Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet, or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing Arabic. It is written from right to left in a cursive style and includes 28 letters. Most letters have contextual letterforms.
The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad, meaning it only uses consonants, but it is now considered an "impure abjad". As with other impure abjads, such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel diacritics.
Consonants
The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages added and removed some letters, as for Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Central Kurdish, Urdu, Sindhi, Malay, Pashto, Arwi and Malayalam, all of which have additional letters as shown below. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms.Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots above or below their central part. These dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters ب, ت and ث have the same basic shape, but have one dot below, two dots above and three dots above; the letter ن also has the same form in initial and medial forms, with one dot above, though it is somewhat different in isolated and final form.
Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters within a word directly connected to the adjacent letters.
Alphabetical order
There are two main collating sequences for the Arabic alphabet: abjad and hija.The original ʾabjadīy order, used for lettering, 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. In this order, letters are also used as numbers, Abjad numerals, and possess the same alphanumeric code/cipher as Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy.
The hijā’ī or alifbāʾī order, used where lists of names and words are sorted, as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries, groups letters by similarity of shape.
Abjadī
The ʾabjadī order is not a simple historical continuation of the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, since it has a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter samekh/semkat ס, yet no letter of the Arabic alphabet historically derives from that letter. Loss of sameḵ was compensated for by the split of shin ש into two independent Arabic letters, ش and ﺱ which moved up to take the place of sameḵ. The six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end.This is commonly vocalized as follows:
Another vocalization is:
This can be vocalized as:
Hijā’ī
Modern dictionaries and other reference books do not use the abjadī order to sort alphabetically; instead, the newer hijāʾī order is used wherein letters are partially grouped together by similarity of shape. The hijāʾī order is never used as numerals.Another kind of hijāʾī order was used widely in the Maghreb until recently when it was replaced by the Mashriqi order.
Letter forms
The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial, final, or isolated position. While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions. Generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters can only be linked to their preceding letter. For example, أرارات has only isolated forms because each letter cannot be connected to its following one. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures, notably lām-alif لا, which is the only mandatory ligature.Table of basic letters
Notes- See the article Romanization of Arabic for details on various transliteration schemes; however, Arabic language speakers may usually not follow a standardized scheme when transcribing names. Also names are regularly transcribed as pronounced locally, not as pronounced in Literary Arabic.
- Regarding pronunciation, the phonemic values given are those of Modern Standard Arabic, which is taught in schools and universities. In practice, pronunciation may vary considerably from region to region. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the articles Arabic phonology and varieties of Arabic.
- 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. Names of Arabic letters may have quite different names popularly.
- Six letters do not have a distinct medial form and have to be written with their final form without being connected to the next letter. Their initial form matches the isolated form. The following letter is written in its initial form, or isolated form if it is the final letter in the word.
- The letter alif originated in the Phoenician alphabet as a consonant-sign indicating a glottal stop. Today it has lost its function as a consonant, and, together with ya’ and wāw, is a mater lectionis, a consonant sign standing in for a long vowel, or as support for certain diacritics.
- Arabic currently uses a diacritic sign, ء, called hamzah, to denote the glottal stop, written alone or with a carrier:
- * alone: ء
- * with a carrier: إ أ, ؤ, ئ.
variations
Alif
| Context | Form | Value | Closest English Equivalent |
| Without diacritics | ا |
| |
| With hamzah over | أ |
| |
| With hamzah under | إ |
| |
| With maddah | آ | ||
| With 'waslah' | ٱ |
Modified letters
The following are not individual letters, but rather different contextual variants of some of the Arabic letters.Ligatures
The use of ligature in Arabic is common. There is one compulsory ligature, that for lām ل + alif ا, which exists in two forms. All other ligatures, of which there are many, are optional.A more complex ligature that combines as many as seven distinct components is commonly used to represent the word Allāh.
The only ligature within the primary range of Arabic script in Unicode is lām + alif. This is the only one compulsory for fonts and word-processing. Other ranges are for compatibility to older standards and contain other ligatures, which are optional.
- lām + alif
- : لا
U+FEFB ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF ISOLATED FORM:-
U+0640ARABIC TATWEEL + lām + alif - : ـلا
-
U+FEFCARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF FINAL FORM - : ﻼ
U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM:This is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word Allāh in Koran. Because Arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran only, rendering lām + lām + hā’ as the previous ligature is considered faulty: If one of a number of fonts is installed on a computer, the word will appear without diacritics.
