Persian language

Orthography

The vast majority of modern Persian text is written in a form of the Arabic alphabet. In recent years the Latin alphabet has been used by some for technological or internationalization reasons.

Related Topics:
Arabic alphabet - Latin alphabet

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Arabic Alphabet

Modern Persian uses a modified version of the Arabic alphabet. After the conversion of Persia to Islam, it took approximately one hundred and fifty years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet as a replacement for the older alphabet. Previously, the Persian language (Middle Persian or Pahlavi at that time) used two different alphabets: a modified version of the Aramaic alphabet, and a native Iranian alphabet called Dîndapirak (literally: religion script).

Related Topics:
Arabic alphabet - Islam - Pahlavi - Aramaic

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Despite their shared alphabet, however, Persian and Arabic are entirely different languages, from different linguistic families and with different phonology and grammar.

Related Topics:
Phonology - Grammar

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Persian adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet for its use, due to the fact that four sounds that exist in Persian do not exist in Arabic. Additionally, it changes the shape of another two. Some people call this modified alphabet the Perso-Arabic alphabet. The additional four letters are:

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The letters different in shape are:

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The diacritical marks used in the Arabic script, a.k.a. harakat, are also used in Persian, although some of them have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic Damma is pronounced as /u/, while in Persian it is pronounced as /o/.

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Persian also adds the notion of a pseudo-space to the Arabic script, called a Zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ) by the Unicode Standard. It acts like a space in disconnecting two otherwise-joining adjacent letters, but does not have a visual width.

Related Topics:
Zero-width non-joiner - Unicode Standard

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It should also be noted that many Persian words with an Arabic root are spelled differently from the original Arabic word. Alef with hamza below ( إ ) always changes to alef ( ا ); teh marbuta ( ة ) usually, but not always, changes to teh ( ت ) or heh ( ه ); and words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول).

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Other languages, such as Pashto or Urdu, have taken those notions and have sometimes extended them with new letters or punctuation.

Related Topics:
Pashto - Urdu

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Latin Alphabet

The Universal Persian (UniPers / Pârsiye Jahâni) Alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet created over 50 years ago in Iran and popularized by Mohamed Keyvan, who had used it in a number of Persian textbooks for foreigners and travellers. It sidesteps the difficulties of the traditional Arabic-based alphabet, with its multiple letter shapes and ambiguous spellings, and fits particularly well in contemporary electronically written media.

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Fingilish is the name given to texts written in Persian using the Basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails and SMS applications.

Related Topics:
Fingilish - Basic Latin alphabet - Chat - Email - SMS

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