Arabic alphabet
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Template:Arabic alphabet Template:Alphabet The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing in the Arabic language.
Because the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, is written with this alphabet, its influence spread with that of Islam. As a result, the Arabic alphabet is used to write many other languages — even languages belonging to language families other than Semitic. Examples of non-Semitic languages written with the Arabic alphabet include Persian and Urdu. In order to accommodate the phonetics of other languages, the alphabet has been adapted by the addition of letters and other symbols. (See Arabic alphabets of other languages below).
The alphabet presents itself in different styles such as Nasta'līq, Thuluth, Kufic and others (see Arabic calligraphy), just like different handwriting styles and typefaces for the Roman alphabet. Superficially, these styles appear quite different, but the basic letterforms remain the same.
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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.
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 (sukūn) and the lengthening of consonants (šadda).
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.
There are two orders for Arabic letters in the alphabet, the original Abjadī Template:Arabiyyah 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 Hejā'ī Template:Arabiyyah order, where letters are grouped according to their shape.
Abjadi order
Template:Main The special Abjadī 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 alphabetic order) — leaving six remaining Arabic letters at the end.
The most common Abjad sequence is:
This is commonly vocalized as follows:
Another vocalization is:
Another Abjad sequence, mainly confined to the Maghreb, is:
which can be vocalized as:
See also: Abjad numerals.
Presentation of the alphabet
The following table provides all of the Unicode characters for Arabic, and none of the supplementary letters used for other languages. The transliteration given is the widespread DIN 31635 standard, with some common alternatives. See the article Arabic transliteration for details and various other transliteration schemes.
Regarding pronunciation, the phonetic values given are those of the "standard" pronunciation of the fusha language as taught in universities. Actual pronunciation between the varieties of Arabic may vary widely. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the article Arabic phonology.
Primary letters
The Arabic script is cursive, and all primary letters have conditional forms for their glyphs, depending on whever they are at the beginning, middle or end of a word, so they may exhibit 4 distinct forms (initial, medial, final or isolated). Six letters however only have isolated or final form, and if they are followed by another letter, they do not join with it, and so this next letter can only have their initial or isolated form despite if it is not an initial.
For compatibility with previous standards, Unicode encoded all these forms separately, however these forms can be infered from their joining context, using the same encoding. The table below shows this common encoding, in addition to the compatibility encodings for their normally contextual forms (Arabic texts should be encoded today using only the common encoding, but the rendering must then infer the joining types to determine the correct glyph forms, with or without ligation).
Letters lacking an initial or medial version are never tied to the following letter, even within a word. As to Template:Ar hamza, it has only a single graphic, since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes 'seated' on a waw, ya or alif, and in that case the seat behaves like an ordinary waw, ya or alif.
Modified letters
The following are not actual letters, but rather different orthographical shapes for letters.
| General Unicode | Conditional forms | Name | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial | ||||
| 0622 Template:Ar | FE81 Template:Ar | FE82 Template:Ar | — | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA | |
| 0629 Template:Ar | FE93 Template:Ar | FE94 Template:Ar | — | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN or Template:ArabDIN / h / ẗ | Template:IPA, Template:IPA | |
| 0649 Template:Ar | FEEF Template:Ar | FEF0 Template:Ar | — | Template:ArabDIN (Arabic) (see note below) | Template:ArabDIN / ỳ | Template:IPA | |
| 06CC Template:Ar | FEEF Template:Ar | FEF0 Template:Ar | FEF4 Template:Ar | FEF3 Template:Ar | Template:ArabDIN (Farsi, Urdu) (see note below) | Template:ArabDIN / ỳ | Template:IPA |
- Notes
The Template:ArabDIN, commonly using Unicode 0x0649 (Template:Ar) in Arabic, is sometimes replaced in Persian or Urdu, with Unicode 0x06CC (ی), called "Farsi Yeh". This is appropriate to its pronunciation in those languages. The glyphs are identical in isolated and final form (ﻯ ﻰ), but not in initial and medial form, in which the Farsi Yeh gains two dots below (ﻳ ﻴ) while the Template:ArabDIN has neither an initial nor a medial form.
