Citizendia

Arabic abjad
TypeAbjad
Spoken languagesArabic, Persian, Kurdish, Baloch, Urdu, Kurdish, Pashto, Sindhi, Malay (limited usage) and others. An Abjad is a type of Writing system in which each symbol stands for a Consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate Vowel. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language The Kurdish language (Kurdish Kurdî or کوردی is a term used for the language spoken by Kurds. Balochi (بلوچی also Baluchi, Baloci or Baluci) is a Northwestern Iranian language. Urdu ( ur '''{{Nastaliq اردو}}''' trans Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language Urdu is a standardised The Kurdish language (Kurdish Kurdî or کوردی is a term used for the language spoken by Kurds. Pashto ( Naskh: پښتو‎ pəʂ'to also rendered as Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, Pushtu, also known as Sindhi ( Arabic script: سنڌي Devanagari script: सिन्धी Sindhī) is the language of the Sindh region of South Asia The Malay language ( ISO 639-1 code MS is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in the
Time period400 CE to the present
Parent systemsProto-Canaanite
 → Phoenician
  → Aramaic
   → Nabataean or Syriac
    → Arabic abjad
Unicode rangeU+0600 to U+06FF

U+0750 to U+077F
U+FB50 to U+FDFF
U+FE70 to U+FEFF

ISO 15924Arab (#160)
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Events By Place Western Roman Empire Italy is first invaded by Alaric (probable date The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is a consonantal alphabet of twenty-two acrophonic glyphs found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC The Aramaic alphabet is an Abjad, a Consonantal Alphabet, used for writing Aramaic. The Syriac alphabet is a Writing system used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. Unicode ’s ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of Writing systems (scripts In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's
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
History of the alphabet

Middle Bronze Age 19 c. is the reconstructed name of the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician Bet, Beth, or Vet is the second letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Taw or Tav is the twenty-second and last letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tav Gimmel redirects here for the musical group see Gimmel (music group. or H̱et (also spelled Khet, Kheth, Chet, Cheth, Het, or Heth) is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter Dalet ( also spelled Daleth or Daled) is the fourth letter of many Semitic alphabets including Phoenician, Aramaic (ar ﺫ is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being,,,,) for the town in Nepal see Resh Nepal Resh is the twentieth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician Zayin (also spelled Zain or Zayn) is the seventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician 𐤆 Aramaic, Hebrew Shin (also spelled Šin or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Shin (also spelled Šin or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tsade (also spelled Ṣādē or Tzadi or Sadhe or Tzaddik) is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician (ar ﺽ is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being,,,,) (also Teth, Tet) is the ninth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tet, For the village in Azerbaijan see Əyin. or is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ghain, ghayn, or (ar ﻍ is one of the six letters in the Arabic alphabet not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others Pe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Pei, Persian alphabet Pe pr Qoph or Qop (In modern Hebrew Kuf, Arabic Qāf) is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic Kaph (also spelled Kap or Kaf) is the eleventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Lamed or Lamedh is the twelfth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Lamed and Arabic Mem (also spelled Meem or Mim) is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Nun is the fourteenth letter of many Semitic Abjads including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet ar ن (in He is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac ܗ and Arabic Waw ( also spelled vav or vau) (In Hebrew Vav) is the sixth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic Yodh (also spelled Yud or Yod) is the tenth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew The history of the Arabic alphabet shows that this Abjad has changed since it arose Different approaches and methods for the Romanization of Arabic exist Hamza ( Arabic: ar الهَمْزة ʼal-hamzah) (ar [[wiktء ء]] is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the Glottal stop. The Eastern Arabic numerals (also called Arabic-Indic numerals and Arabic Eastern Numerals) are the symbols used to represent the Hindu-Arabic numeral system The Abjad numerals are a decimal Numeral system in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values The history of the Alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the History of writing. The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar Undeciphered scripts dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE and believed to be ancestral BCE

