Arabic alphabet
From Includipedia, the inclusionist encyclopedia
| 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 | |||||
| History of the alphabet |
|---|
|
Middle Bronze Age 19th c. BCE
|
| Meroitic 3rd c. BCE |
| Ogham 4th c. |
| Hangul 1443 |
| Canadian Syllabics 1840 |
| Zhuyin 1913 |
| complete genealogy |
The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing languages such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and others. Arabic is written from right to left, and is written in a cursive style of script. There are 28 basic letters in the Arabic alphabet. Just as different handwriting styles and typefaces exist in the Roman alphabet, there are Arabic scripts in a number of different Arabic calligraphy styles, including Naskh, Nasta'līq, Ruq'ah, Thuluth, Kufic, and Hejazi. After the Latin alphabet, the Arabic writing system is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world.[1]
The alphabet was first used to write texts in Arabic -- most importantly, the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam. With the spread of Islam, it came to be used to write many other languages, even outside of the Semitic family to which Arabic belongs. Examples of non-Semitic languages written with the Arabic alphabet include Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Baloch, Malay, Balti, Brahui, Panjabi (in Pakistan), Kashmiri, Sindhi (in Pakistan), Uyghur (in China), Kazakh (in China), Kyrgyz (in China), Azerbaijani (in Iran) and Kurdish in Iraq and Iran. In order to accommodate the needs of these other languages, new letters and other symbols were added to the original alphabet. (See Arabic alphabets of other languages below.)
Structure of the Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 basic letters. Adaptations of Arabic script for other languages, such Malay-Arabic script, have additional letters. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms.
Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters directly connected to the letter that immediately follows. There are some non-connecting letters that do not connect with the following letter, even in the middle of a word. Each individual letter can have up to four distinct forms, based upon the position of the letter within in a word or group of letters. These forms are initial, medial, final, and isolated:
- Initial: beginning of a word; or in the middle of a word, following a non-connecting letter
- Medial: between two connecting letters (non-connecting letters lack a medial form)
- Final: at the end of a word following a connecting letter
- Isolated: at the end of a word following a non-connecting letter; or used independently
Some letters appear almost the same in all four forms, while others display more variety. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), including lam-alif.[2] In many cases, dots will be placed above or below the central part of a letter to distinguish it from other similar letters. These are not like accent marks--rather, the dots distinguish completely different letters (and sounds). For example, the Arabic letters transliterated as "b" and "t" have the same basic shape, but "b" has one dot below, and "t" has two dots above.
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 alphabet. 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. In the Hejā'ī هجائي order similarly-shaped letters are grouped together. This order is used wherever lists of names and words need to be sorted, as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries. However when letters are used for numbering, the Abjadī أبجدي order is exclusively used.
Abjadī order
- See also: Abjad numerals
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, also used by the Hebrew alphabet) — leaving six remaining Arabic letters at the end.
The most common Abjad sequence is (from left to right):
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 Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl
This is commonly vocalized as follows:
Another vocalization is:
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 Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl Template:Transl
which can be vocalized as:
Despite no longer being used as the standard order of the alphabet, the Abjadi order is still used in things such as lists and outlines where a ordinal system of designating points of information or questions other than numbers is required. In other words, whereas a list in English might call its first point "A" its next point "B", its next point "C", then "D", then "E" and so on down to "Z", even today a list in Arabic would typically call its first point "أ", then "ب", then "ج", "د", "ﻫ" and so on down to "ﻍ", rather than "أ", "ب", "ت", "ث", "ج", and so on down to "ي", as the modern order might suggest. The order is, also, still used in Modern Arabic mathematical notation when allocating variable names. For example, when the letters أ (alif) and ب (ba') have already been used for variable names, conventionally, the next letter to be used would be ج (ġim).
Major software packages, like word processors, lack the capability of sorting according to this order, or generating numbered lists according to this order.
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.
Primary letters
The Arabic script is cursive, and all primary letters have conditional forms for their glyphs, depending on whether they are at the beginning, middle or end of a word, so they may exhibit four distinct forms (initial, medial, final or isolated). However, six letters have only isolated or final form, and so force the following letter (if any) to take an initial or isolated form, as if there were a word break.
