Arabic alphabet

Writing system of the Arabic language

For the Arabic script as it is used by other languages, see Arabic script.

Arabic alphabet

Script type|

Abjad

Period

| 3rd century CE – present[1]
Direction| Right-to-left script
Languages| Arabic
Related scripts

Parent systems

Egyptian hieroglyphics

* Proto-Sinaitic
* Phoenician
* Aramaic
* Nabataean
* Arabic alphabet

ISO 15924
ISO 15924| Arab (160), ​Arabic
Unicode

Unicode alias

| Arabic

Unicode range

* U+0600–U+06FF
Arabic,
* U+0750–U+077F
Arabic Supplement,
* U+0870-U+089F
Arabic Extended-B,
* U+08A0–U+08FF
Arabic Extended-A,
* U+FB50–U+FDFF
Arabic Presentation Forms-A,
* U+FE70–U+FEFF
Arabic Presentation Forms-B,
* U+10EC0-U+10EFF
Arabic Extended-C,
* U+1EE00–U+1EEFF
Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Arabic alphabet

ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي

* * *

Arabic script

* History
* Transliteration
* Diacritics
* Hamza
* Numerals
* Numeration

* v
* t
* e

History of the alphabet

* Egyptian hieroglyphs 32nd c. BCE
* Hieratic 32nd c. BCE
* Demotic 7th c. BCE
* Meroitic 3rd c. BCE
* Proto-Sinaitic 19th c. BCE
* Ugaritic 15th c. BCE
* Ancient South Arabian 9th c. BCE
* Geʽez c. 5th c. BCE
* Phoenician 12th c. BCE
* (see below)
* Hangul 1443
* Thaana c. 1601
* Adlam 1989

* * *

* Phoenician 12th c. BCE
* Paleo-Hebrew 10th c. BCE
* Samaritan 6th c. BCE
* Aramaic 8th c. BCE
* Unknown Kushan script 600–200 BCE
* Kharosthi 3rd c. BCE
* Brahmi 3rd c. BCE
* (Brahmic)
* Pallava 4th century
* Cham 4th century
* Dhives Akuru 6th century
* Khmer 611
* Tibetan 7th century
* ʼPhags-pa 1269
* Devanagari 10th century
* Canadian Aboriginal 1840
* Hebrew 3rd c. BCE
* Pahlavi 2nd c. BCE
* Avestan 4th century
* Palmyrene 1st c. BCE
* Nabataean 2nd c. BCE
* Arabic 4th century
* N'Ko 1949
* Syriac 1st century
* Sogdian 2nd century
* Old Turkic 8th century
* Old Hungarian c. 650
* Old Uyghur
* Mongolian 1204
* Mandaic 2nd century
* Greek 8th c. BCE
* Etruscan 8th c. BCE
* Latin 7th c. BCE
* Deseret 1854
* Great Lakes Algonquian 19th century
* Blackfoot 1888
* Fraser 1915
* Saanich 1978
* Osage 2006
* Runic 2nd century
* Ogham 4th century
* Lycian 5th c. BCE
* Coptic 3rd century
* Gothic 3rd century
* Armenian 405
* Caucasian Albanian c. 420
* Georgian c. 430
* Glagolitic 862
* Cyrillic c. 940
* Old Permic 1372
* Libyco-Berber 10th c. BCE
* Tifinagh 4th century
* Neo-Tifinagh 1970
* Paleohispanic 7th c. BCE

Countries and regions that use the Arabic script:

as the sole official script

a co-official script

The Arabic alphabet,[a] or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters,[b] of which most have contextual letterforms. Unlike the modern Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case. The Arabic alphabet is an abjad, with only consonants required to be written (though the long vowels – ā ī ū – are also written, with letters used for consonants); due to its optional use of diacritics to notate vowels, it is considered an impure abjad.[2]

## Letters

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The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Forms using the Arabic script to write other languages added and removed letters: for example ⟨پ⟩ is often used to represent /p/ in adaptations of the Arabic script. Unlike Greek-derived alphabets, Arabic has no distinct upper and lower case letterforms.

Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots (ʾiʿjām) above or below their central part (rasm). These dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters ب b, ت t, and ث th have the same basic shape, but with one dot added below, two dots added above, and three dots added above respectively. The letter ن n also has the same form in initial and medial forms, with one dot added above, though it is somewhat different in its isolated and final forms. Historically, they were often omitted, in a writing style called rasm.

Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most letters within a word directly joined to adjacent letters.

### Alphabetical order

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There are two main collating sequences ('alphabetical orderings') for the Arabic alphabet: Hija'i, and Abjadi.

The Hija'i order (هِجَائِيّ Hijāʾiyy /hid͡ʒaːʔijj/) is the more common order and it is used when sorting lists of words and names, such as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries.

The original Abjadi order (أَبْجَدِيّ ʾabjadiyy /ʔabd͡ʒadijj/) derives from that used by the Phoenician alphabet and therefore resembles the sequence of letters in Hebrew and Greek. Letters are also assigned numerical values (abjad numerals) for purposes of numerology, as is done in Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy. Letters in the Hija'i order are not considered to have numerical values.

#### Hijaʼi

[edit]

Modern dictionaries and reference books use the hijāʾī alphabetical order instead of the Abjadi alphabetical order, in which letters are arranged mainly by similarity of shape. The hijaʼi order is never used for numerals.

Common hijaʼi order  ا | ب | ت | ث | ج | ح | خ | د | ذ | ر | ز | س | ش | ص | ض | ط | ظ | ع | غ | ف | ق | ك | ل | م | ن | ه | و | ي

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ʾ | b | t | th | j | ḥ | kh | d | dh | r | z | s | sh | ṣ | ḍ | ṭ | ẓ | ʻ | gh | f | q | k | l | m | n | h | w | y
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

A different hijaʼi order was used in the Maghreb but is now considered obsolete. The sequence is:[3]

Maghrebian hijaʼi order (obsolete)  ا | ب | ت | ث | ج | ح | خ | د | ذ | ر | ز | ط | ظ | ك | ل | م | ن | ص | ض | ع | غ | ف | ق | س | ش | ه | و | ي

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ʾ | b | t | th | j | ḥ | kh | d | dh | r | z | ṭ | ẓ | k | l | m | n | ṣ | ḍ | ʻ | gh | f | q | s | sh | h | w | y
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
The colors indicate which letters have different positions from the previous table

The al-iklīl order, now obsolete, also arranged letters mainly by shape. It was first used in the 10th-century work Kitāb al-Iklīl. The sequence is:[4]

Al-iklīl order (obsolete)  ا | ب | ت | ث | ج | ح | خ | د | ذ | ك | ل | م | و | ن | ص | ض | ع | غ | ط | ظ | ف | ق | ر | ز | ه | س | ش | ي

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ʾ | b | t | th | j | ḥ | kh | d | dh | k | l | m | w | n | ṣ | ḍ | ʻ | gh | ṭ | ẓ | f | q | r | z | h | s | sh | y
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
The colors indicate which letters have different positions from the previous table
hijāʾī collation compared to Hebrew, Syriac, and Greek

#### Abjadi

[edit]

The abjadi order is the usual Arabic order in dictionaries and reference books of the late 1st millennium to the early 2nd millennium. However, this Arabic adjadi order is not a simple correspondence with the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, as the latter has a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter samek 𐡎‎, which has no cognate letter in the Arabic alphabet historically because Proto-Semitic fricatives *š (represented by šin 𐡔 in Aramaic[note 1]) and *s (represented by samek 𐡎‎ in Aramaic[note 2]) had merged into Arabic s س,[5][6] while Proto-Semitic *ś became Arabic š ش.

The loss of sameḵ was compensated for:

* In the Mashriqi abjad sequence, by splitting the letter šīn 𐡔 into two independent Arabic letters: ش shīn[note 3] and س sīn[note 4], with the latter taking the place of sameḵ 𐡎‎;
* And in the Maghrebi abjad sequence, by splitting the letter ṣāḏē 𐡑 into two independent Arabic letters: ض ḍad[note 5] and ص ṣad[note 6], with the latter taking the place of sameḵ 𐡎‎.

The six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end.

Common Abjadi sequence[3] ا | ب | ج | د | ه | و | ز | ح | ط | ي | ك | ل | م | ن | س | ع | ف | ص | ق | ر | ش | ت | ث | خ | ذ | ض | ظ | غ

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ʾ | b | j | d | h | w | z | ḥ | ṭ | y | k | l | m | n | s | ʻ | f | ṣ | q | r | sh | t | th | kh | dh | ḍ | ẓ | gh
1  | 2  | 3  | 4  | 5  | 6  | 7  | 8  | 9  | 10  | 11  | 12  | 13  | 14  | 15  | 16  | 17  | 18  | 19  | 20  | 21  | 22  | 23  | 24  | 25  | 26  | 27  | 28
1  | 2  | 3  | 4  | 5  | 6  | 7  | 8  | 9  | 10  | 20  | 30  | 40  | 50  | 60  | 70  | 80  | 90  | 100  | 200  | 300  | 400  | 500  | 600  | 700  | 800  | 900  | 1000
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

This is commonly vocalized as follows:

ʾabjad hawwaz ḥuṭṭī kalaman saʿfaṣ qarashat thakhadh ḍaẓagh.

