūṭa‎.

[edit] 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" (أرقام هندية‎ arqām hindiyyah). 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 Middle-Eastern
(Standard)		 Eastern/Indian
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 2 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. أ‎ 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.

[edit] 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. 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 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 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.

Later still, vowel marks and the hamza were introduced, beginning some time in the latter half of the seventh century, preceedign 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.

[edit] Use of the Arabic script for languages other than Arabic

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

The Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages other than Arabic, including Persian, Kurdish, Malay and Urdu. 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, also, writes 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.

[edit] Current uses of the alphabet for languages other than Arabic

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:

[edit] 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 only to a minor 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.

[edit] East Asia

[edit] South Asia

[edit] Southeast Asia

[edit] Africa

[edit] Former uses of the alphabet for languages other than Arabic

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,[4] 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.[5]

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.

[edit] Africa

[edit] Europe

[edit] Central Asia and Russian Federation

[edit] Southeast Asia

[edit] South Asia

[edit] Middle East

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

See also the notes of the section on modified letters.

[edit] Arabic keyboard

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 '<' as well as the location of vowel marks and possibly others.

All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g. for 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.[7][8]

[edit] 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[citation needed].

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.[9]

[edit] 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. [10][11]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Arabic Alphabet. Enclopaedia Britannica online. Retrieved on 2007-11-23.
  2. ^ Rogers, Henry (2005). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Blackwell Publishing, p. 135. 
  3. ^ Unicode problems; Arabic on Linux
  4. ^ Alphabet Transitions — The Latin Script: A New Chronology — Symbol of a New Azerbaijan, by Tamam Bayatly
  5. ^ Tajik Language: Farsi or Not Farsi? by Sukhail Siddikzoda, reporter, Tajikistan.
  6. ^ Chechen Writing
  7. ^ For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at The Unicode website
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ Israel 21c
  10. ^ Arabic and the Art of Printing — A Special Section, by Paul Lunde
  11. ^ A Bequest Unearthed, Phoenicia, Encyclopedia Phoeniciana

[edit] External links

[edit] 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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Arabic • العربية
Arabic
Alphabet
Letters
Eras
Major Varieties
Academic
Calligraphy and scripts
Linguistics

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