For compatibility with previous standards, Unicode can encode all these forms separately; however, these forms can be inferred from their joining context, using the same encoding. The table below shows this common encoding, in addition to the compatibility encodings for their normally contextual forms (Arabic texts should be encoded today using only the common encoding, but the rendering must then infer the joining types to determine the correct glyph forms, with or without ligation). There are 29 primary letters.
| General Unicode | Contextual forms | Name | Translit. | Phonemic Value (IPA) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial | ||||
| 0627 ا | FE8D ﺍ | FE8E ﺎ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | various, including /aː/ | |
| 0628 ب | FE8F ﺏ | FE90 ﺐ | FE92 ﺒ | FE91 ﺑ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /b/ |
| 062A ت | FE95 ﺕ | FE96 ﺖ | FE98 ﺘ | FE97 ﺗ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /t/ |
| 062B ث | FE99 ﺙ | FE9A ﺚ | FE9C ﺜ | FE9B ﺛ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /θ/ |
| 062C ج | FE9D ﺝ | FE9E ﺞ | FEA0 ﺠ | FE9F ﺟ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl (also j, g) | [ʤ] / [ʒ] / [ɡ] |
| 062D ح | FEA1 ﺡ | FEA2 ﺢ | FEA4 ﺤ | FEA3 ﺣ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /ħ/ |
| 062E خ | FEA5 ﺥ | FEA6 ﺦ | FEA8 ﺨ | FEA7 ﺧ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl (also kh, x) | /x/ |
| 062F د | FEA9 ﺩ | FEAA ﺪ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /d/ | |
| 0630 ذ | FEAB ﺫ | FEAC ﺬ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl (also dh, ð) | /ð/ | |
| 0631 ر | FEAD ﺭ | FEAE ﺮ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /r/ | |
| 0632 ز | FEAF ﺯ | FEB0 ﺰ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /z/ | |
| 0633 س | FEB1 ﺱ | FEB2 ﺲ | FEB4 ﺴ | FEB3 ﺳ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /s/ |
| 0634 ش | FEB5 ﺵ | FEB6 ﺶ | FEB8 ﺸ | FEB7 ﺷ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl (also sh) | /ʃ/ |
| 0635 ص | FEB9 ﺹ | FEBA ﺺ | FEBC ﺼ | FEBB ﺻ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /sˁ/ |
| 0636 ض | FEBD ﺽ | FEBE ﺾ | FEC0 ﻀ | FEBF ﺿ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /dˁ/ |
| 0637 ط | FEC1 ﻁ | FEC2 ﻂ | FEC4 ﻄ | FEC3 ﻃ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /tˁ/ |
| 0638 ظ | FEC5 ﻅ | FEC6 ﻆ | FEC8 ﻈ | FEC7 ﻇ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /ðˁ/ / /zˁ/ |
| 0639 ع | FEC9 ﻉ | FECA ﻊ | FECC ﻌ | FECB ﻋ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /ʕ/ |
| 063A غ | FECD ﻍ | FECE ﻎ | FED0 ﻐ | FECF ﻏ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl (also gh) | /ɣ/ |
| 0641 ف | FED1 ﻑ | FED2 ﻒ | FED4 ﻔ | FED3 ﻓ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /f/ |
| 0642 ق | FED5 ﻕ | FED6 ﻖ | FED8 ﻘ | FED7 ﻗ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /q/ |
| 0643 ك | FED9 ﻙ | FEDA ﻚ | FEDC ﻜ | FEDB ﻛ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /k/ |
| 0644 ل | FEDD ﻝ | FEDE ﻞ | FEE0 ﻠ | FEDF ﻟ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /l/, ([lˁ] in Allah only) |
| 0645 م | FEE1 ﻡ | FEE2 ﻢ | FEE4 ﻤ | FEE3 ﻣ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /m/ |
| 0646 ن | FEE5 ﻥ | FEE6 ﻦ | FEE8 ﻨ | FEE7 ﻧ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /n/ |
| 0647 ه | FEE9 ﻩ | FEEA ﻪ | FEEC ﻬ | FEEB ﻫ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /h/ |
| 0648 و | FEED ﻭ | FEEE ﻮ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /w/ / /uː/ | |
| 064A ي | FEF1 ﻱ | FEF2 ﻲ | FEF4 ﻴ | FEF3 ﻳ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /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.
