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Perso-Arabic script

 

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Perso-Arabic script



 
 
For other scripts that have been used to write the Persian language, see Persian language – Orthography
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
.


The Perso-Arabic script is a writing system
Writing system

A writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language....
 that is based on the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
, the Arabic script was modified to match the demands of being a writing system for the Persian language
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
, adding four letters: ? , ? , ? , and ? . Many languages which use the Perso-Arabic script add additional letters.






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For other scripts that have been used to write the Persian language, see Persian language – Orthography
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
.


The Perso-Arabic script is a writing system
Writing system

A writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language....
 that is based on the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
, the Arabic script was modified to match the demands of being a writing system for the Persian language
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
, adding four letters: ? , ? , ? , and ? . Many languages which use the Perso-Arabic script add additional letters. The Perso-Arabic script has been applied, beside the Persian alphabet itself, to the Urdu alphabet
Urdu alphabet

The Urdu alphabet is the right to left alphabet used for the Urdu language. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic alphabet....
, Kurdish Sorani alphabet
Kurdish alphabet

The Kurdish alphabet is a writing system for the Kurdish language. Three systems currently exist. The form used in Turkey was derived from the Latin alphabet by Jaladat Ali Badirkhan in 1932, and thus is also called the Bedirxan script or more properly Hawar....
 ,Lurish (Luri), Ottoman Turkish alphabet, Balochi alphabet, Punjabi Shahmukhi script
Shahmukhi script

Shahmukhi , literally "from the Shah mouth") is a local variant of the Arabic alphabet writing system, that is used to write and record the Punjabi language in Punjab ....
, Tatar
Iske imlâ

Iske iml? is a variant of the Arabic alphabet, used for the Tatar language before 1920 and the Old Tatar language. This alphabet can be referred to as old only to contrast it with Ya?a imla....
, Azeri, and several others.

Nastaliq Proportions
In order to represent non-Arabic sounds, new letters were created by adding dots, lines, and other shapes to existing letters. For example, the retroflex
Retroflex consonant

In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue is placed behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar consonant to palatal consonant region of the mouth....
 sounds of Urdu are represented orthographically by adding a small ? above their non-retroflex counterparts: ? and ? . The voiceless retroflex fricative
Voiceless retroflex fricative

The voiceless retroflex fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is s`....
  of Pashto
Pashto language

Pashto , also known as Afghani, is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the East Iranian languages branch of the Indo-Iranian languages language family....
 is represented in writing by adding a dot above and below the ? letter, resulting in ?. The close central rounded vowel
Close central rounded vowel

The close central rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is }....
  of Kurdish
Kurdish language

The Kurdish language is a term used for the language spoken by Kurdish people. It is mainly concentrated in the parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey....
 is written by writing two ? , resulting in ??.

The Perso-Arabic script is exclusively written cursively. That is, the majority of letters in a word connect to each other. This is also implemented on computers. Whenever the Perso-Arabic script is typed, the computer connects the letters to each other. Unconnected letters are not widely accepted. In Perso-Arabic, as in Arabic, words are written from right to left while numbers are written from left to right.

There are many Arabic-derived alphabets which were not influenced by the Perso-Arabic script, including Jawi (used for Malay
Malay language

The Malay language is an Austronesian languages spoken by the Malays and people of other ethnic groups who reside in Peninsular Malaysia, southern Thailand, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau Islands and parts of the coast of Borneo....
), Sorabe
Sorabe

Sorabe, or Sora-be, is an alphabet based on Arabic alphabet used to transcribe the Malagasy language language and the Antemoro Malagasy dialect in particular dating from the 17th century....
 (Malagasy
Malagasy language

This article is about the Malagasy language. For the Malagasy ethnic group, see Malagasy people. For the residents or citizens of Madagascar, see Demographics of Madagascar...
), and many alphabets used in Northern Africa. These alphabets used other innovations for writing such common sounds as and , instead of the Perso-Arabic letters ? and ?, although the Jawi script does use the same symbol for ( ? ).

A characteristic feature of this script, possibly tracing back to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, is that vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
s are underrepresented. For example, in Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad Caliphate and Abbasid Caliphate times ....
, of the six vowels, the three short ones are normally omitted entirely (except in the Qur'an
Qur'an

The Qur?an is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur?an to be the book of divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic text to be the final revelation of God....
), while the three long ones are represented ambiguously by certain consonants. Only Kashmiri
Kashmiri language

Kashmiri belongs to the Dardic languages and is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in the indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It had about 5,554,496 speakers in India according to the Census of 2001....
, Uyghur
Uyghur language

Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by People's Republic of China....
 and Kurdish
Kurdish language

The Kurdish language is a term used for the language spoken by Kurdish people. It is mainly concentrated in the parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey....
, of the many languages using adaptations of this script, regularly indicate all vowels.