Ligatures
The only compulsory ligature is Template:ArabDIN + Template:ArabDIN. All other ligatures (Template:ArabDIN+Template:ArabDIN, etc.) are optional.
- (isolated) Template:ArabDIN + Template:ArabDIN (Template:ArabDIN Template:IPA) :
- (final) Template:ArabDIN + Template:ArabDIN (Template:ArabDIN Template:IPA) :
Unicode has a special glyph for the ligature Template:ArabDIN, the post-vocalic form of Template:ArabDIN (“God”).
- U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM:
- Template:Ar (image: Image:Allah glyph.png)
Combined with an initial Template:ArabDIN, this becomes full Template:ArabDIN :
- Template:Ar</div>
The latter is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word Template:ArabDIN, because it should compose a small Template:ArabDIN sign above a gemination Template:ArabDIN sign). Compare the display of the composed equivalents below (the exact outcome will depend on your browser and font configuration):
- Template:ArabDIN, (geminated) Template:ArabDIN (with implied short-a vowel), (vowel reversed) Template:ArabDIN :
- Template:ArabDIN, Template:ArabDIN, (geminated) Template:ArabDIN (with implied short-a vowel), (vowel reversed) Template:ArabDIN :
Hamza
Template:Main Initially, the letter Template:ArabDIN indicated an occlusive glottal, or glottal stop, transcribed by Template:IPA, confirming the alphabet came from the same Phoenician origin. Now it is used in the same manner as in other abjads, with Template:ArabDIN and Template:ArabDIN, as a mater lectionis, that is to say, a consonant standing in for a long vowel (see below). In fact, over the course of time its original consonantal value has been obscured, since Template:ArabDIN now serves either as a long vowel or as graphic support for certain diacritics (madda or hamza).*****
The Arabic alphabet now uses the hamza to indicate a glottal stop, which can appear anywhere in a word. This letter, however, does not function like the others: it can be written alone or on a support in which case it becomes a diacritic:
- alone: Template:Ar ;
- with a support: Template:Ar (above and under a Template:ArabDIN), Template:Ar (above a Template:ArabDIN), Template:Ar (above a dotless Template:ArabDIN or Template:ArabDIN).
Diacritics
Shadda
Template:Main Template:ArabDIN ( Template:Ar◌ ) marks the gemination (doubling) of a consonant; an Template:ArabDIN ( Template:Ar◌ ) vowel sign (when present) moves to between the geminate (doubled) consonant and Template:ArabDIN.
The w-shaped Template:ArabDIN glyph above the second consonnant that it geminates, is in fact the beginning of a small Template:ArabDIN letter.
| General Unicode | Name | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0651 Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | (consonnant doubled) | Template:IPA |
Sukūn and ʼalif above
An Arabic syllable can be open (ended by a vowel) or closed (ended by a consonant).
- open: CV[consonant-vowel] (long or short vowel)
- closed: CVC (short vowel only)
When the syllable is closed, we can indicate that the consonant that closes it does not carry a vowel by marking it with a sign called Template:ArabDIN (Template:Ar) to remove any ambiguity, especially when the text is not vocalised: it's necessary to remember that a standard text is only composed of series of consonants; thus, the word Template:ArabDIN, "heart", is written Template:ArabDIN. The sukūn is also used for transliterating words to Arabic script. The Persian word ماسك (mâsk, from the English word mask), for example, would be written with a sukūn above the ﺱ to signify that there is no vowel sound between that letter and the ك .