  • Ugaritic 15 c. The Ugaritic alphabet is a Cuneiform Abjad (alphabet without vowels used from around 1500 BCE for the Ugaritic language, an extinct BCE
  • Phoenician 14–11 c. The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC BCE
    • Paleo-Hebrew 10 c. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, also know as Ktav Ivri, is an offshoot of the ancient Semitic alphabet (see the akin Phoenician alphabet) BCE
      • Samaritan 6 c. The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet. BCE
    • Aramaic 8 c. The Aramaic alphabet is an Abjad, a Consonantal Alphabet, used for writing Aramaic. BCE
      • Brāhmī & Indic 6 c. Brāhmī script refers to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of alphabets. The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries (writing systems used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, BCE
        • Tibetan 7 c. The Tibetan script is an Abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Ladakhi language CE
        • Khmer/Javanese 9 c. The Khmer script (អក្ខរក្រមខេមរភាសា âkkhârâkrâm khémârâ phéasa informally aksar Khmer អក្សរខ្មែរ is used to write the The Javanese script, natively known as Carakan ( Tjarakan) is the script originally used to write Javanese. CE
      • Hebrew 3 c. The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. BCE
      • Syriac 2 c. The Syriac alphabet is a Writing system used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. BCE
        • Arabic 4 c. CE
      • Pahlavi 3 c. BCE
        • Avestan 4 c. The Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during the Sassanid era (226-651 in Iran to render the Avestan language. CE
    • Greek 9 c. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early BCE
      • Etruscan 8 c. Old Italic refers to several now extinct Alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European (predominantly Italic BCE
      • Gothic 3 c. This article is about the 4th century alphabet of the Gothic bible CE
      • Armenian 405 CE
      • Glagolitic 862 CE
      • Cyrillic 10 c. The Armenian alphabet is an Alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavic Alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by CE
    • Paleohispanic 7 c. The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the dominant script BCE
  • Epigraphic South Arabian 9 c. The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad المُسند branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in about the 9th century BC. BCE
    • Ge'ez 5–6 c. Ge'ez (gez ግዕዝ) also called Ethiopic, is an Abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez, a Semitic language BCE
Meroitic 3 c. The Meroitic script is an Alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë / BCE
Ogham 4 c. Ogham (ogam ˈɔɣam Modern Irish or, English) is an Early Medieval Alphabet used primarily to represent the Old Irish language (and CE
Hangul 1443 CE
Canadian syllabics 1840 CE
Zhuyin 1913 CE
complete genealogy

The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing languages such as Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Urdu, and others. Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing', or simply syllabics, is a family of Abugidas {dubious}} used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian Nearly all the segmental scripts (loosely " Alphabets " but see below for more precise terminology used around the globe appear to have derived from the A writing system is a type of Symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in Language. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language The Kurdish language (Kurdish Kurdî or کوردی is a term used for the language spoken by Kurds. Urdu ( ur '''{{Nastaliq اردو}}''' trans Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language Urdu is a standardised 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 Naskh, Nastaʼlīq, Shahmukhi, Ruqʼah, Thuluth, Kufic, and Hejazi. Calligraphy (from Greek kallos "beauty" + graphẽ "writing" is the art of writing (Mediavilla 1996 17 In Typography, a typeface is a set of one or more Fonts designed with stylistic unity each comprising a coordinated set of Glyphs A typeface usually comprises Islamic calligraphy, equally known as Arabic calligraphy, is the art of writing and by extension of bookmaking Naskh (نسخ also known as Naskhi or by its Turkish name Nesih, from Arabic نسخ nasakha, naskh meaning "to copy" (also anglicized as Nastaleeq;) is one of the main genres of Islamic calligraphy. Shahmukhi (, Gurmukhi: ਸ਼ਾਹਮੁਖੀ literally "from the King's mouth" is a local variant of the Arabic script Ruq'ah or Riq'a ( Arabic: الرقعة) is a calligraphic variety of Arabic script. Thuluth ( Arabic: ثلث "one-third" Turkish: Sülüs) is a script variety of Islamic calligraphy, which made its first appearance Kufic is the oldest calligraphic form of the various Arabic scripts and consists of a modified form of the old Nabataean script. Hejazi (or Hijazi is a form of Arabic script used in the early Origin and development of the Qur'an. 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. The Qur’an ( القرآن, literally "the recitation" also sometimes transliterated as Qur’ān, Koran, Alcoran For other meanings including people named 'Islam' see Islam (disambiguation. 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. The Semitic languages are a Language family whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, 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. Urdu ( ur '''{{Nastaliq اردو}}''' trans Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language Urdu is a standardised Pashto ( Naskh: پښتو‎ pəʂ'to also rendered as Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, Pushtu, also known as Balochi (بلوچی also Baluchi, Baloci or Baluci) is a Northwestern Iranian language. The Malay language ( ISO 639-1 code MS is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in the Balti ( بلتی) is a Language spoken in Baltistan, in the Northern Areas of Pakistan and adjoining parts of Jammu and Kashmir The Brahui (Urdu spelling بروہی or Bravi (براوِ Language, spoken by the Brahui, is a Dravidian language mainly spoken in Punjabi (pa ਪੰਜਾਬੀ in Gurmukhi script pa-PK {{Nastaliq پنجابی}} in Shahmukhi script Pañjābī in Transliteration) is an Pakistan () officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia, Southwest Asia, Middle East and Kashmiri (कॉशुर کٲشُر Koshur) is a Dardic language spoken primarily in the valley of Kashmir, a region situated in the Indian state Sindhi ( Arabic script: سنڌي Devanagari script: सिन्धी Sindhī) is the language of the Sindh region of South Asia Uyghur (/ ug-Latn Uyƣurqə/ug-Cyrl Уйғурчә, or / ug-Latn Uyƣur tili/ug-Cyrl Уйғур China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Kazakh (also Qazaq and variants natively kk Qazaq tili, kk Қазақ тілі; pronounced tˈlə is a Turkic language closely related to Kyrgyz or Kirghiz (Кыргыз тили Kyrgyz tili, قىرعىز ٴتىلى is a Turkic language, and together with Russian, an official For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Iran topics. The Kurdish language (Kurdish Kurdî or کوردی is a term used for the language spoken by Kurds. Ottoman Turkish (Osmanlıca or tr ''Osmanlı Türkçesi'' Ottoman Turkish ota-Latn ''lisân-ı Osmânî'' is the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the 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