Modified letters
The following are not individual letters, but rather different contextual variants of some of the Arabic letters.
| General Unicode | Conditional forms | Name | Translit. | Phonemic Value (IPA) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial | ||||
| 0622 آ | FE81 ﺁ | FE82 ﺂ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /ʔaː/ | |
| 0629 ة | FE93 ﺓ | FE94 ﺔ | — | Template:Transl | Template:Transl or Template:Transl / h / ẗ | /a/, /at/ | |
| 0649 ى | FEEF ﻯ | FEF0 ﻰ | — | Template:Transl ("broken alif") (Arabic) (see note below) | Template:Transl / ỳ | /a/ | |
| 06CC ی | FBFC ﯼ | FBFD ﯽ | FBFF ﯿ | FBFE ﯾ | Template:Transl (Persian, Urdu) (see note below) | Template:Transl / ỳ | /iː/ |
- Notes
The Template:Transl ("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 Template:Transl has neither an initial nor a medial form.
Although this is the common situation, the problem is not so simple, and no solution is met yet at the time of September, 2007[3].
Ligatures
The only compulsory ligature is Template:Transl + Template:Transl. All other ligatures (Template:Transl+Template:Transl, etc.) are optional.
- (isolated) Template:Transl + Template:Transl (Template:Transl /laː/) :
- ﻻ
- (final) Template:Transl + Template:Transl (Template:Transl /laː/) :
- ﻼ
Unicode has a special glyph for the ligature Template:Transl (“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 Template:Transl, because it should compose a small Template:Transl sign above a gemination Template:Transl sign. Compare the display of the composed equivalents below (the exact outcome will depend on your browser and font configuration):
- Template:Transl, (geminated) Template:Transl (with implied short-a vowel), (vowel reversed) Template:Transl :
- لله
- Template:Transl, Template:Transl, (geminated) Template:Transl (with implied short-a vowel), (vowel reversed) Template:Transl :
- الله
Hamza
Initially, the letter Template:Transl 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 Template:Transl and Template:Transl, 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 Template:Transl 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 carrier: إ, أ (above and under a Template:Transl), ؤ (above a Template:Transl), ئ (above a dotless Template:Transl or Template:Transl).
Diacritics
Shadda
The Template:Transl ( ّ ّ ) marks the gemination (doubling) of a consonant; a Template:Transl ( ِ ّ ) vowel sign (when present) moves to between the geminated (doubled) consonant and the Template:Transl.
The w-shaped Template:Transl glyph above the second consonant that it geminates, is in fact the beginning of a small Template:Transl letter.
| General Unicode | Name is | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0651 ّ ّ | Template:Transl | (consonant doubled) | [◌◌] (name is pronounced [ʃːdda]) |
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 Template:Transl ( ْ ) 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 Template:Transl, "heart", is written Template:Transl. The sukūn is also used for transliterating words to 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.
Template:Transl allows us to know where not to place a vowel: Template:Transl could, in effect, be read qalab (meaning "he turned around"), but written with a sukūn over the Template:Transl and the Template:Transl, it can only be interpreted as the form /qVlb/; we write this قلْبْ. This is one stage from full vocalization, where the a vowel would also be indicated by a Template:Transl: قَلْبْ,
The Template:Transl is traditionally written in full vocalization. Outside of the Template:Transl, putting a Template:Transl above a Template:Transl which indicates [i:], or above a Template:Transl which stands for [u:] is extremely rare, to the point that Template:Transl with sukūn will be unambiguously read as the diphthong [ai], and Template:Transl with Template:Transl will be read [au].