Another vocalization is:

ʾabujadin hawazin ḥuṭiya kalman saʿfaṣ qurishat thakhudh ḍaẓugh[citation needed]
Maghrebian Abjadi sequence (quoted in apparently earliest authorities & considered older)[3][7] ا | ب | ج | د | ه | و | ز | ح | ط | ي | ك | ل | م | ن | ص | ع | ف | ض | ق | ر | س | ت | ث | خ | ذ | ظ | غ | ش

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ʾ | b | j | d | h | w | z | ḥ | ṭ | y | k | l | m | n | ṣ | ʻ | f | ḍ | q | r | s | t | th | kh | dh | ẓ | gh | sh
1  | 2  | 3  | 4  | 5  | 6  | 7  | 8  | 9  | 10  | 11  | 12  | 13  | 14  | 15  | 16  | 17  | 18  | 19  | 20  | 21  | 22  | 23  | 24  | 25  | 26  | 27  | 28
1  | 2  | 3  | 4  | 5  | 6  | 7  | 8  | 9  | 10  | 20  | 30  | 40  | 50  | 60  | 70  | 80  | 90  | 100  | 200  | 300  | 400  | 500  | 600  | 700  | 800  | 900  | 1000
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The colors indicate which letters have different positions from the previous table

This can be vocalized as:

ʾabujadin hawazin ḥuṭiya kalman ṣaʿfaḍ qurisat thakhudh ẓaghush

Notes:

1. ^ Aramaic š is from PSem. *š[5][6]
2. ^ Aramaic s is from PSem. *ś & *s[5][6]
3. ^ From PSem. *ś[5][6]
4. ^ From PSem. *š & *s[5][6]
5. ^ From PSem. *ṣ́[5][6]
6. ^ From PSem. *ṣ[5][6]

### Letter forms

[edit]

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The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position (IMFI). While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions. Generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters (و ,ز ,ر ,ذ ,د ,ا) can only be linked to their preceding letter. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), notably lām-alif لا,[8] which is the only mandatory ligature (the unligated combination ل‍ا is considered difficult to read).

#### Table of basic letters

[edit]

Arabic letters usage in Literary Arabic  Abjadi Order  | Romanization[c] | Letter
name in IPA | Letter
name in Arabic script[d] | Value in Literary Arabic (IPA)  | Contextual forms  | Isolated
form  | Hija'i

Order

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Maghreb  | Common  | Final  | Medial  | Initial
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1  | 1  | ʾ / ʔ, ā[e] | [ʔalif] | أَلِف | /ʔ/, /aː/[e] | ـا | ا | 1
2  | 2  | b | [baːʔ] | بَاء | /b/ | ـب | ـبـ | بـ | ب | 2
22  | 22  | t | [taːʔ] | تَاء | /t/ | ـت | ـتـ | تـ | ت | 3
23  | 23  | ṯ / th | [θaːʔ] | ثَاء | /θ/ | ـث | ـثـ | ثـ | ث | 4
3  | 3  | j | [d͡ʒiːm] | جِيم | /d͡ʒ/[f] | ـج | ـجـ | جـ | ج | 5
8  | 8  | ḥ | [ħaːʔ] | حَاء | /ħ/ | ـح | ـحـ | حـ | ح | 6
24  | 24  | ḵ / kh | [xaːʔ] | خَاء | /x/ | ـخ | ـخـ | خـ | خ | 7
4  | 4  | d | [daːl] | دَال | /d/ | ـد | د | 8
25  | 25  | ḏ / dh | [ðaːl] | ذَال | /ð/ | ـذ | ذ | 9
20  | 20  | r | [raːʔ] | رَاء | /r/ | ـر | ر | 10
7  | 7  | z | [zaːj] | زَاي [g] | /z/ | ـز | ز | 11
21  | 15  | s | [siːn] | سِين | /s/ | ـس | ـسـ | سـ | س | 12
28  | 21  | š / sh | [ʃiːn] | شِين | /ʃ/ | ـش | ـشـ | شـ | ش | 13
15  | 18  | ṣ | [sˤaːd] | صَاد | /sˤ/ | ـص | ـصـ | صـ | ص | 14
18  | 26  | ḍ | [dˤaːd] | ضَاد | /dˤ/ | ـض | ـضـ | ضـ | ض | 15
9  | 9  | ṭ | [tˤaːʔ] | طَاء | /tˤ/ | ـط | ـطـ | طـ | ط | 16
26  | 27  | ẓ | [ðˤaːʔ] | ظَاء | /ðˤ/ | ـظ | ـظـ | ظـ | ظ | 17
16  | 16  | ʻ / ʕ | [ʕajn] | عَيْن | /ʕ/ | ـع | ـعـ | عـ | ع | 18
27  | 28  | ḡ / gh | [ɣajn] | غَيْن | /ɣ/ | ـغ | ـغـ | غـ | غ | 19
17  | 17  | f | [faːʔ] | فَاء | /f/ | ـف | ـفـ | فـ | ف | 20
19  | 19  | q | [qaːf] | قَاف | /q/ | ـق | ـقـ | قـ | ق | 21
11  | 11  | k | [kaːf] | كَاف | /k/ | ـك | ـكـ | كـ | ك | 22
12  | 12  | l | [laːm] | لَام | /l/ | ـل | ـلـ | لـ | ل | 23
13  | 13  | m | [miːm] | مِيم | /m/ | ـم | ـمـ | مـ | م | 24
14  | 14  | n | [nuːn] | نُون | /n/ | ـن | ـنـ | نـ | ن | 25
5  | 5  | h | [haːʔ] | هَاء | /h/ | ـه‎ | ـهـ‎‎ | هـ‎ | ﻩ[h] | 26
6  | 6  | w, ū | [waːw] | وَاو | /w/, /uː/[i] | ـو | و | 27
10  | 10  | y, ī | [jaːʔ] | يَاء | /j/, /iː/[i] | ـي | ـيـ | يـ | ي[j] | 28
\-  | \-  | ʾ / ʔ | [hamza(h)] | هَمْزة | /ʔ/ | ء

(used in medial and final positions as an unlinked letter)

| -[k]

Notes

1. ^ Arabic: الْأَبْجَدِيَّة الْعَرَبِيَّة al-ʾabjadiyyah l-ʿarabiyyah [alʔabd͡ʒaˈdijːa‿lʕaraˈbijːa]
2. ^ The Hamza <ء> can be considered a letter but it is not part of the alphabet.
3. ^ The romanization depends on each system or country; for example ج is romanized to G in Egypt and J in most other Arabic countries.
4. ^ The Arabic letter names below are the standard and most universally used names, other names (e.g. letter names in Egypt) might be used instead.
5. ^ a b Alif can represent different phonemes; initially: a/i/u /a, i, u/ or sometimes silent in the definite article ال (a)l-. Medially and finally it represents a long vowel ā /aː/. It is also used in some hamzah /ʔ/ forms, check #Hamzah forms
6. ^ When speaking Modern Standard Arabic (الفصحى al-Fuṣḥā) the ج pronunciation varies regionally, most prominently [d͡ʒ] in most of the Arabian Peninsula, parts of the Levant, parts of Egypt (especially the countryside and upper Egypt), Iraq, and northern-central Algeria, it is also considered as the predominant pronunciation of Literary Arabic when reciting the Quran and in Arabic studies outside the Arab world, [ʒ] in most of Northwest Africa and parts of the Levant (especially urban centers) and parts of the Arabian Peninsula, while [ɡ] is the standard pronunciation only in Egypt, ([ɡ] appears as a dialectal pronunciation in coastal Yemen, and coastal Oman), as well as [ɟ] in Sudan.
7. ^ ز the standard name of the letter is zāy زاي but it is sometimes miscalled "zayn" زين.
8. ^ In certain contexts such as serial numbers and license plates the initial form is used to prevent confusion with the western number zero or Eastern Arabic Numeral for 5(٥). It's also worth mentioning that the initial form هـ is usually used when writing the letter separately, rather than using the isolated form ه.
9. ^ a b The letters ⟨و⟩ and ⟨ي⟩ are used to transcribe the vowels /oː/ and /eː/ respectively in loanwords and dialects. ⟨و⟩ also appears as a silent letter in the name عمرو Amr /ʕamr/ which is sometimes romanized wrongly as Amro or Amru.
10. ^ in Egypt and Sudan, the yā’ ي is dotless in the isolated and final position, merging with the ʾalif maqṣūrah ى.
11. ^ can be considered a letter and plays an important role in Arabic spelling but not considered part of the alphabet.