Structure

The Arabic alphabet has 28 basic letters. Adaptations of Arabic script for other languages, such the Malay Arabic script, have additional letters. Jawi (جوي Jăwi (or Yawi in Pattani) is an adapted Arabic alphabet for writing the Malay language. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. In Orthography and Typography, letter case (or just case) is the distinction between Majuscule ( capital or upper-case

Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters directly connected to the letter that immediately follows. For the indie rock band see Cursive (band. Cursive is any style of handwriting that is designed for writing down notes and Each individual letter can have up to four distinct forms, based on its position within in the word. A letter is an element in an Alphabetic system of writing such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants These forms are:

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. The dots are an integral part of the letter, not diacritics, because they distinguish completely different letters (and sounds). A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation 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. An Abjad is a type of Writing system in which each symbol stands for a Consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate Vowel. Long vowels are written, but short ones are not, so the reader must be familiar with the language to understand the missing vowels. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound 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). In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant.

Sorting

Main article: Abjad numerals

There are two collating orders for the Arabic alphabet. The Abjad numerals are a decimal Numeral system in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values 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 Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. 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, like word processors, lack the capability of sorting or generating numbered lists according to the Abjadi order.

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. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's The transliteration given is the widespread DIN 31635 standard, with some common alternatives. DIN 31635 is a DIN standard for the Transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982 See the article Romanization of Arabic for details and various other transliteration schemes. Different approaches and methods for the Romanization of Arabic exist

Regarding pronunciation, the phonetic values given are those of the standard pronunciation of literary Arabic, the Dachsprache which is taught in universities. Literary Arabic (ar اللغة العربية الفصحى "the Eloquent Arabic language" or Standard Arabic is the literary and standard variety The Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache ( framework is a tool developed by sociolinguists for analysing and categorising the status of language varieties Actual pronunciation between the varieties of Arabic may vary widely. See Arabic languages for the historical family of dialects The Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the article Arabic phonology. While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in pronunciation, the Arabic language is more properly described as a collection of different

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). A glyph is an element of writing Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol whether interchangeable or context-dependent are called Allographs the abstract unit they 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. Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical Proto-language of the Semitic languages.