The letters Template:Transl (موسيقى with an Template:Transl at the end of the word) will be read most naturally as the word Template:Transl (“music”). If you were to write Template:Transl above the Template:Transl, Template:Transl and Template:Transl, you’d get موْسيْقىْ, which would be read as Template:Transl (note however that the final Template:Transl is an Template:Transl and never takes Template:Transl). The word, entirely vocalised, would be written مُوْسِيْقَى in the Template:Transl (if it happened to appear there!), or مُوسِيقَى elsewhere. (The Quranic spelling would have no Template:Transl sign above the final Template:Transl, but instead a miniature Template:Transl above the preceding Template:Transl consonant, which is a valid Unicode character but most Arabic computer fonts cannot in fact display this miniature Template:Transl as of 2006.)
A Template:Transl 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, Template:Transl, meaning “Ahmed is a bad husband”, for the purposes of Arabic grammar and orthography, is treated as if still pronounced with full i`rab, i.e. Template:Transl with the complete desinences.
| General Unicode | Name | Translit. | Phonemic Value (IPA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0652 ْ◌ | Template:Transl | (no vowel with this consonant letter or diphthong with this long vowel letter) | Ø / /a͡-/ |
| 0670 ٰ◌ | Template:Transl | (no vowel with next final consonant letter or diphthong with next final long vowel letter) | Ø / /a͡-/ |
Vowels
Arabic short vowels are generally not written when writing Arabic, 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 could not 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) does not 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 Template:Transl — or a word like Template:Transl.)
| Short vowels (fully vocalised text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 064E َ◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /a/ |
| 064F ُ◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /u/ |
| 0650 ِ◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /i/ |
Long "a" following a consonant other than hamza is written with a short-"a" mark on the consonant plus an alif after it (Template:Transl). 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 hamza sound may be represented by an alif-madda or by a floating hamza 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 Template:Transl, Template:Transl and Template:Transl written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the Template:Transl 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 vocalised text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 064E 0627 َا◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /aː/ |
| 064E 0649 َى◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /a/ |
| 064E 06CC َی◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /a/ |
| 064F 0648 ُو◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /uː/ |
| 0650 064A ِي◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /iː/ |
In an unvocalised text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the consonant in question : Template:Transl, Template:Transl (or Template:Transl), Template:Transl, Template:Transl. Long vowels written in the middle of a word of unvocalised 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 (unvocalised text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0627 ا | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /aː/ |
| 0649 ى | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /a/ |
| 06CC ی | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /a/ |
| 0648 و | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /uː/ |
| 064A ي | Template:Transl | Template:Transl / Template:Transl | /iː/ |
The diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/ are represented in vocalised text as follows:
| Diphthongs (fully vocalised text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 064E 064A َي◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /ay/ |
| 064E 0648 َو◌ | Template:Transl | Template:Transl | /aw/ |
| tanwīn letters: | |
| ـًـٍـٌ | used to write the grammatical endings Template:Transl and Template:Transl 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 tā' marbūta. |
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 Template:Transl). 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 Arabic numerals | Standard numerals | East Arab numerals |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | ٠ | ۰ |
| 1 | ١ | ۱ |
| 2* | ٢ | ۲ |
| 3 | ٣ | ۳ |
| 4 | ٤ | ۴ |
| 5 | ٥ | ۵ |
| 6 | ٦ | ۶ |
| 7 | ٧ | ۷ |
| 8 | ٨ | ۸ |
| 9 | ٩ | ۹ |
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. Template:Transl is 1, ب Template:Transl is 2, ج Template:Transl is 3, and so on until ي Template:Transl = 10, ك Template:Transl = 20, ل Template:Transl = 30, …, ر Template:Transl = 200, …, غ Template:Transl = 1000. This is sometimes used to produce chronograms.
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 is still widespread among many Muslim communities today, probably arose partially from a desire to avoid the great ambiguity of the script.
Yet later, vowel signs and hamzas were added, beginning sometime in the last half of the seventh century, roughly contemporaneous with the first invention of Syriac and Hebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned by an Umayyad governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u, and doubled dots gave tanwin. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by al-Farahidi.