* See the article Romanization of Arabic for details on various transliteration schemes. Arabic language speakers may usually not follow a standardized scheme when transcribing words or names. Some Arabic letters which do not have an equivalent in English (such as ط) are often spelled as numbers when Romanized. Also names are regularly transcribed as pronounced locally, not as pronounced in Literary Arabic (if they were of Arabic origin).
* Regarding pronunciation, the phonemic values given are those of Modern Standard Arabic, which is taught in schools and universities. In practice, pronunciation may vary considerably from region to region. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the articles Arabic phonology and varieties of Arabic.
* The names of the Arabic letters can be thought of as abstractions of an older version where they were meaningful words in the Proto-Semitic language.
* Six letters (و ز ر ذ د ا) do not have a distinct medial form and have to be written with their final form without being connected to the next letter. Their initial form matches the isolated form. The following letter is written in its initial form, or isolated form if it is the final letter in the word.
* The letter alif originated in the Phoenician alphabet as a consonant-sign indicating a glottal stop. Today it has lost its function as a consonant, and, together with ya’ and wāw, is a mater lectionis, a consonant sign standing in for a long vowel (see below), or as support for certain diacritics (maddah and hamzah).
* Arabic currently uses a punctuation mark called the hamzah (ء) to denote the glottal stop [ʔ], written alone or with a carrier:
* alone: ء
* with a carrier: إ أ (above or under an alif), ؤ (above a wāw), ئ (above a dotless yā’ or yā’ hamzah).

In academic work, the hamza is transliterated with the modifier letter right half ring (ʾ) or (ʔ) on Wiktionary, while the modifier letter left half ring (ʿ) or (ʕ) on Wiktionary, transliterates the letter ‘ayn (ع), which represents a different sound, not found in English.
The hamza has a single form, since it is never linked to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes combined with a wāw, yā’, or alif, and in that case the carrier behaves like an ordinary wāw, yā’, or alif, check the table below:

#### Hamza forms

[edit]

Further information: Hamza § Arabic "seat" rules

The Hamza /ʔ/ (glottal stop) can be written either alone, as if it were a letter, or with a carrier, when it becomes a diacritic.[9] Hamzat al-madd (آ) indicates a long /ʔ/ \+ /aː/ sound as in آسف ʾāsif /ʔaː.sif/ "sorry", while the other Hamzas indicate the glottal stop /ʔ/ in different positions of the word as in مسؤول masʾūl /mas.ʔuːl/ and سائل sāʾil /saː.ʔil/, the writing of the Hamza is based on a set of rules, For the writing rule of each form, see Hamza § Arabic "seat" rules.

Name  | Contextual forms  | Isolated  | Position occurrence

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Final  | Medial  | Initial
Hamzah ʿalā al-ʾalif (هَمْزَة عَلَى الأَلِفْ)  | ـأ | أ | Initial / Medial / Final positions
Hamzah taḥt al-ʾalif (هَمْزَة تَحْت الأَلِفْ)  | \-  | إ | Initial position only
Hamzah ʿalā as-saṭr (هَمْزَة عَلَى السَّطْر)  | ء | \-  | ء | Medial / Final only
Hamzah ʿalā al-wāw (هَمْزَة عَلَى الوَاو)  | ـؤ | \-  | ؤ | Medial / Final only
Hamzah ʿalā nabra (هَمْزَة عَلَى نَبْرَة) (medial)
Hamzah ʿalā al-yāʾ (هَمْزَة عَلَى اليَاء) (final)  | ـئ | ـئـ | ئـ | \-  | ئ | Medial / Final only
Hamzat al-madd (هَمْزَةْ المد)  | \-  | ـآ | آ | Initial / Medial only

#### Modified letters

[edit]

The following are not individual letters, but rather different contextual variants of some of the Arabic letters.

Name  | Contextual forms  | Isolated  | Translit.  | Notes and Phonemic Value (IPA)

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Final  | Medial  | Initial
tāʾ marbūṭah

(تَاءْ مَرْبُوطَة)

| ـة | (only final)  | ة | h or t | (aka "correlated tā'")

used in final position, often for denoting singular feminine noun/word or to make the noun/word feminine, it has two pronunciations rules; often unpronounced or pronounced /h/ as in مدرسة madrasa [madrasa] / madrasah [madrasah] "school" and pronounced /t/ in construct state as in مدرسة سارة madrasatu sāra "Sara's school".

In rare irregular noun/word cases, it appears to denote masculine singular nouns as in أسامة ʾusāma, or some masculine plural noun forms as in بَقَّالَة baqqāla plural of بَقَّال baqqāl.

plural nouns: āt (a preceding letter followed by a fatḥah alif \+ tāʾ = ـَات‎)

ʾalif maqṣūrah (أَلِفْ مَقْصُورَة)  | ـى | (only final)  | ى | ā | Two uses:
1\. The letter called أَلِفْ مَقْصُورَة alif maqṣūrah or ْأَلِف لَيِّنَة alif layyinah (as opposed to أَلِف مَمْدُودَة alif mamdūda ا), pronounced /aː/ in Modern Standard Arabic. It is used only at the end of words in some special cases to denote the neuter/non-feminine aspect of the word (mainly verbs), where tā’ marbūṭah cannot be used.
[citation needed]
2\. A way of writing the letter ي yāʾ without its dots at the end of words, either traditionally or in contemporary use in Egypt and Sudan.

### Long vowels

[edit]

In the fully vocalized Arabic text found in texts such as the Quran, a long ā following a consonant other than a hamzah is written with a short a sign (fatḥah) on the consonant plus an ʾalif after it; long ī is written as a sign for short i (kasrah) plus a yāʾ; and long ū as a sign for short u (ḍammah) plus a wāw. Briefly, ᵃa = ā; ⁱy = ī; and ᵘw = ū. Long ā following a hamzah may be represented by an ʾalif maddah or by a free hamzah followed by an ʾalif (two consecutive ʾalifs are never allowed in Arabic).

The table below shows vowels placed above or below a dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or a shaddah sign. For clarity in the table, the primary letters on the left used to mark these long vowels are shown only in their isolated form. Most consonants do connect to the left with ʾalif, wāw and yāʾ written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the letter yāʾ in the last row may connect to the letter on its left, and then will use a medial or initial form. Use the table of primary letters to look at their actual glyph and joining types.

Long vowels (with fully vocalized text)  Unicode  | Letter with diacritic  | Name  | Trans.  | Variants  | Value

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|
|
|
|

064E 0627 | ـَـا‎  | ʾalif mamdūdah | ā | aa | /aː/
064E 0649 | ـَـى‎  | ʾalif maqṣūrah | ā | aa
064F 0648 | ـُـو‎  | wāw mamdūdah | ū | uw/ ou | /uː/
0650 064A | ـِـي‎  | yāʾ mamdūdah | ī | iy | /iː/
Regional Variation (Egypt and Sudan)
0650 0649 | ـِـى‎[a] | yāʾ mamdūdah | ī | iy | /iː/

In unvocalized text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the vowel in question: ʾalif mamdūdah/maqṣūrah, wāw, or yāʾ. Long vowels written in the middle of a word of unvocalized text are treated like consonants with a sukūn (see below) in a text that has full diacritics. Here also, the table shows long vowel letters only in isolated form for clarity.

Combinations وا and يا are always pronounced wā and yā respectively. The exception is the suffix ـوا۟ in verb endings where ʾalif is silent, resulting in ū or aw. In addition, when transliterating names and loanwords, Arabic language speakers write out most or all the vowels as long (ā with ا ʾalif, ē and ī with ي yaʾ, and ō and ū with و wāw), meaning it approaches a true alphabet.

### Diphthongs

[edit]

The diphthongs حروف اللين ḥurūfu l-līn /aj/ and /aw/ are represented in vocalized text as follows:

Diphthongs
(fully vocalized text)  | Trans.  | Value

|
|

064A 064E
ـَـي‎  | ay | /aj/
0648 064E
ـَـو‎  | aw | /aw/
Other Diphthongs
ـِـيّ‎  | iyy | /ijj/

A final yaʾ is usually written at the end of words for nisba (اَلنِّسْبَة nisbah) which is a common suffix to form adjectives of relation or pertinence. The suffix is ـِيّ -iyy for masculine (ـِيَّة -iyya(t)- for feminine); for example اِشْتِرَاكِيّ ištirākiyy "socialist", it is also used for a singulative ending that applies to human or other sentient beings as in جندي jundiyy "a soldier". However nowadays this final yaʾ is mostly pronounced with a long yaʾ (yāʾ mamdūdah) -ī as in اِشْتِرَاكِي ištirākī /iʃtiraːkiː/ instead of اِشْتِرَاكِيّ ištirākiyy /iʃtiraːkijj/. A similar mistake happens at the end of some third person plural verbs as in جَرَوْا jaraw "they ran" which is pronounced nowadays as جَرُوا jarū /d͡ʒaruː/.

### Ligatures

[edit]

Components of a ligature for "Allah":
1\. alif
2\. hamzat waṣl (ْهَمْزَة وَصْل‎)
3\. lām
4\. lām
5\. shadda (شَدَّة‎)
6\. dagger alif (أَلِفْ خَنْجَریَّة‎)
7\. hāʾ

The use of ligature in Arabic is common. There is one compulsory ligature, that for lām ل + alif ا, which exists in two forms. All other ligatures, of which there are many,[10] are optional.

