Arabic alphabet
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| Arabic abjad | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type: | Abjad | |
| Languages: | Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Kurdish, Pashto, and others | |
| Time period: | 400 CE to the present | |
| Parent writing systems: | Proto-Canaanite Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean or Syriac Arabic abjad | |
| Unicode range: | U+0600 to U+06FF | |
| ISO 15924 code: | Arab | |
| Image:Test arabe6.png | ||
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
| 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 || هـ || ﻭ || ﻱ | ||||||
| History · Transliteration Diacritics · hamza ء Numerals · Numeration | ||||||
| History of the Alphabet |
|---|
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Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC
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| Meroitic 3rd c. BC |
| Complete genealogy |
The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing Arabic and various other languages, together with various closely related scripts that typically differ in the presence or absence of a few letters.
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 — even languages belonging to language families other than Semitic. Examples of non-Semitic languages written with the Arabic alphabet include Persian, Urdu, Malay and Azerbaijani (in Iran). 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, Thuluth, Kufic and others (see Arabic calligraphy), just like different handwriting styles and typefaces for the Roman alphabet. These styles can vary widely.
Contents
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[edit] Structure of the Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet, written from right to left, 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 upper and lower case nor between written and printed letters. 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 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 vocalization marks are used – including a sign for vowel omission (sukūn) and one for gemination/doubling/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 the Arabic alphabic. The original Abjadī أبجدي order derives from the order of Phoenician alphabet, and is therefore similar to the order of other Phoenician-derived alphabets, such as the Latin alphabet. The standard order used today, and shown in the table, is the Hejā'ī هجائي order, where similarly-shaped letters are grouped together.
[edit] Abjadī 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 alphabetic order) — leaving six remaining Arabic letters at the end.
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 |
| ʼ | b | ǧ | d | h | w | z | ḥ | ṭ | y | k | l | m | n | s | ʻ | f | ṣ | q | r | š | t | ṯ | ḫ | ḏ | ḍ | ẓ | ġ |
This is commonly vocalized as follows:
- ʼabǧad hawwaz ḥuṭṭī kalaman saʻfaṣ qarašat ṯaḫaḏ ḍaẓaġ.
Another vocalization is:
- ʼabuǧadin hawazin ḥuṭiya kalman saʻfaṣ qurišat ṯaḫuḏ ḍaẓuġ
Another Abjad sequence, 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 |
| ʼ | b | ǧ | d | h | w | z | ḥ | ṭ | y | k | l | m | n | ṣ | ʻ | f | ḍ | q | r | s | t | ṯ | ḫ | ḏ | ẓ | ġ | š |
which can be vocalized as:
- ʼabuǧadin hawazin ḥuṭiya kalman ṣaʻfaḍ qurisat ṯaḫuḏ ẓaġuš
See also: Abjad numerals.
[edit] 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. 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 the fusha language as 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).
| General Unicode | Contextual forms | Name | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial | ||||
| 0627 ا | FE8D ﺍ | FE8E ﺎ | — | ʼalif | ʾ / ā | various, including [æː] | |
| 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] / [ʔˁ] |
| 063A غ | FECD ﻍ | FECE ﻎ | FED0 ﻐ | FECF ﻏ | ġayn | ġ (also gh) | [ɣ] / [ʁ] |
| 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] |
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.
[edit] Modified letters
The following are not actual letters, but rather different orthographical shapes for letters.
| General Unicode | Conditional forms | Name | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial | ||||
| 0622 آ | FE81 ﺁ | FE82 ﺂ | — | ʼalif madda | ʼā | [ʔæː] | |
| 0629 ة | FE93 ﺓ | FE94 ﺔ | — | tāʼ marbūṭa | h or t / h / ẗ | [ɛ̈], [ɛ̈t] | |
| 0649 ى | FEEF ﻯ | FEF0 ﻰ | — | ʼalif maqṣūra ("broken alif") (Arabic) (see note below) | ā / ỳ | [ɛ̈] | |
| 06CC ی | FBFC ﯼ | FBFD ﯽ | FBFF ﯿ | FBFE ﯾ | yeh (Persian, Urdu) (see note below) | ī / ỳ | [iː] |
- Notes
The ʼalif maqṣūra ("broken alif") commonly using Unicode 0x0649 (ى) in Arabic, is sometimes replaced in Persian or Urdu, with Unicode 0x06CC (ی), called "Persian 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 Persian Yeh gains two dots below (ﻳ ﻴ) while the ʼalif maqṣūra has neither an initial nor a medial form.
