my-server
← Wiki Redirected from Arabic scripts

Arabic script

The 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), 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).

The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam. With the religion's spread, it came to be used as the primary script for many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols. Such languages using it are Arabic, Persian (Farsi and Dari), Urdu, Uyghur, Kurdish, Pashto, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Sindhi, Azerbaijani (Torki in Iran), Malay (Jawi), Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese and Indonesian (Pegon), Balti, Balochi, Luri, Kashmiri, Cham (Akhar Srak), Rohingya, Somali, Mandinka, and Mooré, among others. Until the 16th century, it was also used for some Spanish texts, and—prior to the script reform in 1928—it was the writing system of Turkish.

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 is unicase and does not have distinct capital or lowercase letters. 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 Sorani dialect of Kurdish, Kashmiri, Gorani, Uyghur, Mandarin, and Serbo-Croatian, being alphabets. It is the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy.

History

The Arabic alphabet is derived either from the Nabataean alphabet or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac alphabet, which are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet, which, in turn, descended from the Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenician script also gave rise to the Greek alphabet (and, therefore, both the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet used in North and South America and most European countries).

Origins

In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, northern Arab tribes emigrated and founded a kingdom centred around Petra, Jordan. This 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, 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. This cursive form influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed into the Arabic alphabet.

Overview

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 sound), therefore many languages add their own letter to represent 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 and ). Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate the writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language. The term , which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign", has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages.

Table of writing styles

Table of alphabets

Current use

Today Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are the main non-Arabic speaking states using the Arabic alphabet to write one or more official national languages, including Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Brahui, Persian, Pashto, Central Kurdish, Urdu, Sindhi, Kashmiri and Punjabi.

In India and China some regions use the Arabic script to write respectively Kashmiri in Jammu and Kashmir, Urdu in Uttar Pradesh and Telangana, Uyghur in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region

An Arabic alphabet is currently used for the following languages:

Middle East and Central Asia

East Asia

South Asia

Southeast Asia

  • Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi. In some cases it can be seen in the signboards of shops and market stalls, especially in rural or conservative areas of Malaysia, but it is no longer commonly used for everyday writing, being relegated instead to religious studies. 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
  • co-official in Brunei
  • co-official in the Malaysian states of Kelantan, Kedah, Pahang, and Terengganu.
  • Indonesia, Jawi script is co-used with Latin in provinces of Aceh, Riau, Riau Islands and Jambi. The Javanese, Madurese and Sundanese also use another Arabic variant, the Pegon in Islamic writings and pesantren community.
  • Southern Thailand
  • Predominantly Muslim areas of the Philippines (especially Maguindanaon and Tausug)
  • Ida'an language (also Idahan) a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Ida'an people of Sabah, Malaysia
  • Cham language in Cambodia and Vietnam besides Western Cham script.

Europe

Africa

  • North Africa
  • Arabic
  • Berber languages have often been written in an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet. The use of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the competing Latin and Tifinagh scripts, has political connotations
  • Tuareg language, (sometimes called Tamasheq) which is also a Berber language
  • Coptic language of Egyptians as Coptic text written in Arabic letters
  • Northeast Africa
  • Bedawi or Beja, mainly in northeastern Sudan
  • Wadaad's writing, used in Somalia
  • Nubian languages
  • 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.
  • Fur language of Darfur, Sudan
  • Southeast Africa
  • Comorian, in the Comoros, currently side by side with the Latin alphabet (neither is official)
  • 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
  • West Africa
  • 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
  • Tadaksahak is a Songhay language spoken by the pastoralist Idaksahak of the Ménaka area of Mali
  • 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
  • Dyula language is a Mandé language spoken in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Mali.
  • Jola-Fonyi language of the Casamance region of Senegal
  • Balanta language a Bak language of west Africa spoken by the Balanta people and Balanta-Ganja dialect in Senegal
  • Mandinka, widely but unofficially (known as Ajami), (another non-Latin script used is the N'Ko script)
  • Fula, especially the Pular of Guinea (known as Ajami)
  • Wolof (at zaouia schools), known as Wolofal.
  • 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
  • Arabic script outside Africa
  • In writings of African American slaves
  • Writings of by Omar Ibn Said (1770–1864) of Senegal
  • The Bilali Document also known as Bilali Muhammad Document is a handwritten, Arabic manuscript 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
  • Letter written by Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (1701–1773)
  • Arabic Text From 1768
  • Letter written by Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori (1762–1829)

Former use

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. In the 20th century, the Arabic script was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet in the Balkans, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, while in the Soviet Union, after a brief period of Latinisation, 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.

Africa

Europe

Central Asia and Caucasus

South and Southeast Asia

Middle East

Unicode

As of Unicode , the following ranges encode Arabic characters:

Additional letters used in other languages

Assignment of phonemes to graphemes

∅ = phoneme absent from language

Table of additional letters in other languages

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 are used in some languages and sometimes have specific usages. In Urdu and some neighbouring languages, the letter Hā has diverged into two forms dō-čašmī hē and gōl hē, while a variant form of yā referred to as baṛī yē is used at the end of some words.

Table of letter components

See also

Explanatory notes

References

External links