Contextual forms  | Name  | Trans.  | Value

|
|
|

Final  | Medial  | Initial  | Isolated
ﻼ‎ | ﻻ‎ | lām + alif  | lā | /laː/

A more complex ligature that combines as many as seven distinct components is commonly used to represent the word Allāh الله. The only ligature within the primary range of Arabic script in Unicode (U+06xx) is lām \+ alif. This is the only one compulsory for fonts and word-processing. Other ranges are for compatibility to older standards and contain other ligatures, which are optional.

Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic, the ligature displayed above should be identical to this one, `U+FEFB`

## Diacritics

[edit]

Main article: Arabic diacritics

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|

Users of Arabic usually write long vowels but omit short ones, so readers must utilize their knowledge of the language in order to supply the missing vowels. However, in the education system and particularly in classes on Arabic grammar these vowels are used since they are crucial to the grammar. An Arabic sentence can have a completely different meaning by a subtle change of the vowels. This is why in an important text such as the Qur’ān the three basic vowel signs are mandated, like the Arabic diacritics and other types of marks, like the cantillation signs.

### Short vowels

[edit]

In the Arabic handwriting of everyday use, in general publications, and on street signs, short vowels are typically not written. On the other hand, copies of the Qur’ān cannot be endorsed by the religious institutes that review them unless the diacritics are included. Children's books, elementary school texts, and Arabic-language grammars in general will include diacritics to some degree. These are known as "vocalized" texts.

Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable, called ḥarakāt. All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; in Arabic, words like "Ali" or "alif", for example, start with a consonant: ‘Aliyy, alif.

Short vowels
(fully vocalized text)  | Code  | Name  | Name in Arabic script  | Trans.  | Phonemic Value  | Remarks

|
|
|
|
|
|

ــَـ ‎  | 064E | fat·ḥah  |  فَتْحَة ‎  | a | /a/ | Ranges from [æ], [a], [ä], [ɑ], [ɐ], to [e], depending on the native dialect, position, and stress.
ــُـ ‎  | 064F | ḍammah |  ضَمَّة ‎  | u | /u/ | Ranges from [ʊ], [o], to [u], depending on the native dialect, position, and stress. Approximated to English "U" (as in "put")

ــِـ ‎

| 0650 | kasrah |  كَسْرَة ‎  | i | /i/ | Ranges from [ɪ], [e], to [i], depending on the native dialect, position, and stress. Approximated to English "I" (as in "pick")

### Nunation

[edit]

Main article: Nunation

Nunation (Arabic: تنوين tanwīn) is the addition of a final -n  to a noun or adjective. The vowel before it indicates grammatical case. In written Arabic, nunation is indicated by doubling the vowel diacritic at the end of the word, e.g. شُكْرًا šukran [ʃukran] 'thank you'.

Nunation - tanwīn forms

Symbol  | ـٌ‎ | ـٍ‎ | ـً‎
Transliteration  | -un | -in | -an

### Gemination

[edit]

Main article: Shadda

Gemination is the doubling of a consonant. Instead of writing the letter twice, Arabic places a W-shaped sign called shaddah above it.

General Unicode  | Name  | Name in Arabic script  | Transliteration

|
|
|

0651  |

ــّـ ‎

| shaddah | شَدَّة‎ | (consonant doubled/geminated)

### Vowel omission

[edit]

An Arabic syllable can be open (ending with a vowel) or closed (ending with a consonant):

* open: CV [consonant-vowel] (long or short vowel)
* closed: CVC (short vowel only)

A normal text is composed only of a series of consonants plus vowel-lengthening letters; thus, the word qalb, "heart", is written qlb, and the word qalaba "he turned around", is also written qlb. To write qalaba without this ambiguity, we could indicate that the l is followed by a short a by writing a fatḥah above it.

To write qalb, we would instead indicate that the l is followed by no vowel by marking it with a diacritic called sukūn ( ْ‎), like this: قلْب. This is one step down from full vocalization, where the vowel after the q would also be indicated by a fatḥah: قَلْب.

The Qurʾān is traditionally written in full vocalization.

The long i sound in some editions of the Qur’ān is written with a kasrah followed by a diacritic-less y, and long u by a ḍammah followed by a bare w. In others, these y and w carry a sukūn. Outside of the Qur’ān, the latter convention is extremely rare, to the point that y with sukūn will be unambiguously read as the diphthong /aj/, and w with sukūn will be read /aw/.

For example, the letters m-y-l can be read like English meel or mail, or (theoretically) also like mayyal or mayil. But if a sukūn is added on the y then the m cannot have a sukūn (because two letters in a row cannot be sukūnated), cannot have a ḍammah (because there is never an uy sound in Arabic unless there is another vowel after the y), and cannot have a kasrah (because kasrah before sukūnated y is never found outside the Qur’ān), so it must have a fatḥah and the only possible pronunciation is /majl/ (meaning mile, or even e-mail). By the same token, m-y-t with a sukūn over the y can be mayt but not mayyit or meet, and m-w-t with a sukūn on the w can only be mawt, not moot (iw is impossible when the w closes the syllable).

Vowel marks are always written as if the i‘rāb vowels were in fact pronounced, even when they must be skipped in actual pronunciation. So, when writing the name Aḥmad, it is optional to place a sukūn on the ḥ, but a sukūn is forbidden on the d, because it would carry a ḍammah if any other word followed, as in Aḥmadu zawjī "Ahmad is my husband".

Another example: the sentence that in correct literary Arabic must be pronounced Aḥmadu zawjun shirrīr "Ahmad is a wicked husband", is usually pronounced (due to influence from vernacular Arabic varieties) as Aḥmad zawj shirrīr. Yet, for the purposes of Arabic grammar and orthography, is treated as if it were not mispronounced and as if yet another word followed it, i.e., if adding any vowel marks, they must be added as if the pronunciation were Aḥmadu zawjun sharrīrun with a tanwīn 'un' at the end. So, it is correct to add an un tanwīn sign on the final r, but actually pronouncing it would be a hypercorrection. Also, it is never correct to write a sukūn on that r, even though in actual pronunciation it is (and in correct Arabic MUST be) sukūned.

Of course, if the correct i‘rāb is a sukūn, it may be optionally written.

General Unicode  | Name  | Name in Arabic script  | Translit.  | Phonemic Value (IPA)

|
|
|
|

0652  |  ــْـ ‎  | sukūn  | سُكُون | (no vowel with this consonant letter or
diphthong with this long vowel letter)  | ∅

The sukūn is also used for transliterating words into the Arabic script. The English name "Mark" is written مارك, for example, might be written with a sukūn above the ر to signify that there is no vowel sound between that letter and the ك.

### Additional diacritics

[edit]

These diacritics are uncommon in modern publications but are often used in Quran and some manuscripts.

General Unicode  | Name  | Name in Arabic script  | Translit.  | Phonemic Value (IPA)

|
|
|
|

0670  |  ــٰـ ‎  | alif khanjariyyah  | أَلِف خَنْجَرِيَّة | it indicates that the consonant is followed by a long ā, where the alif is normally not written.  | /aː/
|  | hamzat al-waṣl | هَمْزَةُ الْوَصْل‎ | It indicates that the ʾalif is not pronounced as a glottal stop (written as the hamza)  | ∅

ٰThe alif khanjariyyah (أَلِف خَنْجَرِيَّة, 'dagger ’alif') is written as short vertical stroke on top of a letter. It indicates a long /aː/ sound for which alif is normally not written. For example: ⟨هَٰذَا⟩ (hādhā) or ⟨رَحْمَٰن⟩ (raḥmān).

The Wasla or hamzat al-waṣl (هَمْزَةُ ٱلْوَصْلِ, 'hamza of connection') is a variant of the letter hamza (ء) resembling part of the letter ṣād (ص) that is rarely placed over the letter ʾalif (أَلِف الْوَصْلِ ʾalif al-waṣl (ا)) to form (ٱ) at the beginning of the word (ٱ). It indicates that the ʾalif is not pronounced as a glottal stop (written as the hamza), but that the word is connected to the previous word (like liaison in French). Outside of vocalised liturgical texts, the waṣla is usually not written.[11][12] e.g. Abdullah عَبْدُ ٱلله can be written with hamzat al-wasl on the first letter of the word ٱلله but it is mostly written without it عَبْدُ الله.

## Additional letters

[edit]

### Regional variations

[edit]

Some letters take a traditionally different form in specific regions:

Letter | Explanation

|

Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial
ی‎  | ـی‎  | ـیـ‎  | یـ‎  | The traditional style to write or print the letter, and remains so in the Nile Valley region (Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan... etc.) and sometimes Maghreb; yā’ ي is dotless in the isolated and final position. Merging with the ʾalif maqṣūrah ى; e.g. على /ʕalaː/ "on" and علي /ʕaliː/ "Ali" are both written على in Egypt and Sudan.
ک‎  | ـک‎  | ـکـ‎  | کـ‎  | An alternative version of final kāf ـک‎ is used (instead of ـك) in some script variants, for example in the Madani script which is used on road signs in Medina and on the logo of the chemical company SABIC written سابک‎‎.
ڢ‎  | ـڢ‎  | ـڢـ‎  | ڢـ‎  | An obsolete traditional Maghrebi variant of fā’ ف.
ڧ/ٯ‎ | ـڧ/ـٯ‎ | ـڧـ/ـٯـ‎  | ڧـ/ٯـ‎  | An obsolete traditional Maghrebi variant of qāf ق. Generally dotless in isolated and final positions and dotted in the initial and medial forms.