General
Unicode		Contextual formsNameTranslit. Phonemic Value (IPA)
IsolatedFinalMedialInitial
0627
ا‎		FE8D
ﺍ‎		FE8E
ﺎ‎		—ʼalifʾ / āvarious, including /aː/
0628
ب‎		FE8F
ﺏ‎		FE90
ﺐ‎		FE92
ﺒ‎		FE91
ﺑ‎		bāʼb/b/
062A
ت‎		FE95
ﺕ‎		FE96
ﺖ‎		FE98
ﺘ‎		FE97
ﺗ‎		tāʼt/t/
062B
ث‎		FE99
ﺙ‎		FE9A
ﺚ‎		FE9C
ﺜ‎		FE9B
ﺛ‎		ṯāʼṯ/θ/
062C
ج‎		FE9D
ﺝ‎		FE9E
ﺞ‎		FEA0
ﺠ‎		FE9F
ﺟ‎		ǧīmǧ (also j, g)[ʤ] / [ʒ] / [ɡ]
062D
ح‎		FEA1
ﺡ‎		FEA2
ﺢ‎		FEA4
ﺤ‎		FEA3
ﺣ‎		ḥāʼḥ/ħ/
062E
خ‎		FEA5
ﺥ‎		FEA6
ﺦ‎		FEA8
ﺨ‎		FEA7
ﺧ‎		ḫāʼḫ (also kh, x)/x/
062F
د‎		FEA9
ﺩ‎		FEAA
ﺪ‎		—dāld/d/
0630
ذ‎		FEAB
ﺫ‎		FEAC
ﺬ‎		—ḏālḏ (also dh, ð)/ð/
0631
ر‎		FEAD
ﺭ‎		FEAE
ﺮ‎		—rāʼr/r/
0632
ز‎		FEAF
ﺯ‎		FEB0
ﺰ‎		—zāīz/z/
0633
س‎		FEB1
ﺱ‎		FEB2
ﺲ‎		FEB4
ﺴ‎		FEB3
ﺳ‎		sīns/s/
0634
ش‎		FEB5
ﺵ‎		FEB6
ﺶ‎		FEB8
ﺸ‎		FEB7
ﺷ‎		šīnš (also sh)/ʃ/
0635
ص‎		FEB9
ﺹ‎		FEBA
ﺺ‎		FEBC
ﺼ‎		FEBB
ﺻ‎		ṣādṣ/sˁ/
0636
ض‎		FEBD
ﺽ‎		FEBE
ﺾ‎		FEC0
ﻀ‎		FEBF
ﺿ‎		ḍādḍ/dˁ/
0637
ط‎		FEC1
ﻁ‎		FEC2
ﻂ‎		FEC4
ﻄ‎		FEC3
ﻃ‎		ṭāʼṭ/tˁ/
0638
ظ‎		FEC5
ﻅ‎		FEC6
ﻆ‎		FEC8
ﻈ‎		FEC7
ﻇ‎		ẓāʼẓ/ðˁ/ / /zˁ/
0639
ع‎		FEC9
ﻉ‎		FECA
ﻊ‎		FECC
ﻌ‎		FECB
ﻋ‎		ʿaynʿ/ʕ/
063A
غ‎		FECD
ﻍ‎		FECE
ﻎ‎		FED0
ﻐ‎		FECF
ﻏ‎		ġaynġ (also gh)/ɣ/
0641
ف‎		FED1
ﻑ‎		FED2
ﻒ‎		FED4
ﻔ‎		FED3
ﻓ‎		fāʼf/f/
0642
ق‎		FED5
ﻕ‎		FED6
ﻖ‎		FED8
ﻘ‎		FED7
ﻗ‎		qāfq/q/
0643
ك‎		FED9
ﻙ‎		FEDA
ﻚ‎		FEDC
ﻜ‎		FEDB
ﻛ‎		kāfk/k/
0644
ل‎		FEDD
ﻝ‎		FEDE
ﻞ‎		FEE0
ﻠ‎		FEDF
ﻟ‎		lāml/l/, ([lˁ] in Allah only)
0645
م‎		FEE1
ﻡ‎		FEE2
ﻢ‎		FEE4
ﻤ‎		FEE3
ﻣ‎		mīmm/m/
0646
ن‎		FEE5
ﻥ‎		FEE6
ﻦ‎		FEE8
ﻨ‎		FEE7
ﻧ‎		nūnn/n/
0647
ه‎		FEE9
ﻩ‎		FEEA
ﻪ‎		FEEC
ﻬ‎		FEEB
ﻫ‎		hāʼh/h/
0648
و‎		FEED
ﻭ‎		FEEE
ﻮ‎		—wāww / ū/w/ / /uː/
064A
ي‎		FEF1
ﻱ‎		FEF2
ﻲ‎		FEF4
ﻴ‎		FEF3
ﻳ‎		yāʼy / ī/j/ / /iː/
Notes