- lām + lām + hā’ = LILLĀH
- : لله or لله
- alif + lām + lām + hā’ = ALLĀH
- : الله or الله
- alif + lām + lām +
U+0651ARABIC SHADDA +U+0670ARABIC LETTER SUPERSCRIPT ALEF + hā’ - : اللّٰه
U+200d after the first or second lāmU+200d ZERO WIDTH JOINER + hā’''Gemination
Nunation
Nunation is the addition of a final -n to a noun or adjective. The vowel before it indicates grammatical case. In written Arabic nunation is indicated by doubling the vowel diacritic at the end of the word.Vowels
Users of Arabic usually write long vowels but omit short ones, so readers must utilize their knowledge of the language in order to supply the missing vowels. However, in the education system and particularly in classes on Arabic grammar these vowels are used since they are crucial to the grammar. An Arabic sentence can have a completely different meaning by a subtle change of the vowels. This is why in an important text such as the Qur’ān the three basic vowel signs are mandated, like the ḥarakāt and all the other diacritics or other types of marks, for example the cantillation signs.Short vowels
In the Arabic handwriting of everyday use, in general publications, and on street signs, short vowels are typically not written. On the other hand, copies of the cannot be endorsed by the religious institutes that review them unless the diacritics are included. Children's books, elementary school texts, and Arabic-language grammars in general will include diacritics to some degree. These are known as "vocalized" texts.Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable, called ḥarakāt. All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; in Arabic, words like "Ali" or "alif", for example, start with a consonant: ‘Aliyy, alif.
| Short vowels | Code | Name | Name in Arabic script | Trans. | Value | Remarks |
| 064E | fat·ḥah | a | the fathah sounds properly more like the English "E" in comparison to the letter alif which is a full-whole "A" e.g. حَرَكَة ḥarakah is pronounced more like "ḥerekeh"; شَمْس shams is pronounced more like "shems" | |||
| 064F | ḍammah | u | English "U" | |||
| 0650 | kasrah | i | English "I" |
Long vowels
In the fully vocalized Arabic text found in texts such as Quran, a long ā following a consonant other than a hamzah is written with a short a sign on the consonant plus an ʾalif after it; long ī is written as a sign for short i plus a yāʾ; and long ū as a sign for short u plus a wāw. Briefly, ᵃa = ā; ⁱy = ī; and ᵘw = ū. Long ā following a hamzah may be represented by an ʾalif maddah or by a free hamzah followed by an ʾalif.The table below shows vowels placed above or below a dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or a shaddah sign. For clarity in the table, the primary letters 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.
| Unicode | Letter with diacritic | Name | Trans. | Variants | Value |
| 064E 0627 | fatḥah ʾalif | ā | aa | ||
| 064E 0649 | fatḥah ʾalif maqṣūrah | ā | aa | ||
| kasrah ʾalif maqṣūrah | y | iy | |||
| 064F 0648 | ḍammah wāw | ū | uw/ ou | ||
| 0650 064A | kasrah yāʾ | ī | iy |
In unvocalized text, the long vowels are represented by the vowel in question: ʾalif ṭawīlah/maqṣūrah, wāw, or yāʾ. Long vowels written in the middle of a word of unvocalized text are treated like consonants with a sukūn in a text that has full diacritics. Here also, the table shows long vowel letters only in isolated form for clarity.
Combinations وا and يا are always pronounced wā and yāʾ respectively. The exception is the suffix ـوا۟ in verb endings where ʾalif is silent, resulting in ū or aw.
| Long vowels | Name | Trans. | Value |
| 0627 ا | ʾalif | ā | |
| 0649 ى | ʾalif maqṣūrah | ā / y | |
| 0648 و | wāw | ū | |
| 064A ي | yāʾ | ī |
In addition, when transliterating names and loanwords, Arabic language speakers write out most or all the vowels as long, meaning it approaches a true alphabet.
Diphthongs
The diphthongs and are represented in vocalized text as follows:| Diphthongs | Name | Trans. | Value |
| 064A 064E | fatḥah yāʾ | ay | |
| 0648 064E | fatḥah wāw | aw |
Vowel omission
An Arabic syllable can be open or closed :- open: CV
- closed: CVC
To write qalaba without this ambiguity, we could indicate that the l is followed by a short a by writing a fatḥah above it.
To write qalb, we would instead indicate that the l is followed by no vowel by marking it with a diacritic called sukūn, like this: قلْب.
This is one step down from full vocalization, where the vowel after the q would also be indicated by a fatḥah: قَلْب.
The Qurʾān is traditionally written in full vocalization.
The long i sound in some editions of the Qur’ān is written with a kasrah followed by a diacritic-less y, and long u by a ḍammah followed by a bare w. In others, these y and w carry a sukūn. Outside of the Qur’ān, the latter convention is extremely rare, to the point that y with sukūn will be unambiguously read as the diphthong, and w with sukūn will be read.
For example, the letters m-y-l can be read like English meel or mail, or also like mayyal or mayil. But if a sukūn is added on the y then the m cannot have a sukūn, cannot have a ḍammah, and cannot have a kasrah, so it must have a fatḥah and the only possible pronunciation is . By the same token, m-y-t with a sukūn over the y can be mayt but not mayyit or meet, and m-w-t with a sukūn on the w can only be mawt, not moot.