### Non-standard letters

[edit]

Some modified letters are used to represent non-native sounds to Modern Standard Arabic. These letters are used as an optional alternative in transliterated names, loanwords and dialectal words. The usage of these letters depends on the writer and their country of origin and their usage is not mandatory.

The phoneme /ɡ/ (considered a standard pronunciation of ج in Egypt, Oman, and coastal Yemen) has the highest number of variations when writing loanwords or foreign proper nouns in Literary Arabic, and it can be written with either the standard letters ج, غ, ق, and ك or with the non-standard letters ڨ‎‎‎ (used only in Tunisia and Algeria), ڭ (used only in Morocco), and گ (used mainly in Iraq) for example "Golf" pronounced /ɡoːlf/ can be written جولف, غولف, قولف, كولف, ڨولف‎‎‎, ڭولف or گولف depending on the writer and their country of origin. On the other hand, /ɡ/ is considered a native phoneme in most Arabic dialects, either as a reflex of ج as in lower Egypt, parts of Oman and parts of Yemen (e.g. جمل [gamal]) or as a reflex of ق as in most of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Sudan, and parts of Egypt, Levant and North Africa (e.g. قال [gaːl]).

Letter | Phoneme | Note

|
|

پ‎  | /p/ | Sometimes used when transliterating foreign names and loanwords instead of bā’ ب. only used in foreign words.
ڤ‎  | /v/ | Sometimes used when transliterating foreign names and loanwords instead of fā’ ف.[13] only used in foreign words.
ڥ‎  | Only used in Algeria and Tunisia when transliterating foreign names and loanwords instead of fā’ ف, this form is used to distinguish it from ڨ. only used in foreign words.
ڨ‎  | /g/ | Only in Algeria and Tunisia /g/ is officially written using ڨ or ق including in city names e.g. the city of Guelma is written ڨالمة or قالمة [ɡelmæ], Gafsa is written ڨفصة or قفصة [gafsˤa], and Gabès is written ڨابس or قابس [gaːbis].
ڭ‎  | Only in Morocco /g/ is officially written using ڭ or ك including in city names; e.g. the city of Agadir is written أڭادير or أكادير [ʔaɡaːdiːr].
گ‎  | Used in Gulf and Mesopotamian Arabic but only when writing dialectal words (e.g. گمر [ɡʊmər] "moon" instead of Standard Arabic قمر [qamar]).
چ‎  | /t͡ʃ/ | Used in colloquial Gulf and Mesopotamian Arabic but only when writing dialectal words where /t͡ʃ/ is considered a native phoneme/allophone (e.g. چلب [t͡ʃəlb] "dog" instead of the standard كلب [kalb]). While in Standard Arabic throughout the Arab world, the sequence ت /t/ \+ ش /ʃ/ (/tʃ/) is usually preferred (e.g. تشاد [tʃaːd] "Chad", التشيك [at.tʃiːk] "Czechia" and تشيلي [tʃiː.liː] "Chile").
/ʒ/ | Used in Egypt when transliterating foreign names and loanwords where standard ج is mostly pronounced /ɡ/ as in the city of Giza is written الجيزة [elˈgiːzæ]., (e.g. چيبة or جيبة [ʒiː.ba] "skirt"). only used in foreign words.

Note: The sounds /p/ and /v/ are non-native to most Arabic dialects (excl. Anatolian Arabic where ذِئْب "Wolf" is pronounced vīp [viːp][14] instead of Standard Arabic [ðɪʔb]), while /g/, /t͡ʃ/ and /ʒ/ appear as a native phoneme or allophone in many dialects.

### Used in languages other than Arabic

[edit]

Further information: Arabic script § Additional letters used in other languages

## Numerals

[edit]

Main articles: Western Arabic numerals and Eastern Arabic numerals

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Western
(Maghreb) | Eastern
(Mashriq) | Eastern

|
|

Persian  | Urdu
0  | ٠ | ۰ | ۰
1  | ١ | ۱ | ۱
2  | ٢ | ۲ | ۲
3  | ٣ | ۳ | ۳
4  | ٤ | ۴ | ۴
5  | ٥ | ۵ | ۵
6  | ٦ | ۶ | ۶
7  | ٧ | ۷ | ۷
8  | ٨ | ۸ | ۸
9  | ٩ | ۹ | ۹
10  | ١٠ | ۱۰ | ۱۰

There are two main kinds of numerals used along with Arabic text; Western Arabic numerals and Eastern Arabic numerals. In most of present-day North Africa, the usual Western Arabic numerals are used. Like Western Arabic numerals, in Eastern Arabic numerals, the units are always right-most, and the highest value left-most. Eastern Arabic numbers are written from left to right.

### Letters as numerals

[edit]

Main article: Abjad numerals

In addition, the Arabic alphabet can be used to represent numbers (Abjad numerals). This usage is based on the ʾabjadī order of the alphabet. أ ʾalif is 1, ب bāʾ is 2, ج jīm is 3, and so on until ي yāʾ = 10, ك kāf = 20, ل lām = 30, ..., ر rāʾ = 200, ..., غ ghayn = 1000. This is sometimes used to produce chronograms.

## History

[edit]

Main article: History of the Arabic alphabet

Evolution of early Arabic calligraphy (9th–11th century). The Basmala is taken as an example, from Kufic Qur’ān manuscripts. (1) Early 9th century script used no dots or diacritic marks;[15] (2) and (3) in the 9th–10th century during the Abbasid dynasty, Abu al-Aswad's system used red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel. Later, a second system of black dots was used to differentiate between letters like fā’ and qāf;[16] (4) in the 11th century (al-Farāhīdī's system) dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels. This system is the one used today.[17]

The Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabataean script used to write Nabataean Aramaic. A transitional phase, between the Nabataean Aramaic script and a subsequent, recognizably Arabic script, is known as Nabataean Arabic. The pre-Islamic phase of the script as it existed in the fifth and sixth centuries, once it had become recognizably similar to the script as it came to be known in the Islamic era, is known as Paleo-Arabic.[18]

The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late fourth-century inscription from Jabal Ram 50 km east of ‘Aqabah in Jordan, but the Zabad trilingual inscription is the earliest dated Arabic text from 512, and was discovered in Syria.[19] Nevertheless, the epigraphic record is extremely sparse. Later, dots were added above and below the letters to differentiate them. (The Aramaic language had fewer phonemes than the Arabic, and some originally distinct Aramaic letters had become indistinguishable in shape, so that in the early writings 14 distinct letter-shapes had to do duty for 28 sounds; cf. the similarly ambiguous Book Pahlavi.)

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 were and still are frequently memorized, especially in Qurʾan memorization.

Later still, vowel marks and the hamza were introduced, beginning some time in the latter half of the 7th century, preceding the first invention of Syriac and Tiberian vocalizations. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned in the Umayyad era by Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali, a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u, and doubled dots indicated nunation. 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-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi.

### Other tributes and alphabets written in Arabic dialects

[edit]

Arabic dialects were written in different alphabets before the spread of the Arabic alphabet currently in use. The most important of these alphabets and inscriptions are the Safaitic inscriptions, amounting to 30,000 inscriptions discovered in the Levant desert.[20]

There are about 3,700 inscriptions in Hismaic in central Jordan and northwest of the Arabian Peninsula, and Nabataean inscriptions, the most important of which are the Umm al-Jimal I inscription and the Numara inscription.[21]

Musnad script as is clear from one of the Sabaean inscriptions.

### Arabic printing

[edit]

Medieval Arabic blockprinting flourished from the 10th century until the 14th. It was devoted to tiny texts, which were usually used in amulets.

In 1514, following Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1450, Gregorio de Gregorii, a Venetian, published an entire book of hours in Arabic script; it was entitled Kitab Salat al-Sawa'i and was intended for eastern Christian communities.[22] Between 1580 and 1586, type designer Robert Granjon designed Arabic typefaces for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, and the Medici Oriental Press published many Christian prayer and scholarly Arabic texts in the late 16th century.[23]

A page from the manuscript of Al-Kamil's book on the making of the northern and southern astrolabe and their reasons for geometry and arithmetic by Ahmed bin Katheer Al-Farghani, where the letters appear in red in an arranged order expressing numbers.

Maronite monks at Monastery of Qozhaya on Mount Lebanon published the first Arabic books to use movable type in the Middle East. The monks employed Garshuni, the practice of writing Arabic using the Syriac script, usually by Christians.

