Arabic alphabet

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

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

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

[edit] Structure

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Sorting

Main article: Abjad numerals

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

[edit] Letters and letter variants

The following table provides all of the Unicode characters for Arabic, and none of the supplementary letters used for other languages. The transliteration given is the widespread DIN 31635 standard, with some common alternatives. See the article Romanization of Arabic for details and various other transliteration schemes.

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

[edit] Primary letters

The Arabic script is cursive, and all primary letters have conditional forms for their glyphs, depending on whether they are at the beginning, middle or end of a word, so they may exhibit four distinct forms (initial, medial, final or isolated). However, six letters have only isolated or final form, and so force the following letter (if any) to take an initial or isolated form, as if there were a word break.

For compatibility with previous standards, Unicode can encode all these forms separately; however, these forms can be inferred from their joining context, using the same encoding. The table below shows this common encoding, in addition to the compatibility encodings for their normally contextual forms (Arabic texts should be encoded today using only the common encoding, but the rendering must then infer the joining types to determine the correct glyph forms, with or without ligation). There are 29 primary letters.

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

Notes

• Initially, the letter ʾalif indicated the glottal stop [ʔ], as in Phoenician. Today it is used, together with yāʾ and wāw, as a mater lectionis, that is to say a consonant standing in for a long vowel (see below). In fact, over the course of time its original consonantal value has been obscured, so ʾalif now serves either as a long vowel or as graphic support for certain diacritics (madda and hamza).

• The Arabic alphabet now uses ﺀ‎, the hamza, to denote the glottal stop, which can appear anywhere in a word. This letter, however, does not function like the others: it can be written alone or with a carrier, in which case it becomes a diacritic:
  • alone: ء‎ ;
  • with a carrier: إ, أ‎ (above and under a ʾalif), ؤ‎ (above a wāw), ئ‎ (above a dotless yāʾ or yāʾ hamza).

• Letters lacking an initial or medial version are never connected to the following letter, even within a word. As to the hamza, it has only a single form, since it is never connected to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes combined with a wāw, yāʾ, or ʾalif, and in that case the carrier behaves like an ordinary wāw, yāʾ, or ʾalif.

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

[edit] Modified letters

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

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

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

[edit] Ligatures

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

• (isolated) lām + ʼalif (lā /laː/):

ﻻ‎

• (final) lām + ʼalif (lā /laː/):

ﻼ‎

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

ﷲ‎

The latter is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word Allāh, because it should compose a small ʼalif sign above a gemination šadda sign. Compare the display of the composed equivalents below (the exact outcome will depend on your browser and font configuration):

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

لله‎

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

الله‎

[edit] Extra letters

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

[edit] Sometimes used in Arabic

• ﭪ - Vā', sometimes used to represent the letter V when transliterating foreign words in Arabic. Normally the letter ف - Fā' is used to transliterate the V letter.

It's also used as Pa in the Jawi script.

• ﭖ - Pā', represents the sound [p] in Persian, Kurdish, and Urdu; sometimes used to represent the letter P when transliterating foreign words in Arabic, although Arabic nearly always substitutes B for P in the transliteration of foreign terms. Normally the letter ب - Bā' is used to transliterate the P letter. So, "7up" can be transcribed as سفن أب or سڤن أﭖ.

• ﭺ - Chā', used to represent the [tʃ] ("ch") phoneme; sometimes used when transliterating foreign words in Arabic, although Arabic usually substitutes other letters in the transliteration of foreign terms. Normally the combination تش - tā' and šīn are used to transliterate the [tʃ] ("ch") sound.

It's also used in several other languages. Ca in the Jawi script

• گ - Gāf, used to represent the [g] phoneme (as in "get"). Normally used in Persian. Often foreign words with the G sound are transliterated in Arabic with ك (kāf), غ (ġayn) or ج (ǧīm), which may or may not change the original sound, (in Egyptian Arabic ج is usually read as a hard "G" (get), which also creates a confusion when the original sound is like the English [dʒ] (j) phoneme (as in "job")).

[edit] Used only in languages other than Arabic

• ڭ - Ng, used to represent the "ng" phoneme in Ottoman Turkish, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uyghur

• ݙ - used in Siraiki to represent a voiced retroflex implosive

• ݐ - used to represent the equivalent of the Latin letter the Latin letter Ƴ in some African languages such as Fulfulde; not used in Arabic

• ݫ - used in Ormuri to represent a voiced alveolo-palatal fricative, as well as in Torwali

• ݭ - used in Kalami to represent a voiceless retroflex fricative, and in Ormuri to represent a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative

• ݜ - used in Shina to represent a voiceless retroflex fricative

• ݪ - used in Marwari to represent a retroflex lateral flap, and in Kalami to represent a voiceless lateral fricative

• ﭒ - B̤ē, used to represent a voiced bilabial implosive in Hausa and Sindhi

• ﭞ - Ṭhē, represents the aspirated voiceless retroflex plosive in Sindhi

• ﮎ - Khē, represents K in Sindhi

• ﭦ - Ṭe, used to represent Ṭ (a voiceless retroflex plosive) in Urdu

• ڳ - represents a variety of G in Sindhi

• ڱ - represents the "ng" phoneme in Sindhi

• ڻ - represents the retroflex nasal phoneme in Sindhi

• ڀ - represents an aspirated "b" ("bh") in Sindhi and Urdu

• ژ - Zhe, represents a voiced postalveolar fricative in Urdu and Uyghur

• ڑ - Aṛ, represents a retroflex flap in Urdu

• گ - Gaf, represents G in Persian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Kurdish, and Ottoman Turkish

• ݣ - Gaf, represents G in informal Moroccan Arabic, as well as officially to transliterate the letter G in many city names such as Agadir (أݣادير), and family names such as El Guerrouj (الݣروج).

• ݢ or ڬ - Gaf, represents G in the Jawi script of Malay

• ے - Bari ye, represents "ai" or "e" in Urdu and Punjabi

• ێ - represents Ê or É (ɛ) in Kurdish

• ۋ - represents V in Kyrgyz, Uyghur, and Old Tatar; and W in Kazakh; also formerly used in Nogai

• ڽ - Nya in the Jawi script

• ڠ - Nga in the Jawi script

• ۏ - Va in the Jawi script

• ڈ - Ḍ in Urdu

[edit] Writing vowels

Further information: Harakat

[edit] Short vowels

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

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

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

Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable, called harakat. All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; contrary to appearances, there is a consonant at the start of a name like Ali — in Arabic ʻAliyy — or of a word like ʼalif.

[edit] Long vowels

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

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

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

[edit] Diphthongs

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

[edit] Sukūn and alif above

An Arabic syllable can be open (ending with a vowel) or closed (ending with a consonant).

• open: CV [consonant-vowel] (long or short vowel)
• closed: CVC (short vowel only)

When the syllable is closed, we can indicate that the consonant that closes it does not carry a vowel by marking it with a diacritic called sukūn ( ْ‎ ) to remove any ambiguity, especially when the text is not vocalized. A normal text is composed only of series of consonants; thus, the word qalb, "heart", is written qlb. The sukūn indicates where not to place a vowel: qlb could, in effect, be read qalab (meaning "he turned around"), but written with a sukūn over the l and the b (قلْبْ‎), it can only have the form qVlb. This is one step down from full vocalization, where the vowel a