[edit] Ligatures
The only compulsory ligature is lām + ʼalif. All other ligatures (yāʼ+mīm, etc.) are optional.
- (isolated) lām + ʼalif (lā [læː]) :
- ﻻ
- (final) lām + ʼalif (lā [læː]) :
- ﻼ
Unicode has a special glyph for the ligature llāh, the post-vocalic form of Allāh (“God”).
- U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM:
- ﷲ
Combined with an initial ʼalif, this becomes full allāh :
- اﷲ
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), (vowel reversed) hāʼ :
- لله
- ʼalif, lām, (geminated) lām (with implied short-a vowel), (vowel reversed) hāʼ :
- الله
[edit] 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 dotless yāʼ or yāʼ hamza).
[edit] Diacritics
[edit] Shadda
šadda ( ّ◌ ) marks the gemination (doubling) of a consonant; an kasra ( ِ◌ ) vowel sign (when present) moves to between the geminated (doubled) consonant and šadda.
The w-shaped šadda glyph above the second consonant that it geminates, is in fact the beginning of a small šīn letter.
| General Unicode | Name is | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0651 ّ◌ | šadda | (consonant doubled) | [◌◌] |
[edit] Sukūn and ʼalif above
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 ( ْ ) 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. The sukūn is also used for transliterating words to Arabic script. The Persian word ماسك (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 ك .
Sukūn allows us to know 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, it can only be interpreted as the form /qVlb/; we write this قلْْب. This is one stage from full vocalization, where the a vowel would also be indicated by a fatḥa: قَلْْب,
The Qur’an is traditionally written in full vocalization. Outside of the Qur’an, putting a sukūn above a yāʼ which indicates [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].
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 you were to write sukūns above the wāw, yāʼ and ʼalif, you’d get موْسيْقىْ, which would be read as *mawsaykāy (note however that the final ʼalif maqṣūra is an ʼalif and never takes sukūn). The word, entirely vocalised, would be written مُوْسِيْقَى in the Qur’an (if it happened to appear there!), 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 i`rab 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 it was still pronounced with full i`rab, i.e. ʼaḥmadu zawǧun šarrun with the complete desinences.
| General Unicode | Name | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0652 ْ◌ | sukūn | (no vowel with this consonant letter or diphthong with this long vowel letter) | [] / [a͡-] |
| 0670 ٰ◌ | ʼalif above | (no vowel with next final consonant letter or diphthong with next final long vowel letter) | [] / [a͡-] |
[edit] Vowels
Arabic short vowels are generally not written, except in sacred texts (such as the Qurʼan, where they must be written) and sometimes in didactics, which are known as vocalised texts.
Before the introduction of printing, occasionally short vowels would be marked where the word would otherwise be ambiguous and couldn't be resolved simply from context, or simply wherever they looked nice. This custom has now all but disappeared, to the point that many Arabs believe (wrongly) that the use of vowel marks is forbidden outside of the Quran. Most software (such as most text editors and all mobile phones) doesn't allow the writer to add short vowels, and displays them illegibly if at all.
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 ʻAliyy — or a word like ʼalif.)