Template:ArabDIN allows us to know where not to place a vowel: Template:ArabDIN could, in effect, be read /qVlVbV/, but written with a sukūn over the Template:ArabDIN and the Template:ArabDIN, it can only be interpreted as the form /qVlb/; we write this Template:Ar. This is one stage from full vocalization, where the a vowel would also be indicated by a Template:ArabDIN: Template:Ar,
The Template:ArabDIN is traditionally written in full vocalization. Outside of the Template:ArabDIN, putting a Template:ArabDIN above a Template:ArabDIN which indicates Template:IPA, or above a Template:ArabDIN which stands for Template:IPA is extremely rare, to the point that Template:ArabDIN with sukūn will be unambiguously read as the diphthong Template:IPA, and Template:ArabDIN with Template:ArabDIN will be read Template:IPA.
The letters Template:ArabDIN (Template:Ar with an Template:ArabDIN at the end of the word) will be read most naturally as the word Template:ArabDIN (“music”). If you were to write Template:ArabDIN above the Template:ArabDIN, Template:ArabDIN and Template:ArabDIN, you’d get Template:Ar, which would be read as Template:ArabDIN (note however that the final Template:ArabDIN is an Template:ArabDIN and never takes Template:ArabDIN). The word, entirely vocalised, would be written Template:Ar in the Template:ArabDIN (if it happened to appear there!), or Template:Ar elsewhere. (The Quranic spelling would have no Template:ArabDIN sign above the final Template:ArabDIN, but instead a miniature Template:ArabDIN above the preceding Template:ArabDIN consonant, which is a valid Unicode character but most Arabic computer fonts cannot in fact display this miniature Template:ArabDIN as of 2006.)
A Template:ArabDIN is not placed on word-final consonants, even if no vowel is pronounced, because fully vocalised texts are always written as if the i`rab vowels were in fact pronounced. For example, Template:ArabDIN, meaning “Ahmed is a bad husband”, for the purposes of Arabic grammar and orthography, is treated as if it was still pronounced with full i`rab, i.e. Template:ArabDIN with the complete desinences.
| General Unicode | Name | Translit. | Phonetic Value (IPA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0652 Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | (no vowel with this consonnant letter or diphtong with this long vowel letter) | Template:IPA / Template:IPA |
| 0670 Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | (no vowel with next final consonnant letter or diphtong with next final long vowel letter) | Template:IPA / Template:IPA |
Vowels
Arabic short vowels are generally not written, except sometimes in sacred texts (such as the Qurʼan) and didactics, which are known as vocalised texts. Occasionally short vowels are marked where the word would otherwise be ambiguous and cannot be resolved simply from context.
Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable. (All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; contrary to appearances: there is a consonant at the start of a name like Ali in Arabic Template:ArabDIN or a word like Template:ArabDIN.)
Note that when the acute-shaped Template:ArabDIN which denotes a short a is added on top of a geminated consonnant (i.e. after a Template:ArabDIN), the fatha accent takes a vertical shape to make the composition more distinctable from the tanwiin vowel sign Template:ArabDIN (which marks a /-an/ ending with indeterminate nunation in fully vocalized texts, see below). For an example, see the encoded ligature for ʻAllah above.
| Short vowels (fully vocalized text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 064E Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 064F Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 0650 Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
Long "a" following a consonant other than hamzah is written with a short-"a" mark on the consonant plus an alif after it (Template:ArabDIN). Long "i" is a mark for short "i" plus a yaa yāʼ, and long u is mark for short u plus waaw, so aā = ā, iy = ī and uw = ū); long "a" following a hamzah sound may be represented by an alif-madda or by a floating hamzah followed by an alif.