Although Napoleon generally receives credit for introducing the printing press to Egypt during his invasion of the country in 1798, and though he did indeed bring printing presses and Arabic presses to print the French occupation's official newspaper Al-Tanbiyyah "The Courier," printing in the Arabic language had started several centuries earlier. A goldsmith (like Gutenberg) designed and implemented an Arabic script movable type printing press in the Middle East. The Lebanese Melkite monk Abdallah Zakher set up an Arabic printing press using movable type at the monastery of Saint John at the town of Dhour El Shuwayr in Mount Lebanon, the first homemade press in Lebanon using Arabic script. He cut the type molds and founded the typeface. The first book came off his press in 1734; this press continued in use until 1899.[24]

## Computers

[edit]

The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6, Windows-1256 and Unicode, the latter of which contains the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, none of the sets indicates the form that each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.

Each letter has a position-independent encoding in Unicode, and the rendering software can infer the correct glyph form (initial, medial, final or isolated) from its joining context. That is the current recommendation. However, for compatibility with previous standards, the initial, medial, final and isolated forms can also be encoded separately.

### Unicode

[edit]

Main article: Arabic script in Unicode

As of Unicode 16.0, the Arabic script is contained in the following blocks:[25]

* Arabic (0600–06FF, 256 characters)
* Arabic Supplement (0750–077F, 48 characters)
* Arabic Extended-A (08A0–08FF, 96 characters)
* Arabic Extended-B (0870–089F, 42 characters)
* Arabic Extended-C (10EC0–10EFF, 7 characters)
* Arabic Presentation Forms-A (FB50–FDFF, 631 characters)
* Arabic Presentation Forms-B (FE70–FEFF, 141 characters)
* Rumi Numeral Symbols (10E60–10E7F, 31 characters)
* Indic Siyaq Numbers (1EC70–1ECBF, 68 characters)
* Ottoman Siyaq Numbers (1ED00–1ED4F, 61 characters)
* Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols (1EE00—1EEFF, 143 characters)

The basic Arabic range encodes the standard letters and diacritics but does not encode contextual forms (U+0621-U+0652 being directly based on ISO 8859-6). It also includes the most common diacritics and Arabic-Indic digits. U+06D6 to U+06ED encode Qur'anic annotation signs such as "end of ayah" ۝ۖ and "start of rub el hizb" ۞. The Arabic supplement range encodes letter variants mostly used for writing African (non-Arabic) languages. The Arabic Extended-A range encodes additional Qur'anic annotations and letter variants used for various non-Arabic languages.

The Arabic Presentation Forms-A range encodes contextual forms and ligatures of letter variants needed for Persian, Urdu, Sindhi and Central Asian languages. The Arabic Presentation Forms-B range encodes spacing forms of Arabic diacritics, and more contextual letter forms. The Arabic Mathematical Alphabetical Symbols block encodes characters used in Arabic mathematical expressions.

See also the notes of the section on modified letters.

### Keyboards

[edit]

See also: Keyboard layout and Arabic keyboard

Arabic Mac keyboard layout Arabic PC keyboard layout Intellark imposed on a QWERTY keyboard layout

Keyboards designed for different nations have different layouts, so proficiency in one style of keyboard, such as Iraq's, does not transfer to proficiency in another, such as Saudi Arabia's. Differences can include the location of non-alphabetic characters.

All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g., for the URL in a web browser. Thus, each Arabic keyboard has both Arabic and Roman characters marked on the keys. Usually, the Roman characters of an Arabic keyboard conform to the QWERTY layout, but in North Africa, where French is the most common language typed using the Roman characters, the Arabic keyboards are AZERTY.

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 range Arabic presentation forms A (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) contain ligatures while the range Arabic presentation forms B (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contains the positional variants. These effects are better achieved in Unicode by using the zero-width joiner and zero-width 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.[26][27]

There are competing online tools, e.g. Yamli editor, which allow entry of Arabic letters without having Arabic support installed on a PC, and without knowledge of the layout of the Arabic keyboard.[28]

### Variations

[edit]

The modern Hijā’ī sequence (excluding hamzah) in 15 fonts: ي و ه ن م ل ك ق ف غ ع ظ ط ض ص ش س ز ر ذ د خ ح ج ث ت ب ا | Hijā’ī sequence

|

| •  | Noto Nastaliq
•  | Scheherazade New
•  | Lateef
•  | Noto Naskh Arabic
•  | Markazi Text
•  | Noto Sans Arabic
•  | El Messiri
•  | Lemonada
•  | Changa
•  | Mada
•  | Noto Kufi Arabic
•  | Reem Kufi
•  | Lalezar
•  | Jomhuria
•  | Rakkas

## See also

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arabic alphabet.

* Ancient South Arabian script
* Algerian braille
* Arabic braille
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic chat alphabet
* Arabic letter frequency
* Arabic numerals
* ArabTeX – provides Arabic support for TeX and LaTeX
* History of the Arabic alphabet
* Modern Arabic mathematical notation
* Romanization of Arabic

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ See the section on regional variations in letter form.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William, eds. (1996). The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press, Inc. p. 559\. ISBN 978-0195079937.
2. ^ Zitouni, Imed (2014). Natural Language Processing of Semitic Languages. Springer Science & Business. p. 15\. ISBN 978-3642453588.
3. ^ a b c Macdonald 1986, p. 117, 130, 149.
4. ^ Macdonald 1986, p. 130.
5. ^ a b c d e f g Lipiński, Edward (1997). Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar. Leuven: Peeters. p. 157\. ISBN 978-90-429-0815-4.
6. ^ a b c d e f g Kogan, Leonid (2011). "Proto-Semitic Phonetics and Phonology". In Weninger, Stefan (ed.). The Semitic Languages. An International Handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter. p. 55\. ISBN 978-3-11-025158-6.
7. ^ (in Arabic) Alyaseer.net ترتيب المداخل والبطاقات في القوائم والفهارس الموضوعية Ordering entries and cards in subject indexes Archived 23 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine Discussion thread (Accessed 2009-October–06)
8. ^ Rogers, Henry (2005). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Blackwell Publishing. p. 135.
9. ^ Habash, Nizar Y. (1 June 2022). Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing. Springer Nature. p. 60\. ISBN 978-3-031-02139-8.
10. ^ "A list of Arabic ligature forms in Unicode".
11. ^ Alhonen, Miikka-Markus. "Proposal for encoding the combining diacritic Arabic wasla" (PDF). unicode.org. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
12. ^ Price, James M (7 June 2012). "Helping Vowels and the Elidable Hamza". Arabic Language Lessons: All The Arabic You Never Learned The First Time Around. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
13. ^ "Arabic Dialect Tutorial" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2008. Retrieved 2 December 2008.
14. ^ Akkuş, Faruk. "Anatolian Arabic".
15. ^ File:Basmala kufi.svg – Wikimedia Commons
16. ^ File:Kufi.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
17. ^ File:Qur'an folio 11th century kufic.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
18. ^ Nehmé 2020.
19. ^ Blair, Sheila (1998). Islamic inscriptions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh university press. p. 21\. ISBN 0748609032.
20. ^ "علم اللغة العربية • الموقع الرسمي للمكتبة الشاملة". 15 December 2018. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
21. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (6 January 2019), A Manual of the Historical Grammar of Arabic, doi:10.1017/S0041977X14000524 – via Academia.edu
22. ^ "294° anniversario della Biblioteca Federiciana: ricerche e curiosità sul Kitab Salat al-Sawai". Retrieved 31 January 2017.
23. ^ Naghashian, Naghi (21 January 2013). Design and Structure of Arabic Script. epubli. ISBN 9783844245059.
24. ^ Arabic and the Art of Printing – A Special Section Archived 29 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine, by Paul Lunde
25. ^ "UAX #24: Script data file". Unicode Character Database. The Unicode Consortium.
26. ^ For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at The Unicode website
27. ^ See also Multilingual Computing with Arabic and Arabic Transliteration: Arabicizing Windows Applications to Read and Write Arabic & Solutions for the Transliteration Quagmire Faced by Arabic-Script Languages and A PowerPoint Tutorial (with screen shots and an English voice-over) on how to add Arabic to the Windows Operating System. Archived 11 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
28. ^ "Yamli in the News".

## Sources

[edit]

* Macdonald, Michael C. A. (1986). "ABCs and letter order in Ancient North Arabian". Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies (16): 101–168.
* Nehmé, Laila (2020). "The religious landscape of Northwest Arabia as reflected in the Nabataean, Nabataeo-Arabic, and pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions" (PDF). Semitica et Classica. 13: 127–154\. doi:10.1484/J.SEC.5.122984.

## External links

[edit]

* Shaalan, Khaled; Raza, Hafsa (August 2009). "NERA: Named entity recognition for Arabic". Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 60 (8): 1652–1663\. doi:10.1002/asi.21090.