Vowel marks are always written as if the i‘rāb vowels were in fact pronounced, even when they must be skipped in actual pronunciation. So, when writing the name Aḥmad, it is optional to place a sukūn on the ḥ, but a sukūn is forbidden on the d, because it would carry a ḍammah if any other word followed, as in Aḥmadu zawjī "Ahmad is my husband".
Another example: the sentence that in correct literary Arabic must be pronounced Aḥmadu zawjun shirrīr "Ahmad is a wicked husband", is usually mispronounced as Aḥmad zawj shirrīr. Yet, for the purposes of Arabic grammar and orthography, is treated as if it were not mispronounced and as if yet another word followed it, i.e., if adding any vowel marks, they must be added as if the pronunciation were Aḥmadu zawjun sharrīrun with a tanwīn 'un' at the end. So, it is correct to add an un tanwīn sign on the final r, but actually pronouncing it would be a hypercorrection. Also, it is never correct to write a sukūn on that r, even though in actual pronunciation it is sukūned.
Of course, if the correct i‘rāb is a sukūn, it may be optionally written.
| General Unicode | Name | Name in Arabic script | Translit. | Phonemic Value | - |
| 0652 | sukūn | سُكُون | ∅ | ||
| 0670 | Additional lettersRegional variationsSome letters take a traditionally different form in specific regions:Non-native letters to Standard ArabicSee also Arabic script#Special letters for languages other than Arabic.Some [|modified letters] are used to represent non-native sounds of Modern Standard Arabic. These letters are used in transliterated names, loanwords and dialectal words.
NumeralsThere are two main kinds of numerals used along with Arabic text; Western Arabic numerals and Eastern Arabic numerals. In most of present-day North Africa, the usual Western Arabic numerals are used. Like Western Arabic numerals, in Eastern Arabic numerals, the units are always right-most, and the highest value left-most.Letters as numeralsIn addition, the Arabic alphabet can be used to represent numbers. This usage is based on the ʾabjadī order of the alphabet. أ ʾalif is 1, ب bāʾ is 2, ج jīm is 3, and so on until ي yāʾ = 10, ك kāf = 20, ل lām = 30,..., ر rāʾ = 200,..., غ ghayn = 1000. This is sometimes used to produce chronograms.HistoryThe Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabataean alphabet used to write Nabataean. The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late 4th-century inscription from Jabal Ramm in Jordan, 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 first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic papyrus, dated April 643, although they did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts were and still are frequently memorized, especially in Qurʾan memorization.Later still, vowel marks and the hamzah were introduced, beginning some time in the latter half of the 7th century, preceding the first invention of Syriac and Hebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned in the Umayyad era by Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u, and doubled dots indicated nunation. 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 . Arabic printing pressesAlthough Napoleon Bonaparte generally receives credit for introducing the printing press to Egypt during his invasion of that country in 1798, and though he did indeed bring printing presses and Arabic script presses to print the French occupation's official newspaper Al-Tanbiyyah, printing in the Arabic language started several centuries earlier.In 1514, following Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1450, Gregorio de Gregorii, a Venetian, published an entire prayer-book in Arabic script; it was entitled Kitab Salat al-Sawa'i and was intended for eastern Christian communities. Between 1580 and 1586, type designer Robert Granjon designed Arabic typefaces for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, and the Medici press published many Christian prayer and scholarly Arabic texts in the late 16th century. Maronite monks at the Maar Quzhayy Monastery in Mount Lebanon published the first Arabic books to use movable type in the Middle East. The monks transliterated the Arabic language using Syriac script. A goldsmith designed and implemented an Arabic-script movable-type printing-press in the Middle East. The Greek Orthodox monk Abd Allah Zakhir set up an Arabic 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 Arabic script. He personally cut the type molds and did the founding of the typeface. The first book came off his press in 1734; this press continued in use until 1899. ComputersThe Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6, Windows-1256 and Unicode, latter thanks to the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, none of the sets indicates the form that each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.Each letter has a position-independent encoding in Unicode, and the rendering software can infer the correct glyph form from its joining context. That is the current recommendation. However, for compatibility with previous standards, the initial, medial, final and isolated forms can also be encoded separately. UnicodeAs of Unicode 13.0, the Arabic script is contained in the following blocks:
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. The Arabic Mathematical Alphabetical Symbols block encodes characters used in Arabic mathematical expressions. See also the notes of the section on modified letters. KeyboardsKeyboards designed for different nations have different layouts so proficiency in one style of keyboard, such as Iraq's, does not transfer to proficiency in another, such as Saudi Arabia's. Differences can include the location of non-alphabetic characters.All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g., for the 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. 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 contain ligatures while the range Arabic presentation forms B 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. There are competing online tools, e.g. , which allow entry of Arabic letters without having Arabic support installed on a PC, and without knowledge of the layout of the Arabic keyboard. Handwriting recognitionThe first software program of its kind in the world that identifies Arabic handwriting in real time was 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. |