In the table below, vowels will be placed above or below a dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or shadda. Please note, that most consonants (except 6 of them) do join to the left with Template:ArabDIN, Template:ArabDIN and Template:ArabDIN written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the Template:ArabDIN letter in the last row may connect to the letter on its left, and then will use a medial or initial form. For clarity in the table below, the primary letter on the left used to mark these long vowels are shown only in their isolated form. Use the table of primary letters to look at their actual glyph and joining types.
| Long vowels (fully vocalized text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 064E 0627 Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 064E 0649 Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 064E 06CC Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 064F 0648 Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | [uː] |
| 0650 064A Template:Ar◌ | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | [iː] |
In an un-vocalised text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the consonant in question : Template:ArabDIN, Template:ArabDIN (or Template:ArabDIN), Template:ArabDIN, Template:ArabDIN. Long vowels written in the middle of a word of un-vocalized text are treated like consonants taking sukūn (see below) in a text that has full diacritics. Here also, the table shows long vowel letters only in isolated form for clarity.
| Long vowels (un-vocalized text) | Name | Trans. | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0627 Template:Ar | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 0649 Template:Ar | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 06CC Template:Ar | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | Template:IPA |
| 0648 Template:Ar | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | [uː] |
| 064A Template:Ar | Template:ArabDIN | Template:ArabDIN / Template:ArabDIN | [iː] |
| tanwiin letters: | |
| Template:Ar | used to write the grammatical endings Template:ArabDIN and Template:ArabDIN respectively for desinences with nunation in indefinite state (see I`rab) in Arabic. Template:Ar is most commonly written in combination with Template:Ar alif (Template:Ar) or taa' marbūta. |
Numerals
Template:Main There are two kinds of numerals used in Arabic writing; standard numerals and "East Arab" numerals, used in Iran, Pakistan and India. In Arabic, these numbers are referred to as "Indian numbers" (Template:Ar Template:ArabDIN). In most of present-day North Africa, the usual Western numerals are used; in medieval times, a slightly different set (from which, via Italy, Western "Arabic numerals" derive) was used. Unlike Arabic alphabetic characters, Arabic numerals are written from left to right.
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In addition, the Arabic alphabet can be used to represent numbers (Abjad numerals), a usage rare today. This usage is based on the Abjadi order of the alphabet. Template:Semxlit is 1, Template:Arabiyyah Template:Semxlit is 2, Template:Arabiyyah Template:Semxlit is 3, and so on until Template:Arabiyyah Template:Semxlit = 10, Template:Arabiyyah Template:Semxlit = 20, Template:Arabiyyah Template:Semxlit = 30, ... Template:Arabiyyah Template:Semxlit = 200, ..., Template:Arabiyyah Template:Semxlit = 1000. This is sometimes used to produce chronograms. *Standard form of number 2 in Egypt is slightly different
History
The Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabatean alphabet used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic, itself descended from Phoenician. The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late fourth-century inscription from Jabal Ram (50 km east of Aqaba), but the first dated one is a trilingual inscription at Zebed in Syria from 512. However, the epigraphic record is extremely sparse, with only five certainly pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions surviving, though some others may be pre-Islamic. Later, dots were added above and below the letters to differentiate them (the Aramaic model had fewer phonemes than the Arabic, and some originally distinct Aramaic letters had become indistinguishable in shape, so in the early writings 15 distinct letter-shapes had to do duty for 28 sounds!) The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic papyrus (PERF 558), dated April 643, although they did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts like the Qurʼan were frequently memorized; this practice, which survives even today, probably arose partially from a desire to avoid the great ambiguity of the script.
Yet later, vowel signs and hamzas were added, beginning sometime in the last half of the seventh century, roughly contemporaneous with the first invention of Syriac and Hebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned by an Umayyad governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: a dot above = Template:Semxlit, a dot below = Template:Semxlit, a dot on the line = Template:Semxlit, and doubled dots gave tanwin. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by al-Farahidi.