* v
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Arabic alphabets

† indicates the language is no longer written using Arabic

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* Category

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Arabic language

Overviews|

* Language
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Scripts|

* Nabataean script
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* Ancient North Arabian
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Letters|

* ʾAlif
* Bāʾ
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* Ṯāʾ
* Ǧīm
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* Dāl
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* Lām
* Mīm
* Nūn
* Hāʾ
* Wāw
* Yāʾ

Varieties|

| Pre-Islamic|

* Proto-Arabic
* Nabataean Arabic
* Old Arabic
* Old Hijazi Arabic
* Pre-classical Arabic

|

Literary|

* Classical
* Modern Standard

Modern
spoken|

| Maghrebi|

| Pre-Hilalian|

* Andalusi
* Sicilian
* Maltese
* Australian
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* Judeo-Moroccan
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|

Hilalian|

* Central Hilal
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* Judeo-Algerian
* Algerian Saharan
* Eastern Algerian
* Eastern Hilal
* Tunisian koiné
* Maqil
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* Eastern
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* Western Algerian
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* Libyan koiné
* Western Egyptian Bedawi

Nile Valley|

* Egyptian
* Saʽidi
* Sudanese

Levantine|

| North|

* Cilician
* Lebanese
* Syrian
* Aleppine
* Damascene

|

South|

* Jordanian
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Mesopotamian|

| Gilit|

* Baghdadi
* Khuzestani
* Shawi
* South

|

North (Qeltu)|

* Anatolian
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* Baghdadi

Peninsular|

* Bahrani
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* Taʽizzi-Adeni
* Tihami
* Judeo-Yemeni

Others|

* Central Asian
* Bakhtiari
* Bukhara
* Kashkadarya
* Khorasani
* Shirvani
* Chadian
* Nigerian

Sociological|

* Bedouin Arabic

Judeo-Arabic|

* Judeo-Algerian
* Judeo-Egyptian
* Judeo-Iraqi
* Baghdadi
* Judeo-Moroccan
* Kjal
* Wqal
* Judeo-Tripolitanian
* Judeo-Tunisian
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* Adeni
* Beda
* Habban
* Sanʽani

Creoles
and pidgins|

* Bimbashi
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* Jordanian Bengali Pidgin
* Juba
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* Pidgin Madam
* Turku

Academic|

* Literature
* Names

Linguistics|

* Standard Arabic phonology
* Sun and moon letters
* Tajwid
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* Grammar
* Triliteral root
* Mater lectionis
* IPA
* Quranic Arabic Corpus

Calligraphy
· Script|

* Ajami script
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* Jeli Thuluth
* Kairouani
* Kufic
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* Muhaqqaq
* Naskh (script)
* Nastaliq
* Rasm
* Ruqʿah script
* Shahmukhi
* Sini (script)
* Taliq script
* Tawqi
* Thuluth

Technical|

* Arabic keyboard
* Arabic script in Unicode
* ISO/IEC 8859-6
* Windows-1256
* MS-DOS codepages
* 708
* 709
* 710
* 711
* 720
* 864
* MacArabic encoding

Other|

* Islam and Arabic language

* Italics indicate extinct languages
* Languages between parentheses are varieties of the language on their left.
* Category

* v
* t
* e

Types of writing systems

| Overview|

* History of writing
* Grapheme

|

Lists|

* Writing systems
* undeciphered
* inventors
* constructed
* Languages by writing system / by first written accounts

Types

Abjads

* Numerals

* Aramaic
* Hatran
* Arabic
* Elifba
* Egyptian hieroglyphs
* Elymaic
* Hebrew
* Ashuri
* Cursive
* Rashi
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* Book
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* Inscriptional Parthian
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* Pegon
* Phoenician
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* Pitman shorthand
* Proto-Sinaitic
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* Zabur
* Musnad
* Sogdian
* Syriac
* ʾEsṭrangēlā
* Serṭā
* Maḏnḥāyā
* Teeline Shorthand
* Ugaritic

Abugidas

| Brahmic|

| Northern|

* Bengali–Assamese
* Bhaiksuki
* Brahmi script
* Devanagari
* Dogri
* Gujarati
* Gupta
* Gurmukhi
* Kaithi
* Kalinga
* Khema
* Khojki
* Khudabadi
* Laṇḍā
* Lepcha
* Mahajani
* Marchen
* Meitei
* Modi
* Multani
* Nagari
* Nandinagari
* Nepalese scripts
* Bhujimol
* Golmol
* Himmol
* Kummol
* Kvemmol
* Pachumol
* Pracalit
* Ranjana
* Tamyig
* Tirhuta
* Limbu
* Litumol
* Odia
* Karani
* ʼPhags-pa
* Sharada
* Siddhaṃ
* Soyombo
* Sylheti Nagri
* Takri
* Tibetan
* Uchen
* Umê
* Tocharian
* Zanabazar square

|

Southern|

* Ahom
* Balinese
* Batak
* Baybayin
* Bhattiprolu
* Buda
* Buhid
* Chakma
* Cham
* Fakkham
* Grantha
* Goykanadi
* Hanunoo
* Javanese
* Kadamba
* Kannada
* Karen
* Kawi
* Khmer
* Khom Thai
* Kulitan
* Lanna
* Langdi
* Lao
* Leke
* Lontara
* Bilang-bilang
* Makasar
* Malayalam
* Old Maldivian
* Dhives Akuru
* Eveyla Akuru
* Mon–Burmese
* Pallava
* Pyu
* Saurashtra
* Shan
* Sinhala
* Sukhothai
* Sundanese
* Old Sundanese
* Tagbanwa
* Tai Le
* New Tai Lue
* Tai Noi
* Tai Tham
* Tai Viet
* Lai Tay
* Tamil
* Tamil-Brahmi
* Tanchangya
* Telugu
* Thai
* Tigalari
* Ulu scripts
* Incung
* Lampung
* Lembak
* Ogan
* Pasemah
* Rejang
* Serawai
* Vatteluttu
* Kolezhuthu
* Malayanma

Others|

* Bharati
* Boyd's syllabic shorthand
* Canadian syllabics
* Blackfoot
* Déné syllabics
* Dham
* Fox I
* Geʽez
* Gunjala Gondi
* Japanese Braille
* Sarati
* Jenticha
* Kharosthi
* Mandombe
* Masaram Gondi
* Meroitic
* Miao
* Mwangwego
* Pahawh Hmong
* Sorang Sompeng
* Tengwar
* Thaana
* Thomas Natural Shorthand
* Warang Citi
* Mwangwego
* Rma

Alphabets

| Linear|

* Adlam
* Ariyaka
* Armenian
* Avestan
* Pazend
* Avoiuli
* Bassa Vah
* Carian
* Caucasian Albanian
* Cirth
* Coelbren
* Coorgi–Cox alphabet
* Coptic
* Cyrillic
* Serbian
* Early
* Deseret
* Duployan shorthand
* Chinook
* Eclectic shorthand
* Elbasan
* Enochian
* Etruscan
* Formosan
* Fox II
* Fraser
* Gabelsberger shorthand
* Gadabuursi
* Garay alphabet
* Georgian
* Asomtavruli
* Nuskhuri
* Mkhedruli
* Veso Bey
* Glagolitic
* Gothic
* Gregg shorthand
* Greek (Archaic)
* Greco-Iberian alphabet
* Hangul
* Hanifi
* Sunuwar
* Kaddare
* Kayah Li
* Klingon
* Latin
* Beneventan
* Blackletter
* Carolingian minuscule
* Fraktur
* Gaelic
* Insular
* IPA
* Kurrent
* Merovingian
* Sigla
* Sütterlin
* Tironian notes
* Visigothic
* Luo
* Lycian
* Lydian
* Manchu
* Medefaidrin
* Molodtsov
* Mru
* Mundari Bani
* N'Ko
* Ogham
* Ol Chiki
* Old Hungarian
* Old Italic
* Old Permic
* Orkhon
* Old Uyghur
* Mongolian
* Evenki
* Galik alphabet
* Manchu
* Oirat
* Vagindra
* Ol Onal
* Osage
* Osmanya
* Pau Cin Hau
* Phrygian
* Pisidian
* Runic
* Anglo-Saxon
* Cipher
* Dalecarlian
* Elder Futhark
* Younger Futhark
* Gothic
* Marcomannic
* Medieval
* Staveless
* Shavian
* Sidetic
* Sorang Sompeng
* Sunuwar
* Tifinagh
* Todhri
* Tolong Siki
* Vellara
* Visible Speech
* Vithkuqi
* Wancho
* Warang Citi
* Yezidi
* Zaghawa

|

Non-linear|

* Braille
* Maritime flags
* Telegraph code
* New York Point
* Flag semaphore
* Moon type

Ideograms

* Adinkra
* Aztec
* Blissymbols
* Dongba
* Ersu Shaba
* Emoji
* Isotype
* Kaidā
* Miꞌkmaw
* Mixtec
* New Epoch Notation Painting
* Nsibidi
* Anishinaabewibii'iganan
* Olmec
* Siglas poveiras
* Testerian
* Yerkish
* Zapotec