Note that when the acute-shaped fatḥa which denotes a short a is added on top of a geminated consonant (i.e. after a šadda), the fatha accent takes a vertical shape to make the composition more distinguishable from the tanwiin vowel sign fatḥatan (which marks a /-an/ ending with indeterminate nunation in fully vocalized texts, see below). For an example, see the encoded ligature for ʻAllah above.
| Short vowels (fully vocalized text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 064E َ◌ | fatḥa | a | [ɛ̈] |
| 064F ُ◌ | ḍamma | u | [ʊ] |
| 0650 ِ◌ | kasra | i | [ɪ] |
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 the table below, vowels will be placed above or below a dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or shadda. Please note, that most consonants (except 6 of them) do join to the left with ʼalif, wāw and yāʼ written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the yāʼ letter in the last row may connect to the letter on its left, and then will use a medial or initial form. 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. Use the table of primary letters to look at their actual glyph and joining types.
| Long vowels (fully vocalized text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 064E 0627 َا◌ | fatḥa ʼalif | ā | [æː] |
| 064E 0649 َى◌ | fatḥa ʼalif maqṣūra (Arabic) | ā / aỳ | [ɛ̈] |
| 064E 06CC َی◌ | fatḥa yeh (Persian, Urdu) | ā / aỳ | [ɛ̈] |
| 064F 0648 ُو◌ | ḍamma wāw | ū / uw | [uː] |
| 0650 064A ِي◌ | kasra yāʼ | ī / iy | [iː] |
In an un-vocalised 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, yāʼ. Long vowels written in the middle of a word of un-vocalized text are treated like consonants taking 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 (un-vocalized text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0627 ا | (implied fatḥa) ʼalif | ā | [æː] |
| 0649 ى | (implied fatḥa) ʼalif maqṣūra (Arabic) | ā / aỳ | [ɛ̈] |
| 06CC ی | (implied fatḥa) yeh (Persian, Urdu) | ā / aỳ | [ɛ̈] |
| 0648 و | (implied ḍamma) wāw | ū / uw | [uː] |
| 064A ي | (implied kasra) yāʼ | ī / iy | [iː] |
| tanwiin letters: | |
| ـًـٍـٌ | used to write the grammatical endings /-an/, /-in/, and /-un/ respectively for desinences with nunation in indefinite state (see I`rab) in Arabic. ًـً is most commonly written in combination with ا alif (ـًا) or taa' marbūta. |
[edit] Numerals
There are two kinds of numerals used in Arabic writing; standard numerals and "East Arab" numerals, used in Iran, Pakistan and India. In Arabic, these numbers are referred to as "Indian numbers" (أرقام هندية arqām hindiyyah). 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. 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 numerals | Standard numerals | East Arab numerals |
|---|---|---|
| 0 |
٠ |
۰ |
| 1 |
١ |
۱ |
| 2¹ |
٢ |
۲ |
| 3 |
٣ |
۳ |
| 4 |
٤ |
۴ |
| 5 |
٥ |
۵ |
| 6 |
٦ |
۶ |
| 7 |
٧ |
۷ |
| 8 |
٨ |
۸ |
| 9 |
٩ |
۹ |
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.
[edit] History
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 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 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.
[edit] Arabic alphabets of other languages
| Worldwide use of the Arabic alphabet | |
|---|---|
| → Countries where the Arabic script is the only official orthography | |
| → Countries where the Arabic script is used alongside other orthographies. | |
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 [p] phoneme, 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.
Use of 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 dots in the fa and qaf letters). 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 "stranger" 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, Azerbaijan, and Nigeria are the main non-Arab states using the Arabic alphabet to write one or more official national languages, including Farsi, Dari, Pashto, Azeri, Urdu, Sindhi, and Hausa.
The Arabic alphabet is currently used for:
[edit] Middle East and Central Asia
- 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 (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
- 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;
[edit] South Asia
- Official language Urdu and regional languages including Punjabi (where the script is known as Shahmukhi), Sindhi, Kashmiri, and Balochi in Pakistan;
- Urdu and Kashmiri in India. Urdu is one of several official languages in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh; see List of national languages of India. Kashmiri also uses Sharada script;
- The Thaana script used to write the Dhivehi language in the Maldives has vowels derived from the vowel diacritics of the Arabic script. Some of the consonant are also borrowed from Arabic letters or numerals.
