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.)

Structure of the Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is written from right to left and is composed of 28 basic letters. Adaptations of the script for other languages such as Persian and Urdu have additional letters. There is no difference between written and printed letters; the writing is unicase (i.e. the concept of upper and lower case letters does not exist). On the other hand, most of the letters are attached to one another, even when printed, and their appearance changes as a function of whether they connect to preceding or following letters. Some combinations of letters form special ligatures.

Related Topics:
Persian - Urdu - Unicase - Upper and lower case - Ligature

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The Arabic alphabet is an "impure" abjad—short vowels are not written, though long ones are—so the reader must know the language in order to restore the vowels. However, in editions of the Qur'an or in didactic works a vocalization notation in the form of diacritic marks is used. Moreover, in vocalized texts, there is a series of other diacritics of which the most modern are an indication of vowel omission (suk?n) and the lengthening of consonants (?adda).

Related Topics:
Abjad - Short vowels - Diacritic

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

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There are two orders for Arabic letters in the alphabet, the original Abjad? ????? order matches the ordering of letters in all alphabets derived from the Phoenician alphabet, including the English ABC. The standard order used today, and shown in the table is the Hej?'? ????? order, where letters are grouped according to their shape.

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Abjadi order

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The special Abjad? order (or two slightly variant orders) was devised by matching an Arabic letter of the fully consonant-dotted 28-letter Arabic alphabet to each of the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet (in their old Phoenician/Hebrew/Aramaic alphabetic order) — leaving six remaining Arabic letters at the end. The Abjad? order is not a simple historically-continuous preservation of the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, since it contains a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter semkat/samekh ס, yet no letter of the Arabic alphabet historically comes from ס. Similarly, the Abjad orders include in their first 22 positions some letters (? and ?) which did not exist until the Arabic alphabet was expanded by consonant dotting.

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The most common Abjad sequence is:

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? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

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This is commonly vocalized as follows:

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:*abjad hawwaz HuTTi kalaman sa'faS qarashat thakhadh DaZagh.

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Another vocalization is:

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:*abujadin hawazin HuTiya kalman sa'faS qurishat thakhudh DaZugh

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Another (probably older) Abjad sequence, now mainly confined to the Maghreb, is:

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? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

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which can be vocalized as:

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:*abujadin hawazin HuTiya kalman Sa'faD qurisat thakhudh Zaghush

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(As used here, the capital letters represent the "emphatic" and pharyngeal consonants, while the digraphs sh, th, kh, dh and gh represent single letters. The final 'in' represents tanw?n, a feature of Arabic grammar.) Differences emerge starting at the fifteenth letter (where there are different Arabic substitutes for Aramaic semkat/samekh). Any of these "alphabetical orders" can be used for the purpose of numbering, or in the branch of numerology called isopsephy (see Abjad numerals).

Related Topics:
Isopsephy - Abjad numerals

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