Logograms

| Chinese family of scripts|

| Chinese characters|

* Simplified
* Traditional
* Oracle bone script
* Bronze scripts
* Seal script
* large
* small
* bird-worm
* Hanja
* Kanji
* Chữ Nôm
* Sawndip
* Bowen

|

Chinese-influenced|

* Jurchen
* Khitan large script
* Sui
* Tangut

Cuneiform|

* Akkadian
* Assyrian
* Elamite
* Hittite
* Luwian
* Sumerian

Other logosyllabic|

* Anatolian
* Bagam
* Cretan
* Isthmian
* Maya
* Proto-Elamite
* Tenevil
* Yi (Classical)

Logoconsonantal|

* Demotic
* Hieratic
* Hieroglyphs

Numerals|

* Hindu-Arabic
* Abjad
* Attic (Greek)
* Muisca
* Roman

Other|

* Sitelen Pona

Semi-syllabaries

| Full|

* Linear Elamite
* Celtiberian
* Iberian
* Northeastern
* Southeastern
* Khom
* Dunging

|

Redundant|

* Espanca script
* Pahawh Hmong
* Khitan small script
* Southwest Paleohispanic
* Bopomofo
* Quốc Âm Tân Tự

Sign languages

* ASLwrite
* SignWriting
* si5s
* Stokoe notation

Syllabaries

* Afaka
* Bamum
* Bété
* Byblos
* Canadian Aboriginal
* Cherokee
* Cypriot
* Cypro-Minoan
* Ditema tsa Dinoko
* Eskayan
* Geba
* Great Lakes Algonquian
* Iban
* Idu
* Kana
* Hiragana
* Katakana
* Man'yōgana
* Hentaigana
* Sōgana
* Jindai moji
* Kikakui
* Kpelle
* Linear B
* Linear Elamite
* Lisu
* Loma
* Nüshu
* Nwagu Aneke script
* Old Persian cuneiform
* Sumerian
* Vai
* Woleai
* Yi
* Yugtun

* v
* t
* e

Braille ⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑

Braille cell|

* 1829 braille
* International uniformity
* ASCII braille
* Unicode braille patterns

Braille scripts|

| French-ordered|

* Albanian
* Azerbaijani
* Cantonese
* Catalan
* Chinese (mainland Mandarin) (largely reassigned)
* Czech
* Dutch
* English (Unified English)
* Esperanto
* French
* German
* Ghanaian
* Guarani
* Hawaiian
* Hungarian
* Iñupiaq
* IPA
* Irish
* Italian
* Latvian
* Lithuanian
* Luxembourgish (extended to 8-dot)
* Maltese
* Māori
* Navajo
* Nigerian
* Philippine
* Polish
* Portuguese
* Romanian
* Samoan
* Slovak
* South African
* Spanish
* Taiwanese Mandarin (largely reassigned)
* Turkish
* Vietnamese
* Welsh
* Yugoslav
* Zambian

| Nordic family|

* Estonian
* Faroese
* Icelandic
* Scandinavian
* Danish
* Finnish
* Greenlandic
* Northern Sámi
* Norwegian
* Swedish

|

Russian lineage family
i.e. Cyrillic-mediated scripts|

* Belarusian
* Bulgarian
* Kazakh
* Kyrgyz
* Mongolian
* Russian
* Tatar
* Ukrainian

Egyptian lineage family
i.e. Arabic-mediated scripts|

* Arabic
* Persian
* Urdu (Pakistan)

Indian lineage family
i.e. Bharati Braille|

* Devanagari (Hindi / Marathi / Nepali)
* Bengali (Bangla / Assamese)
* Gujarati
* Kannada
* Malayalam
* Odia
* Punjabi
* Sinhala
* Tamil
* Telugu
* Urdu (India)

Other scripts|

* Amharic
* Armenian
* Burmese
* Dzongkha (Bhutanese)
* Georgian
* Greek
* Hebrew
* Inuktitut (reassigned vowels)
* Khmer
* Thai and Lao (Japanese vowels)
* Tibetan

Reordered|

* Algerian Braille (obsolete)

Frequency-based|

* American Braille (obsolete)

Independent|

* Chinese semi-syllabaries
* Cantonese
* Mainland Chinese Mandarin
* Taiwanese Mandarin
* Two-cell Chinese (Shuangpin)
* Japanese
* Korean

Eight-dot|

* Luxembourgish
* Kanji
* Gardner–Salinas braille codes (GS8)

Symbols in braille|

* Braille music
* Canadian currency marks
* Computer Braille Code
* Gardner–Salinas braille codes (science; GS8/GS6)
* International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
* Nemeth braille code

Braille technology|

* Braille e-book
* Braille embosser
* Braille translator
* Braille watch
* Mountbatten Brailler
* Optical braille recognition
* Perforation
* Perkins Brailler
* Refreshable braille display
* Slate and stylus
* Braigo

People|

* Louis Braille
* Charles Barbier
* Róża Czacka
* Valentin Haüy
* Harris Mowbray
* Thakur Vishva Narain Singh
* Sabriye Tenberken
* William Bell Wait

Organisations|

* Braille Institute of America
* Braille Without Borders
* Japan Braille Library
* National Braille Association
* Blindness organizations
* Schools for the blind
* American Printing House for the Blind

Other tactile alphabets|

* Decapoint
* Moon type
* New York Point
* Night writing
* Vibratese

Related topics|

* Accessible publishing
* Braille literacy
* RoboBraille

* v
* t
* e

The Northwest Semitic abjad

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1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 200 | 300 | 400

* History
* Inscriptions
* Phoenician
* Paleo-Hebrew
* Hebrew
* Aramaic
* Syriac

* v
* t
* e

Orthographies of the world's languages

* Phonologies
* Orthographies
* Grammars
* Adjectives
* Determiners
* Nouns
* Prepositions
* Pronouns
* Verbs

Indo-European|

| Germanic|

* Afrikaans
* Danish
* alphabet
* orthography
* Dutch
* Elfdalian
* English
* alphabet
* orthography
* Faroese
* German
* alphabet
* orthography
* Icelandic
* Norwegian
* alphabet
* orthography
* Swedish
* alphabet
* orthography
* West Frisian
* Yiddish

|

Celtic|

* Breton
* Cornish
* Kernewek Kemmyn
* Standard Written Form
* Kernowek Standard
* Modern Cornish
* Unified Cornish
* Irish
* Manx
* Scottish Gaelic
* Welsh

Romance|

* Aromanian
* Catalan
* French
* Galician
* Istro-Romanian
* Italian
* Latin
* Phonology & orthography
* alphabet
* Portuguese
* Romanian
* Sicilian
* Spanish
* Walloon

Baltic|

* Latvian
* Lithuanian

Slavic|

* Belarusian
* Cyrillic alphabet
* Latin alphabet
* Classical orthography
* Bulgarian
* Czech
* Kashubian
* Macedonian
* Polish
* alphabet
* orthography
* Russian
* alphabet
* orthography
* Silesian
* Serbo-Croatian
* Cyrillic alphabet
* Latin alphabet
* Montenegrin alphabet
* Slovak
* Slovene
* Sorbian
* Ukrainian
* Cyrillic alphabet
* Latin alphabet

Iranian|

* Avestan
* Kurdish
* Pashto
* Persian
* Tajik

Indo-Aryan|

* Bengali
* Chakma
* Gujarati
* Gurmukhi
* Hindustani
* Urdu
* Maldivian
* Thaana
* Marathi
* Odia
* Romani

other|

* Albanian
* Armenian
* Greek

Uralic|

* Estonian
* Finnish
* Hungarian
* alphabet
* orthography
* Karelian
* Komi
* Livonian
* Mansi
* Mari
* Mordvinic
* Moksha
* Erzyan
* Sámi
* Kildin Sámi
* Udmurt

Turkic|

* Azerbaijani
* Bashkir
* Crimean
* Gagauz
* Kazakh
* Khakas
* Kyrgyz
* Nogai
* Tatar
* Turkish
* Turkmen
* Uyghur
* Latin alphabet
* Uzbek
* Yakut

Tungus—Manchu|

* Even
* Evenki
* Manchu
* Udege

other European|

* Abkhaz
* Basque
* Dargwa
* Georgian
* Lezgin

Afroasiatic|

* Arabic
* Aramaic
* Aramaic
* Syriac
* Ethiopian Semitic languages
* Hebrew
* Biblical
* Maltese
* Somali

Niger–Congo|

* Fula
* Sotho
* Vai
* Yoruba

Dravidian|

* Tamil
* Telugu
* Kannada
* Malayalam

Japonic|

* Japanese
* Okinawan

other East Asian|

* Chinese (Dungan)
* Korean
* Mizo (Lushai)
* Mongolian
* Cyrillic alphabet
* Latin alphabet
* Thai
* Vietnamese
* Nivkh

Austronesian|

* Filipino
* alphabet
* orthography
* Hawaiian
* Malay
* Tetum

Algic|

* Massachusett
* Ojibwe

other Native American|

* Cherokee
* Inuktitut
* Nahuatl
* Osage

Creole|

* Haitian Creole
* Papiamento

Constructed|

* Esperanto

Authority control databases

National|

* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Japan
* Czech Republic
* Latvia
* Israel

Other|

* Yale LUX

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template
*[c.]: circa
*[†]: Extinct