Arabic alphabets of other languages
| 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.
In the case of Kurdish, vowels are mandatory, making the script an abugida rather than an abjad as it is for most languages. Kashmiri, also, writes all vowels.
Use of 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.
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
- Kurdish and Turkmen in Northern Iraq. (In Turkey and Syria, the Latin alphabet is now used for Kurdish);
- Official language Persian and regional languages including Azeri, Kurdish and Baluchi in Iran;
- Official languages Dari (which differs only to a minor degree from Persian) and Pashto and all regional languages including Uzbek in Afghanistan;
- Tajik also differs only to a minor degree from Persian, and while in Tajikistan the usual Tajik alphabet is an extended Cyrillic alphabet, there is also some use of Arabic-alphabet Persian books from Iran
- Uyghur changed to Roman script in 1969 and back to a simplified, fully voweled, Arabic script in 1983;
- Kazakh is written in Arabic in Pakistan, Iran, China, and Afghanistan; and
- Kyrgyz is written in Arabic by the 150,000 in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China.
East Asia
- The Chinese language is written by some Hui in the Arabic-derived Xiao'erjing alphabet.
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, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh; see List of national languages of India. Kashmiri also uses Sharada script;
- The Arwi language known as Arabic-Tamil uses the Arabic script together with the addition of 13 letters. It is mainly used in Sri Lanka and the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala for religious purposes.
- 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 consonants are borrowed from Arabic numerals.
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.
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 zaouia schools), known as Wolofal.
- Tamazight and other Berber languages were traditionally written in Arabic in the Maghreb. There is now a competing 'revival' of neo-Tifinagh.
Former uses of the alphabet for 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, 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.
Africa
- Afrikaans (as it was first written among the "Cape Malays", see Arabic Afrikaans);
- 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;
- Malagasy in Madagascar (script known as Sorabe);
- Nubian;
- Swahili (has used the Latin alphabet since the 19th century);
- Somali (see Wadaad's writing) has used only the Latin alphabet since 1972;
- Songhay in West Africa, particularly in Timbuktu;
- Yoruba in West Africa (this was probably limited, but still notable)
Europe
- Albanian;
- Azeri in Azerbaijan (now written in the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet scripts in Azerbaijan);
- Bosnian (only for literary purposes; currently 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);
Central Asia and Russian Federation
- Bashkir (for some years: from the October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
- Chaghatai across Central Asia;
- Chechen (from the adoption of Islam in the XVI century until 1928[4]);
- Kazakh in Kazakhstan (until 1930s, now uses Cyrillic script);
- Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan (until 1930s, now uses Cyrillic script);
- Tatar (iske imlâ) before 1928 (changed to Latin), reformed in 1880s, 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.
Southeast Asia
- Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia; Maguindanaon and Tausug in the Philippines.
South Asia
- Arwi, a hybradized Arabic and Tamil dialect that was used extensively by the Muslim minority of Tamil Nadu state of India and the Moors of Sri Lanka.
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)
- Kurdish (Kurmanji dialect) in Turkey and Syria was written in Arabic script until 1932, when a modified Kurdish Latin alphabet was introduced by Jaladat Ali Badirkhan in Syria.
Computers and the Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6 and Unicode, in the latter thanks to the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, neither of these sets indicate the form each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.
Unicode
As of Unicode 5.0, 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.
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 other differences.
All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g. for URL in a web browser. Thus, each Arabic keyboard has both Arabic and Roman characters marked on the keys. Usually the Roman characters of an Arabic keyboard conform to the QWERTY layout, but in North Africa, where French is the most common language typed using the Roman characters, the Arabic keyboards are AZERTY.
When one wants to encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The range Arabic presentation forms A (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) contain ligatures while the range Arabic presentation forms B (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contains the positional variants. These effects are better achieved in Unicode by using the zero width joiner and non-joiner, as these presentation forms are deprecated in Unicode, and should generally only be used within the internals of text-rendering software, when using Unicode as an intermediate form for conversion between character encodings, or for backwards compatibility with implementations that rely on the hard-coding of glyph forms.