Letters


Below are the 32 letters of the modern Persian alphabet.
Name Transliteration
Romanization of Persian

TransliterationTransliteration attempts to be a complete representation of the original writing, so that an informed reader should be able to reconstruct the original spelling of unknown transliterated words....
IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
Final Medial Initial Isolated
* ?


Exceptions

There are seven letters in the Persian alphabet that do not connect to other letters like the rest of the letters in the alphabet. These seven letters do not have initial or medial forms but the solo and the final forms are used instead because they do not allow for a connection to be made on the left hand side to the other letters in the word. For example when the letter alef is at the beginning of a word such as ????? "inja" (here), the initial form of alef is used. Or in the case of ?????? "emruz" (today) the letter re uses the final form and the letter vav uses the initial form although they are in the middle of the word.

Other characters


The following are not actual letters, but rather different orthographical shapes for letters, and in the case of the , a ligature. As to hamze, it has only a single graphic, since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes 'seated' on a vav, ye or alef, and in that case the seat behaves like an ordinary vav, ye or alef respectively. Technically, hamze
Hamza

Hamza is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters, and owes its existence to historical orthographical inconsistencies in early Islamic times....
 is not a letter, but a diacritic.

Name Transliteration
Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
Final Medial Initial Stand-alone


Although at first glance they may seem similar, there are many differences in the way the different languages use the alphabets. For example, similar words are written differently in Persian and Arabic, as they are used differently.

The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet, , , (ch – chair), (zh – measure):

Sound Shape Unicode name
? pe
? che
? zhe
? gaf


Changes from the Arabic writing system

The following is a list of differences between the Arabic writing system and the Persian writing system:
  1. A hamze
    Hamza

    Hamza is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters, and owes its existence to historical orthographical inconsistencies in early Islamic times....
    is not written above an alef to denote a zabar or piš and below to denote a zir.
  2. A small kâf is not typically written in the final kâf.
  3. A hamze is not typically written in Persian to separate two vowels. For example, the word cây (tea) is written ???. In Persian grammar, words ending in ye versus hamze-ye have different grammatical meanings. For example, ??????? means "the books of," whereas ???????? means "some books." In Arabic, a hamza is used in words to separate two vowels. For example, the word al-jazã'ir (Algeria) is written ???????. In Persian, this convention is dropped unless the word originates from Arabic.
  4. The Arabic letter tã marbuta is usually changed to a te because tã marbuta is a grammatical construct in Arabic denoting femininity. Since Persian grammar lacks gender constructs, the tã marbuta is not necessary and is only kept to maintain fidelity to the original Arabic spelling.
  5. Two dots are removed in the final ye. Arabic differentiates the final with the two dots and alif maqsura, which is written like a final without two dots. Because Persian drops the two dots in the final ye, the alif maqsura cannot be differentiated from the normal final ye. For example, the name Musâ (Moses) is written ????. In the final letter in Musâ, Persian does not differentiate between ye or an alif maqsura.
  6. The letters pe, ce, že, and gâf are added because Arabic lacks these phonemes, yet they occur in the Persian language. (Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew do not have separate phonemes for P/F or J/G. These phonetic differences are required by Persian.)
  7. In the Arabic alphabet comes before wãw, however in the Persian alphabet, he comes after vâv.


Word boundaries

Typically words are separated from each other by a space. Certain morphemes (such as the plural ending '-hâ') are written without a space but separated from the previous word with a zero-width non-joiner.

Languages using the Perso-Arabic script

Current Use
  • Azerbaijani
    Azerbaijani language

    Azerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic languages language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran....
  • Balochi
    Balochi language

    Balochi is a Northwestern Iranian language. It is the principal language of the Baloch of Balochistan , Pakistan, eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan....
  • Gilaki
  • Kashmiri
  • Kazakh
    Kazakh language

    Kazakh is a Turkic languages language closely related to Nogai language and Karakalpak language.Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony....
     In China and Iran
  • Kurdish
    Kurdish language

    The Kurdish language is a term used for the language spoken by Kurdish people. It is mainly concentrated in the parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey....
     (Kurmanji dialect
    Kurmanji

    Kurmanji or Northern Kurdish is the most commonly spoken variety of the Kurdish macrolanguage....
     in Iran and Iraq, Soranî dialect
    Soranî

    Soran? is the name of a Kurdish language#Sorani that is spoken in Iran and Iraq and such is a member of the Iranian languages. Soran? belongs to one of the main Kurdish dialects that make up the Kurdish language....
    )
  • Kyrgyz
    Kyrgyz language