Arabic alphabets of other languages
| Worldwide use of the Arabic alphabet | |
|---|---|
| Image:Arabic alphabet world distribution.gif | |
| → Countries where the Arabic script is the only official orthography | |
| → Countries where the Arabic script is used alongside other orthographies. | |
Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages other than Arabic, including Persian, Kurdish, Malay and Urdu. 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 Template:IPA phoneme, so many languages add their own letter to represent Template:IPA in the script, though the specific letter used varies from language to language. These modifications tend to fall into groups: all the Indian and Turkic languages written in Arabic script tend to use the Persian modified letters); whereas West African languages tend to imitate those of Ajami, and Indonesian ones 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.
Current uses of the alphabet for other languages
The Arabic alphabet is currently used for:
- 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).Kashmiri also uses it's own script-Sharda;
- 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.
Former uses of the alphabet for other languages
In the past, Arabic script has also been used to represent some languages now written with a different script, such as the Latin alphabet. 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.
- 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 (only for literary purposes); (presently written in the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet scripts)
- Chaghatai across Central Asia;
- Chechen (for some years: from October Revolution (1917) until 1928);
- Chinese and Dungan, among the Chinese Hui Muslims[1];
- Fulani, where the script is known as Ajami script;
- 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 Devanagari - the script also known for being currently 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.
Computers and the Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6 and Unicode, in the latter thanks to the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, neither of these sets indicate the form each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.
When one wants to encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The Arabic presentation forms A (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) and Arabic presentation forms B (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contain most of the characters with contextual variation as well as the extended characters appropriate for other languages. These effects are better achieved in Unicode by using the zero width joiner and non-joiner, as these presentation forms are deprecated in Unicode, and should generally only be used within the internals of text-rendering software, when using Unicode as an intermediate form for conversion between character encodings, or for backwards compatibility with implementations that rely on the hard-coding of glyph forms.
Finally, the Unicode encoding of Arabic is in logical order, that is, the characters are entered, and stored in computer memory, in the order that they are written and pronounced without worrying about the direction in which they will be displayed on paper or on the screen. Again, it is left to the rendering engine to present the characters in the correct direction, using Unicode's bi-directional text features. In this regard, if the Arabic words on this page are written left to right, it is an indication that the Unicode rendering engine used to display them is out-of-date. For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at http://www.unicode.org/
Arabic keyboard layout
For entering Arabic letters in all Microsoft products, most Western students of Arabic prefer the free Arabic QWERTY keyboard (see image below) because it is the most intuitive for a non-native Arabic speaker to use, which in turn makes it very easy to memorize where all the Arabic keystrokes are located. For example, the letter that corresponds to the sound of the Q is the same for both Arabic and English (see keyboard image below).
If you can not get accustomed to the Arabic keyboards provided by Microsoft (see keyboard image below) and you do not want to define your own Arabic keyboard from scratch, it is recommended to install and use the Arabic keyboard available for download at this website.
This Arabic keyboard created by Zsigri more closely resembles the sounds and shapes of the US English QWERTY keyboard. It is without a doubt more intuitive than the Arabic keyboards that Microsoft provides.
Image:Zsigri vs Microsoft Arabic Keyboards A Madhany.png
Image:Microsoft Arabic Keyboards Madhany.png
See also
- Arabic calligraphy - considered an art form in its own right
- Hindu-Arabic numerals
- Arabic transliteration
- Arabic Chat Alphabet
- ArabTeX - provides Arabic support for TeX and LaTeX
- Harakat
- Jawi - an adapted Arabic alphabet for the Malay language
- South Arabian alphabet
External links
- Declan Software's Arabic alphabet learning software with audio and animations
- online Arabic Keyboard
- Arabic Writing and Reading never been Easier with MP3
- Arab writing and calligraphy
- Article about Arabic alphabet
- Arabic alphabet and calligraphy
- aralpha (freeware) to learn the characters
- Guide to the use of Arabic in Windows, major word processors and web browsers
- Learn the Arabic Script Online
This article contains major sections of text from the very detailed article Arabic alphabet/from the French Wikipedia, which has been partially translated into English. Further translation of that page, and its incorporation into the text here, are welcomed.Template:Link FA Template:Link FA
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