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| Arabic script | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Script type | primarily, alphabet |
Time period | 4th century CE to the present[1] |
| Direction | Right-to-left script  |
| Official script | 20 sovereign states Co-official script in: Official script at regional level in: |
| Languages | See below |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Child systems | N'Ko Hanifi script Persian alphabet |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Arab (160), Arabic |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Arabic |
| |
| Worldwide use of the Arabic and Perso-Arabic script | ||
|---|---|---|
 | ||
| Countries where the Arabic script is: | ||
| → | the sole official script | |
| → | official alongside other scripts | |
| → | official at a provincial level (China, India, Tanzania) or a recognized second script of the official language (Malaysia, Tajikistan) | |
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script),[2] the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese scripts).[3]
The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam. With the religion's spread, it came to be used as the primary script for many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols. Such languages still using it are: Persian (Farsi and Dari), Malay (Jawi), Cham (Akhar Srak),[4] Uyghur, Kurdish, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Sindhi, Balti, Balochi, Pashto, Luri, Urdu, Kashmiri, Rohingya, Somali, Mandinka, and Mooré, among others.[5] Until the 16th century, it was also used for some Spanish texts, and—prior to the script reform in 1928—it was the writing system of Turkish.[6]
The script is written from right to left in a cursive style, in which most of the letters are written in slightly different forms according to whether they stand alone or are joined to a following or preceding letter. The script does not have capital letters.[7] In most cases, the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, so most Arabic alphabets are abjads, with the versions used for some languages, such as Kurdish dialect of Sorani, Uyghur, Mandarin, and Bosniak, being alphabets. It is the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy.
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| Calligraphy |
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History
The Arabic alphabet is derived either from the Nabataean alphabet[8][9] or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac alphabet,[10] which are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet (which also gave rise to the Hebrew alphabet), which, in turn, descended from the Phoenician alphabet. In addition to the Aramaic script (and, therefore, the Arabic and Hebrew scripts), the Phoenician script also gave rise to the Greek alphabet (and, therefore, both the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet used in America and most European countries.).
Origins
In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, northern Arab tribes emigrated and founded a kingdom centred around Petra, Jordan. These people (now named Nabataeans from the name of one of the tribes, Nabatu) spoke Nabataean Arabic, a dialect of the Arabic language. In the 2nd or 1st centuries BCE,[11][12] the first known records of the Nabataean alphabet were written in the Aramaic language (which was the language of communication and trade), but included some Arabic language features: the Nabataeans did not write the language which they spoke. They wrote in a form of the Aramaic alphabet, which continued to evolve; it separated into two forms: one intended for inscriptions (known as "monumental Nabataean") and the other, more cursive and hurriedly written and with joined letters, for writing on papyrus.[13] This cursive form influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed into the Arabic alphabet.
Overview
| خ | ح | ج | ث | ت | ب | ا |
| khā’ | ḥā’ | jīm | tha’ | tā’ | bā’ | alif |
| ص | ش | س | ز | ر | ذ | د |
| ṣād | shīn | sīn | zāy / zayn |
rā’ | dhāl | dāl |
| ق | ف | غ | ع | ظ | ط | ض |
| qāf | fā’ | ghayn | ‘ayn | ẓā’ | ṭā’ | ḍād |
| ي | و | ه | ن | م | ل | ك |
| yā’ | wāw | hā’ | nūn | mīm | lām | kāf |
| أ | آ | إ | ئ | ؠ | ء | ࢬ |
| alif hamza↑ | alif madda | alif hamza↓ | yā’ hamza↑ | kashmiri yā’ | hamza | rohingya yā’ |
| ى | ٱ | ی | ە | ً | ٌ | ٍ |
| alif maksura | alif wasla | farsi yā’ | ae | fathatan | dammatan | kasratan |
| َ | ُ | ِ | ّ | ْ | ٓ | ۤ |
| fatha | damma | kasra | shadda | sukun | maddah | madda |
| ں | ٹ | ٺ | ٻ | پ | ٿ | ڃ |
| nūn ghunna | ttā’ | ttāhā’ | bāā’ | pā’ | tāhā’ | nyā’ |
| ڄ | چ | ڇ | ڈ | ڌ | ڍ | ڎ |
| dyā’ | tchā’ | tchahā’ | ddāl | dāhāl | ddāhāl | duul |
| ڑ | ژ | ڤ | ڦ | ک | ڭ | گ |
| rrā’ | jā’ | vā’ | pāḥā’ | kāḥā’ | ng | gāf |
| ڳ | ڻ | ھ | ہ | ة | ۃ | ۅ |
| gueh | rnūn | hā’ doachashmee | hā’ goal | tā’ marbuta | tā’ marbuta goal | kirghiz oe |
| ۆ | ۇ | ۈ | ۉ | ۋ | ې | ے |
| oe | u | yu | kirghiz yu | ve | e | yā’ barree |
| (see below for other alphabets) | ||||||
The Arabic script has been adapted for use in a wide variety of languages aside from Arabic, including Persian, Malay and Urdu, which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology. For example, the Arabic language lacks a voiceless bilabial plosive (the sound), therefore many languages add their own letter to represent in the script, though the specific letter used varies from language to language. These modifications tend to fall into groups: Indian and Turkic languages written in the Arabic script tend to use the Persian modified letters, whereas the languages of Indonesia 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.[citation needed]
When the Arabic script is used to write Serbo-Croatian, Sorani, Kashmiri, Mandarin Chinese, or Uyghur, vowels are mandatory. The Arabic script can, therefore, be used as a true alphabet as well as an abjad, although it is often strongly, if erroneously, connected to the latter due to it being originally used only for Arabic.[citation needed]
Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, developed with the spread of Islam. To a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb (for instance the position of the dots in the letters fāʼ and qāf).[14][15] Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate the writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language. The term ʻAjamī, which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign", has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages.[citation needed]