[edit] Southeast Asia
- Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi is co-official in Brunei, and used for religious purposes in Malaysia, Indonesia, Southern Thailand, Singapore, and predominantly Muslim areas of the Philippines.
[edit] Africa
- Bedawi or Beja, mainly in northeastern Sudan
- 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 (known as Ajami); (another non-Latin alphabet used is N'Ko)
- Fula, especially the Pular of Guinea(known as Ajami);
- 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.
[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 lead to Arabic script being the most widely used script during the middle ages. See also Languages of Muslim countries.
In the 20th century, 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, [1] 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. [2]
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
- Afrikaans (as it was first written among the "Cape Malays");
- Berber in North Africa, particularly Tachelhit in Morocco (still being considered, along with Tifinagh and Latin for Tamazight);
- Harari, by the Harari people of the Harari Region in Ethiopia. Now uses the Ge'ez alphabet.
- For the West African languages mentioned above - Hausa, Fula, Mandinka, and Wolof - the Latin alphabet has officially replaced Arabic transcriptions for use in literacy and education;
- Nubian;
- Swahili (has used the Latin alphabet since the 19th century);
- Somali (has used the Latin alphabet since 1972);
- Songhay in West Africa, particularly in Timbuktu;
- Yoruba in West Africa (this was probably limited, but still notable)
- Malagasy in Madagascar (script known as Sorabe)
[edit] Europe
- Albanian;
- Bosnian (only for literary purposes; presently written in the Latin alphabet);
- Polish (among ethnic Tatars);
- Belarusian (among ethnic Tatars; see Belarusian Arabic alphabet);
- Mozarabic, when the Moors ruled Spain (and later Aragonese, Portuguese, and Spanish proper; see aljamiado);
[edit] Central Asia and Russian Federation
- Azeri in Azerbaijan (now written in the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet scripts in Azerbaijan);
- Bashkir (for some years: from October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
- Chaghatai across Central Asia;
- Chechen (for some years: from October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
- Kazakh in Kazakhstan (until 1930-s, now uses Cyrillic script);
- Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan (until 1930-s, now uses Cyrillic script);
- Tatar (iske imlâ) before 1928 (changed to Latin), reformed in 1880's, 1918 (deletion of some letters);
- Chinese and Dungan, among the Hui people (script known as Xiao'erjing);
- 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.
[edit] Southeast Asia
- Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia; Maguindanaon and Tausug in the Philippines.
[edit] South Asia
- Arwi, a Tamil dialect that was used extensively by the Muslim minority of Tamil Nadu state of India and Sri Lanka.
- Sanskrit has also been written in Arabic script,[citation needed] though it is more well known as using Devanagari - the script also currently used for writing several Indo-Aryan languages.
[edit] Middle East
- 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; (Ottoman Turkish alphabet)
[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
As of Unicode 4.1, the following ranges encode Arabic characters:
- Arabic (0600–06FF)
- Arabic Supplement (0750–077F)
- Arabic Presentation Forms-A (FB50–FDFF)
- Arabic Presentation Forms-B (FE70–FEFF)
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.
[edit] Arabic keyboard
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. For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at http://www.unicode.org/
[edit] See also
- Arabic calligraphy - considered an art form in its own right
- Hindu-Arabic numerals
- Romanization of Arabic
- Arabic Chat Alphabet
- ArabTeX - provides Arabic support for TeX and LaTeX
- Harakat
- Jawi - an adapted Arabic alphabet for the Malay language
- South Arabian alphabet
[edit] External links
- Arabic Learning Media Website
- Declan Software's Arabic alphabet learning software with audio and animations
- online Arabic Keyboard
- clavier arabe en ligne LEXILOGOS(French)
- Keyboard for Arabic characters and Unicode(Japanese)
- Arabic Writing and Reading never been Easier with MP3
- 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
- Learn the Arabic Script Online
- Muftah-Alhuruf.com: Write and send Arabic emails without having an Arabic keyboard or operating system.
- Madinaharabic.com: Free Arabic Reading and Language Course.
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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