official at a provincial level (China, India, Tanzania) or a recognized second script of the official language (Malaysia, Tajikistan)
The Arabic script, also called as the Perso-Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) 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 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.
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.
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 [p] sound), therefore 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: 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.
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.
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.
Used for almost all modern Urdu and Punjabi text, but only occasionally used for Persian. (The term "Nastaliq" is sometimes used by Urdu-speakers to refer to all Perso-Arabic scripts.)
This orthography is fully voweled. 3 out of the 4 (ۆ, ۄ, ێ) additional glyphs are actually vowels. Not all vowels are listed here since they are not separate letters. For further information, see Kashmiri writing.
Baluchi in Iran, in Pakistan's Balochistan region, Afghanistan and Oman[16]
Garshuni (or Karshuni) originated in the 7th century, when Arabic became the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent, but Arabic script was not yet fully developed or widely read, and so the Syriac alphabet was used. There is evidence that writing Arabic in this other set of letters (known as Garshuni) influenced the style of modern Arabic script. After this initial period, Garshuni writing has continued to the present day among some Syriac Christian communities in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Dogri, spoken by about five million people in India and Pakistan, chiefly in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir and in Himachal Pradesh, but also in northern Punjab, although Dogri is more commonly written in Devanagari
Arwi language (a mixture of Arabic and Tamil) uses the Arabic script together with the addition of 13 letters. It is mainly used in Sri Lanka and the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for religious purposes. Arwi language is the language of Tamil Muslims
Arabi Malayalam is Malayalam written in the Arabic script. The script has particular letters to represent the peculiar sounds of Malayalam. This script is mainly used in madrasas of the South Indian state of Kerala and of Lakshadweep.
Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi. In some cases it can be seen in the signboards of shops and market stalls. Particularly in Brunei, Jawi is used in terms of writing or reading for Islamic religious educational programs in primary school, secondary school, college, or even higher educational institutes such as universities. In addition, some television programming uses Jawi, such as announcements, advertisements, news, social programs or Islamic programs
Dongolawi language or Andaandi language of Nubia, in the Nile Vale of northern Sudan
Nobiin language, the largest Nubian language (previously known by the geographic terms Mahas and Fadicca/Fiadicca) is not yet standardized, being written variously in both Latinized and Arabic scripts; also, there have been recent efforts to revive the Old Nubian alphabet.[26][27]
Swahili, was originally written in Arabic alphabet, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators
Zarma language of the Songhay family. It is the language of the southwestern lobe of the West African nation of Niger, and it is the second leading language of Niger, after Hausa, which is spoken in south central Niger[28]
Tadaksahak is a Songhay language spoken by the pastoralist Idaksahak of the Ménaka area of Mali[29]
Hausa language uses an adaptation of the Arabic script known as Ajami, for many purposes, especially religious, but including newspapers, mass mobilization posters and public information[30]
Yoruba, earliest attested history of use since 17th century, however earliest verifiable history of use dates to the 19th century. Yoruba Ajami used in Muslim praise verse, poetry, personal and esoteric use[33]
The Bilali Document also known as Bilali Muhammad Document is a handwritten, Arabic manuscript[35] on West African Islamic law. It was written by Bilali Mohammet in the 19th century. The document is currently housed in the library at the University of Georgia
With the establishment of Muslim rule in the subcontinent, one or more forms of the Arabic script were incorporated among the assortment of scripts used for writing native languages.[37] In the 20th century, the Arabic script was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet in the Balkans,[dubious – discuss] parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, while in the Soviet Union, after a brief period of Latinisation,[38] use of Cyrillic 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 Afghanistan and Iran.[39]
For the West African languages—Hausa, Fula, Mandinka, Wolof and others—the Latin alphabet has officially replaced Arabic transcriptions for use in literacy and education
Bosnian (only for literary purposes; currently written in the Latin alphabet; Text example: مۉلٖىمۉ سه تهبٖى بۉژه = Molimo se tebi, Bože (We pray to you, O God); see Arebica)
Adyghe language also known as West Circassian, is an official languages of the Republic of Adygea in the Russian Federation. It used Arabic alphabet before 1927
Ve, used in Kurdish to represent /v/, it can be used in Arabic to describe the phoneme /v/ otherwise it is written ف /f/. Pa, used in the Jawi script and Pegon script to represent /p/.
Nya/ɲ/ in the Jawi script ڽـ ـڽـ ڽ., The isolated ڽ and final ـڽ resemble the form ڽ, while the initial ڽـ and medial forms ـڽـ, resemble the form پ.
Do-chashmi he (two-eyed hāʼ), used in digraphs for aspiration /ʰ/ and breathy voice /ʱ/ in Punjabi and Urdu. Also used to represent /h/ in Kazakh, Sorani and Uyghur.[F]
^Although the letter also known as Waw with Damma, some publications and fonts features filled Damma that looks similar to comma.
^Shown in Naskh (top) and Nastaliq (bottom) styles. The Nastaliq version of the connected forms are connected to each other, because the tatweel character U+0640 used to show the other forms does not work in many Nastaliq fonts.
Letter construction
Most languages that use alphabets based on the Arabic alphabet use the same base shapes. Most additional letters in languages that use alphabets based on the Arabic alphabet are built by adding (or removing) diacritics to existing Arabic letters. Some stylistic variants in Arabic have distinct meanings in other languages. For example, variant forms of kāf ك ک ڪ are used in some languages and sometimes have specific usages. In Urdu and some neighbouring languages, the letter Hā has diverged into two forms ھ dō-čašmī hē and ہ ہـ ـہـ ـہ gōl hē,[44] while a variant form of ي yā referred to as baṛī yē ے is used at the end of some words.[44]
^Broadly speaking, there are two standards for Pashto orthography: the Afghan orthography in Afghanistan and the Peshawar orthography in Pakistan, where /g/ in the latter is represented by ګ instead of the Afghani گ.
^Brustad, K. (2000). The syntax of spoken Arabic: A comparative study of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Kuwaiti dialects. Georgetown University Press.
^p. 20, Samuel Noel Kramer. 1986. In the World of Sumer: An Autobiography. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
^J. Blau. 2000. Hebrew written in Arabic characters: An instance of radical change in tradition. (In Hebrew, with English summary). In Heritage and Innovation in Judaeo-Arabic Culture: Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the Society For Judaeo-Arabic Studies, p. 27–31. Ramat Gan.