    Kyrgyz or Kirghiz is a Turkic languages and, together with Russian language, an official language of Kyrgyzstan. It is most closely related to Altay language and more distantly so to Kazakh language....
     in China and Afghanistan
  • Pashto language
    Pashto language

    Pashto , also known as Afghani, is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the East Iranian languages branch of the Indo-Iranian languages language family....
  • Mazandarani
    Mazandarani language

    Mazandarani or Tabari is an Iranian languages of the northwestern branch. Spoken mainly in Iran's Mazandaran and Golestan provinces, it is partially, but not fully, intelligible with respect to Persian language....
  • Persian
    Persian language

    name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
    , except Tajik dialect
  • Western Punjabi
    Punjabi language

    'Punjabi' , , is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region and their diasporas. Speakers include adherents of the religions of Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism....
     (Shahmukhi script
    Shahmukhi script

    Shahmukhi , literally "from the Shah mouth") is a local variant of the Arabic alphabet writing system, that is used to write and record the Punjabi language in Punjab ....
    )
  • Sindhi
    Sindhi language

    Sindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan. It is spoken by approximately 41 million people in Pakistan, and is also spoken by a minority 12 million in India; it is the third most spoken language of Pakistan, and the official language of Sindh in Pakistan....
  • Lurish (Luri)
  • Saraiki
    Saraiki

    Saraiki may refer to:* Saraiki people, an ethnic group of central Pakistan* Saraiki language, sometimes regarded as a dialect of Punjabi or Sindhi...
  • Turkmen
    Turkmen language

    Turkmen is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan. It is spoken by approximately 3,430,000 people in Turkmenistan, and by an additional approximately 6,000,000 people in other countries, including Iran , Iraq , Syria , Afghanistan , and Turkey ....
  • Urdu
  • Uzbek
    Uzbek language

    Uzbek is a Turkic languages and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 23.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia....
     in China and Afghanistan
  • Uyghur
    Uyghur language

    Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by People's Republic of China....


Former Use
A number of languages have used the Perso-Arabic script before, but have since changed.
  • Azerbaijani
    Azerbaijani language

    Azerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic languages language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran....
     in the Republic of Azerbaijan (changed first to Latin
    Latin alphabet

    The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
    , then Cyrillic
    Cyrillic alphabet

    The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
    )
  • Chaghatay Turkic (changed first to Latin, then Cyrillic)
  • Turkish
    Ottoman Turkish language

    Ottoman Turkish is the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic language and Persian language languages and was written in a variant of the Arabic script....
     (changed to Latin)
  • Tajik
    Tajik language

    The Tajik language, or Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a modern variety of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. An Indo-European languages language of the Iranian languages language group, most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan....
     (changed first to Latin, then Cyrillic)
  • Turkmen
    Turkmen language

    Turkmen is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan. It is spoken by approximately 3,430,000 people in Turkmenistan, and by an additional approximately 6,000,000 people in other countries, including Iran , Iraq , Syria , Afghanistan , and Turkey ....
     in the republic of Turkmenistan (changed first to Latin, then Cyrillic)
  • Uzbek
    Uzbek language

    Uzbek is a Turkic languages and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 23.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia....
     (changed first to Latin, then Cyrillic)


See also

  • Arabic alphabet
    Arabic alphabet

    The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
  • Scripts used for Persian
  • Persian phonology
    Persian phonology

    The Persian language has six vowel phonemes and twenty-three consonant phonemes. It features contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters....
  • Ottoman Turkish language
    Ottoman Turkish language

    Ottoman Turkish is the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic language and Persian language languages and was written in a variant of the Arabic script....
  • History of the Arabic alphabet
    History of the Arabic alphabet

    The history of the Arabic alphabet shows that this abjad has changed since it arose. It is thought that the Arabic alphabet is a derivative of the Nabataean alphabet variation of the Aramaic alphabet, which descended from the Phoenician alphabet, which among others gave rise to the Hebrew alphabet and the Greek alphabet, ....
  • List of languages using Arabic script
    List of languages by writing system

    This article is a list of languages sorted by writing system ....
  • Nasta?liq
  • Shahmukhi
  • Urdu alphabet
    Urdu alphabet

    The Urdu alphabet is the right to left alphabet used for the Urdu language. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic alphabet....
  • Ajami script
    Ajami script

    The term Ajami , or Ajamiyya , which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign" or "stranger" has been applied to Arabic script of African languages....
  • Persian language
    Persian language

    name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....


External links

  • web-based Perso-arabic transliteration pad, with support for Persian characters