Modified letters

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

General
Unicode		Conditional formsNameTranslit. Phonemic Value (IPA)
IsolatedFinalMedialInitial
0622
آ‎		FE81
ﺁ‎		FE82
ﺂ‎		—ʼalif maddaʼā/ʔaː/
0629
ة‎		FE93
ﺓ‎		FE94
ﺔ‎		—ًtāʼ marbūṭa‎h 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. Urdu ( ur '''{{Nastaliq اردو}}''' trans Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language Urdu is a standardised 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]

Ligatures

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

ﻻ‎
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. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's Allah ( Arabic: الله, ʔalˤːɑːh) is the standard Arabic word for ' Compare the display of the composed equivalents below (the exact outcome will depend on your browser and font configuration):

لله‎
الله‎

Writing vowels

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. Calligraphy (from Greek kallos "beauty" + graphẽ "writing" is the art of writing (Mediavilla 1996 17

Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable. A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation 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)		NameTrans. Value
064E
َ‎◌		fatḥaa/a/
064F
ُ‎◌		ḍammau/u/
0650
ِ‎◌		kasrai/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 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. Hamza ( Arabic: ar الهَمْزة ʼal-hamzah) (ar [[wiktء ء]] is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the Glottal stop. 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. Shadda ( Arabic ar شَدَّةٌ " of emphasis" also called by the verbal noun to the same root Tashdid ar تشديد 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)		NameTrans. Value
064E 0627
َا‎◌		fatḥa ʼalifā/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 wāwū / uw/uː/
0650 064A
ِي‎◌		kasra yāʼī / 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)		NameTrans. Value
0627
ا‎		(implied fatḥa) ʼalifā/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) wāwū / uw/uː/
064A
ي‎		(implied kasra) yāʼī / iy/iː/

Diphthongs

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

Diphthongs
(fully vocalised text)		NameTrans. In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with Value
064E 064A
َي‎◌		fatḥa yāʼay/aj/
064E 0648
َو‎◌		fatḥa wāwaw/aw/

Sukūn and alif above

An Arabic syllable can be open (ending with a vowel) or closed (ending with a consonant). A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds

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 diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation 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. The Qur’an ( القرآن, literally "the recitation" also sometimes transliterated as Qur’ān, Koran, Alcoran 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]. In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with

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 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. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's )

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. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word

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		NameTranslit. 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-/

Other diacritics

See also: Harakat

Gemination

The šadda, or shadda ( ّ‎ ّ ), marks the gemination (doubling) of a consonant. Shadda ( Arabic ar شَدَّةٌ " of emphasis" also called by the verbal noun to the same root Tashdid ar تشديد In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short 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 isTranslit.
0651
ّ‎ ّ		šadda(consonant doubled)

Nunation

Tanwīn letters:
ـًـٍـٌ‎used to write the grammatical endings -an, -in and -un, respectively, for desinences with nunation in indefinite state (see ʼIʻrāb) in Arabic. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word In some Semitic languages, notably Arabic, nunation (the Arabic term is tanwīn) is the addition of a final -n to a Noun The sign ًـً‎ is most commonly written in combination with ا‎ ʼalif ‎ (ـًا‎) or ًtāʼ marbūṭa‎.

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). The arabic numerals (often capitalized are the ten Digits (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 which—along with the system The Eastern Arabic numerals (also called Arabic-Indic numerals and Arabic Eastern Numerals) are the symbols used to represent the Hindu-Arabic numeral system For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Iran topics. Afghanistan /æfˈgænɪstæn/ officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan ( Pashto: د افغانستان اسلامي جمهوریت, Pakistan () officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia, Southwest Asia, Middle East and India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country 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. The term Western world, the West or the Occident ( Latin: occidens -sunset -west as distinct from the Orient) can have multiple meanings 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.

