Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing the Arabic language. Because the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, is written with this alphabet, its influence spread with that of Islam and it has been, and still is, used to write many other languages from families unrelated to the Semitic languages, such as Persian and Urdu. (See fuller list below.)

Arabic alphabets of other languages

Arabic script is not used solely for writing Arabic, but for a variety of languages. In each language, it has been modified to fit the language's sound system. There are phonemes not found in Arabic, but found in, for instance, Persian, Malay and Urdu. For example, the Arabic language lacks a "P" sounding letter, so many languages add their own "P" in the script, though the symbol used may differ between languages. These modifications tend to fall into groups; so all the Indian and Turkic languages written in Arabic tend to use the Persian modified letters, whereas West African languages tend to imitate those of Ajami, and Indonesian ones those of Jawi. The script in which the Persian modified letters are used, is called Perso-Arabic script by the scholars.

Related Topics:
Sound system - Phoneme - Ajami - Jawi - Perso-Arabic script

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Generally, in countries where national education is effective and where the national language is written in Arabic script, Arabic script is also used to write the other languages used in that country.

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The Arabic alphabet is currently used for:

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• Kurdish and Turkmen in Northern Iraq. (In Turkey, the Latin alphabet is now used for Kurdish);
• Official language Persian and regional languages including Azeri, Sorani-Kurdish and Baluchi in Iran;
• Official languages Dari and Pashto and regional languages including Uzbek in Afghanistan;
• Official language Urdu and regional languages including Punjabi (where the script is known as Shahmukhi), Sindhi, Kashmiri, and Baluchi in Pakistan;
• Urdu and Kashmiri in India (see List of national languages of India);
• Uyghur (changed to Roman script in 1969 and back to a simplified, fully voweled, Arabic script in 1983), Kazakh and Kyrgyz by a minority of Kyrgyz in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China;
• Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi is co-official in Brunei, and used for religious purposes in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore;
• 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; (another alphabet used is N'Ko)
• Wolof (at zaouias), 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.

In the past, it has also been used to represent other languages. Most education was once religious instead of governmental and uniform within a state, so choice of script was determined by the user's religion and Muslims would use Arabic script to write any language they used. See also Languages of Muslim countries.

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• Afrikaans (as it was first written among the "Cape Malays");
• Albanian;
• Azeri in Azerbaijan (now written in the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet scripts in Azerbaijan);
• Belarusian (among ethnic Tatars);
• Berber in North Africa, particularly Tachelhit in Morocco (still being considered, along with Tifinagh and Latin for Tamazight);
• Bashkir (for some years: from October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
• Bosnian;
• Chaghatai across Central Asia;
• Chechen (for some years: from October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
• Chinese and Dungan, among the Chinese Hui Muslimshttp://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~kmach/xiaoerjin/xiaoerjin-e.htm;
• Fulani, known as Ajami;
• Hebrew;
• Kazakh in Kazakhstan;
• Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan;
• Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia;
• Mozarabic, when the Moors ruled Spain (and later Aragonese, Portuguese, and Spanish proper; see aljamiado);
• Nubian;
• Polish (among ethnic Tatars);
• Sanskrit has also been written in Arabic script, though it is more well known as using the Devanagari script - the same script used for writing the Hindi language.
• Swahili;
• Somali (has used the Latin alphabet since 1972);
• Songhay in West Africa, particularly in Timbuktu;
• Tatar (iske imlâ) before 1928 (changed to Latin), reformed in 1880's, 1918 (deletion of some letters);
• 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;
• 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.