Finally, the Unicode encoding of Arabic is in logical order, that is, the characters are entered, and stored in computer memory, in the order that they are written and pronounced without worrying about the direction in which they will be displayed on paper or on the screen. Again, it is left to the rendering engine to present the characters in the correct direction, using Unicode's bi-directional text features. In this regard, if the Arabic words on this page are written left to right, it is an indication that the Unicode rendering engine used to display them is out-of-date. For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at http://www.unicode.org/
Arabic text computerized
The first software program of its kind in the world that identifies Arabic handwriting in real time has been developed by researchers at Ben-Gurion University.
The prototype enables the user to write Arabic words by hand on an electronic screen, which then analyzes the text and translates it into printed Arabic letters in a thousandth of a second. The error rate is less than three percent, according to Dr. Jihad El-Sana, from BGU's department of computer sciences, who developed the system along with master's degree student Fadi Biadsy.[3]
Arabic printing presses
Although Napoleon Bonaparte generally is given the credit with introducing the printing press to the Arab world upon invading Egypt in 1798, and he did indeed bring printing presses and Arabic script presses, to print the French occupation's official newspaper Al-Tanbiyyah (The Courier), the process was started several centuries earlier.
Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1450 was followed up by Gregorio de Gregorii, a Venetian, who in 1514 published an entire prayer book in Arabic script entitled Kitab Salat al-Sawa'i intended for the eastern Christian communities. The script was said to be crude and almost unreadable.
Famed type designer Robert Granjon working for Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici succeeded in designing elegant Arabic typefaces and the Medici press published many Christian prayer and scholarly Arabic texts in the late sixteenth century.
The first Arabic books published using movable type in the Middle East were by the Maronite monks at the Maar Quz?hayy Monastery in Mount Lebanon. They transliterated the Arabic language using Syriac script. It took a fellow goldsmith like Gutenberg to design and implement the first true Arabic script movable type printing press in the Middle East. The Greek Orthodox monk Abd Allah Zakhir set up an Arabic language printing press using movable type at the monastery of Saint John at the town of Dhour El Shuwayr in Mount Lebanon, the first homemade press in Lebanon using true Arabic script. He personally cut the type molds and did the founding of the elegant typeface. He created the first true Arabic script type in the Middle East. The first book off the press was in 1734; this press continued to be used until 1899. [4][5]
See also
- Arabic calligraphy - considered an art form in its own right
- Arabic numerals
- Romanization of Arabic
- Arabic Chat Alphabet
- ArabTeX - provides Arabic support for TeX and LaTeX
- Harakat
- South Arabian alphabet
- Category: Arabic-derived alphabets
References
- ^ Arabic Alphabet. Enclopaedia Britannica online. Retrieved on 2007-11-23.
- ^ Rogers, Henry (2005). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Blackwell Publishing, p. 135.
- ^ http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~oibane/aonl/en/uni-prob.htm
- ^ http://socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Echechen/Ch_writing.htm
External links
- The Arabic Alphabet showing the different glyphs for each letter and its code position in Unicode
- Alphabet, with sound, just click on a letter
- Arabic Alphabet with sound and lessons
- Arabic writing and calligraphy
- Article about Arabic alphabet
- Arabic alphabet and calligraphy
- (freeware) to learn the characters
- Guide to the use of Arabic in Windows, major word processors and web browsers
- Learn the Arabic Script Online
- Madinaharabic.com: Free Arabic Reading and Language Course (with sound)
- Arabic Alphabet Quiz Choose the "Arabic" link.
- Babel Arabic Writing Explanation
- Site on Scripts and Writing Systems: A long list of links to sites dealing with issues of scripts.
- Arabic alphabet stroke directions
Online Arabic keyboards
- Arabic Keyboard adapted to QWERTY (ISLAM-91)
- clavier arabe en ligne LEXILOGOS (French)
- Muftah-Alhuruf.com: Write and send Arabic emails without having an Arabic keyboard or operating system.
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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