WesternMiddle-Eastern
(Standard)		Eastern/Indian
0٠۰
1١۱
2*٢۲
3٣۳
4٤۴
5٥۵
6٦۶
7٧۷
8٨۸
9٩۹

*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). The Abjad numerals are a decimal Numeral system in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values 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. Chronogram is also a magazine published in the Hudson Valley of New York featuring politics and art

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 history of the Arabic alphabet shows that this Abjad has changed since it arose The Nabataeans ( Arabic: الأنباط, Al-Anbāṭ) were an ancient Semitic people Arabs of southern Jordan, Canaan Aramaic is a Semitic language with 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. Jabal Ram is a mountain in Jordan. Most authorities give its elevation as 1734 metres above sea level For the town in the West Bank see Aqabah West Bank. Aqaba (العقبة Al-ʻAqabah) is a coastal town in the far south of Syria ( سوريّة or) officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic ar الجمهورية العربية السورية However, the epigraphic record is extremely sparse, with only five certainly pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions surviving, though some others may be pre-Islamic. Epigraphy (ἐπιγραφολογία from Greek ἐπιγραφή — "inscription" is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs engraved The history of the Arabic alphabet shows that this Abjad has changed since it arose 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. Papyrus (/pəˈpaɪrəs/ (Rhymes -aɪrəs)is a thick paper-like material produced from the Pith of the papyrus plant Cyperus papyrus PERF 558 is the oldest surviving Arabic Papyrus, and the oldest dated Arabic text from the Islamic era dating from 22 AH ( AD 642) 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. The Qur’an ( القرآن, literally "the recitation" also sometimes transliterated as Qur’ān, Koran, Alcoran In Psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store retain and subsequently retrieve information

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. Hamza ( Arabic: ar الهَمْزة ʼal-hamzah) (ar [[wiktء ء]] is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the Glottal stop. The 7th century is the period from 601 to 700 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian / Common Era. The Syriac alphabet is a Writing system used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. Tiberian Hebrew is an extinct (yet very well documented Oral tradition of pronunciation for ancient Hebrew, especially the Hebrew of the Tanakh, that was 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. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Iraq topics. Al-Hajjāj ibn Yūsuf ( Arabic: الحجاج بن يوسف, also known as Hajjāj ibn Yūsuf ath-Thaqafī) born in early June 661 in aţ-Ţā’if In some Semitic languages, notably Arabic, nunation (the Arabic term is tanwīn) is the addition of a final -n to a Noun 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. Khalīl ibn Ahmad Al Farāhīdi (أبو عبد الرحمن ، الخليل بن أحمد الفراهيدي (More commonly known as Al Farāhīdi (c

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 orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language

The Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages other than Arabic, including Persian, Kurdish, Malay and Urdu. The Kurdish language (Kurdish Kurdî or کوردی is a term used for the language spoken by Kurds. The Malay language ( ISO 639-1 code MS is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in the Urdu ( ur '''{{Nastaliq اردو}}''' trans Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language Urdu is a standardised Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning 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. The voiceless bilabial plosive is a type of Consonantal sound used in many spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet 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. India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country The Turkic languages constitute a Language family of some thirty languages spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the The Perso-Arabic script is a Writing system that is based on the Arabic alphabet. The number of Languages of Indonesia is 742 Of those 737 are living languages 2 are second language without mother-tongue speakers and 3 are extinct Jawi (جوي Jăwi (or Yawi in Pattani) is an adapted Arabic alphabet for writing the Malay language. The modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars. The Perso-Arabic script is a Writing system that is based on the Arabic alphabet.

In the case of Kurdish, vowels are mandatory, making the script an abugida rather than an abjad as it is for most languages. The Kurdish language (Kurdish Kurdî or کوردی is a term used for the language spoken by Kurds. Kashmiri, also, writes all vowels. Kashmiri (कॉशुर کٲشُر Koshur) is a Dardic language spoken primarily in the valley of Kashmir, a region situated in the Indian state

Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, developed with the penetration of Islam. West Africa or Western Africa is the Westernmost Region of the African Continent. See also Sahel Tunisia, a region of eastern Tunisia. The Sahel or Sahel Belt (from Arabic ساحل sāḥil 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). The Maghreb (المغرب العربي al-Maġrib al-ʿArabī) also rendered Maghrib (or rarely Moghreb) meaning "place of Sunset Pe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Pei, Persian alphabet Pe pr Qoph or Qop (In modern Hebrew Kuf, Arabic Qāf) is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic 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. The term Ajami (عجمي or Ajamiyya (عجمية which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign" or "stranger" has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies

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:

Middle East and Central Asia

East Asia

South Asia

Southeast Asia

Africa

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. Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 In the USSR, latinization (латиниза́ция — latinizatsiya was the name of the campaign during the 1920s-1930s which aimed to replace traditional The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by Turkey changed to the Latin alphabet in 1928 as part of an internal Westernizing revolution. Turkey (Türkiye known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( is a Eurasian Country that stretches 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. Tajikistan (təˈdʒɪkɨstæn or /təˈdʒiːkɨstæn/ Тоҷикистон tɔʤikɪsˈtɔn or, Persian تاجیکستان‎ taajikestaan officially the Republic of [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. The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily Indo-Iranian. The Indo-Aryan languages (within the context of Indo-European studies also Indic) are a branch of the Indo-European language family India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country The Bengali script ( Bengali: বাংলা লিপি Bangla lipi) is a variant of the Eastern Nagari script also used for Assamese and

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. A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given character set (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Code page ISO 8859-6, also known as Arabic, is an 8-bit Character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's 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. A glyph is an element of writing Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol whether interchangeable or context-dependent are called Allographs the abstract unit they

Unicode

Main article: Arabic Unicode

As of Unicode 5. As of Unicode 50 the following ranges encode Arabic characters: Arabic (0600–06FF Arabic Supplement (0750–077F 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. ISO 8859-6, also known as Arabic, is an 8-bit Character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard The Hindu-Arabic numeral system is a Positional Decimal Numeral system first documented in the ninth century U+06D6 to U+06ED encode Qur'anic annotation signs such as "end of ayah" ۝ۖ and "start of rub el hizb" ۞. The Rub El Hizb ( رب الحزب) is an Islamic Symbol which is found on a number of emblems and flags 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.

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. A web browser is a software application which enables a user to display and interact with text images videos music games and other information typically located on a 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. QWERTY (ˈkwɜː(rti is the most common modern-day Keyboard layout on English-language computer and Typewriter keyboards It takes its North Africa or Northern Africa is the Northernmost Region of the African Continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The AZERTY layout is a Keyboard layout used in several (at least partially French-speaking countries including France and Belgium.

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. Bi-directional text is used as some Writing systems of the world notably the Arabic (including variants such as Nasta'liq) and Hebrew scripts 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]

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. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בנגב was founded in 1969, in Beersheba, Israel.

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]

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. Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821 was a French military and political leader who had a significant impact on the History of Europe.

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. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg ( 1398 &ndash February 3, 1468) was a German Goldsmith and printer who is credited 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. Maronites ( الموارنة,, Syriac: ܡܪܘܢܝܐ, Latin: Ecclesia Maronitarum) are members of one of the Syriac Mount Lebanon ( Arabic: جبل لبنان as a geographic designation is the Lebanese mountain range known as the Western Mountain Range of Lebanon They transliterated the Arabic language using Syriac script. See Syriac (disambiguation for other uses Syriac (syr ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ leššānā Suryāyā) is an Eastern Aramaic language 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. The Greek Orthodox Church ( Greek: Ἑλληνορθόδοξη Ἐκκλησία Hellēnorthódoxē Ekklēsía) is formed by several autocephalous churches Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth thereby transferring an image Movable type is the system of Printing and Typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation Dhour El Shuwayr (ضهور الشوير is a mountain town in Lebanon ('dhour' meaning 'summit top a mountain' 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]

See also

References

  1. ^ Arabic Alphabet. Islamic calligraphy, equally known as Arabic calligraphy, is the art of writing and by extension of bookmaking The arabic numerals (often capitalized are the ten Digits (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 which—along with the system Different approaches and methods for the Romanization of Arabic exist The Arabic chat alphabet or Arabish (عربيزي ‘Arabīzī) is used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew Alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. TeX (ˈtɛx as in Greek, often /ˈtɛk/ in English; written with a lowercase 'e' in imitation of the logo is a Typesetting system designed and mostly LaTeX (ˈleɪtɛ Rasm (رسم is an Arabic term that signifies "sketch pattern mark design form" The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad المُسند branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in about the 9th century BC. Enclopaedia Britannica online. Retrieved on 2007-11-23. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 800 - Charlemagne arrives at Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of
  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

External links

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.

Dictionary

Arabic alphabet

-noun

  1. The 28 letters used for writing the Arabic language. Derived from the Phoenician alphabet. The Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages other than Arabic, including Persian, Kurdish, Malay and Urdu.
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