Talk:Arabic alphabet/Archive 1

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Talk:Arabic alphabet/from the French Wikipedia - temp page moved into talk namespace, as per policy.

Miscellaneous threads

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This is a terrible article on what is arguably a very important subject. Its structure and language are both dense and pedantic, and concepts that require special clarification are inadequately developed. Too many subjects are discussed in tandem - there should be a much clearer demarcation of each example. As well, the arabic glyphs are currently in a format much too small to be comprehended. It is at present nearly opaque to the linguistic non-specialist, which is hardly appropriate for Wikipedia.

Can anyone contribute to a list of languages commonly written in Arabic alphabet? I know Urdu is, and of course Arabic. I think the entry should also include a note that the Qur'an is written in the Arabic alphabet.

turkish was former written in arabic until some political reforms. --Elian

Didn't Ataturk decide that the Roman alphabet worked better with the Turkish language, than the Arabic alphabet does? -- Zoe

Seems to have been one of the practical reasons. Latin alphabet easier to learn etc. But there were also political reasons, orientation more toward europe and secularization. IMO the reform was mainly destined to mark a clear break with all (Islamic) traditions of the Ottomane Empire. --Elian

Due to the lack of notation for vowels (only 3 distinct vowels in arabic, see below) and the fact that short vowels are normally not noted, the arabic alphabet and conventions are not too well suited for languages where vowels play a more important role than in Arabic. (My 0.02 cents.) That may be one of the main non-political reasons. --FvdP

::: I should say that arabic is not restricted to the three vowels ( A,o,I) as many people would think, there are (Tashkeel) which is a vital element in the language (Dhamma, fat'haa, Kasrah), basically, arabic is easily adapted to any other language, especially, that there are new (not commonly used) letters, for instance, P can be written in arabic like the second letter in the arabic alphabet (Baa') except with three dots beneath instead of one. I disagree with the statement, that arabic is a difficult language, and isn't flexible. Once you cross the pronounciation barrier, then it is matter of some vocabulary and grammar, and you can speak the language fluently, it is just like any other language really, but to completely master the language,it'll require a lifetime, but we don't need to master a language in order to speak it, do we ??

Sort of, but the objection was spurious insofar as that could easily be remedied: look at its adaptation to Uighur or Kurdish! - Mustafaa 17:29, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I addition to the possibility of modifying the orthography (as Mustafa mentioned), if a language really requires diacritics then they should be made obligatory for that language :) I think Greek ideally requires extensive use of diacritical marks, which are often omitted. No? --Alif 18:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Modern Greek only requires an accent mark, and a diaresis to indicate diphthongs. I don't believe they're normally left out, except maybe in newspaper headlines. In Classical Greek, diacritics indicated aspiration and pitch accent. I'm not sure how good an analogy this is to Arabic vowels, though it's on the right track: you might create more confusion by mixing up Arabic vowels than mixing up Greek accent. kwami 01:08, 2005 July 14 (UTC)

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I think the table of Unicode codes should go elsewhere, something like "Unicode codes from the Arabic alphabet". It clutters the article, not everyone will be interested in this technical matter.

I may do the move in a few days if no one protests.

FvdP 20:56 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

---

I have started a merge of the Arabic examples from the German Wikipedia Karada

From the German version (crudely translated):

There are only three vowels: A, i and u. Long vowels are indicated by Alif, Ya and Waw. Short vowels marked by Fatha (A - diagonal line over the letter), Kasra (i - diagonal line under the letter) and Damma (u - a kind of small 9 over the letter). If no vowel follows, a Sukun (a small circle over the letter) is set.

Is this correct? Karada

Yes, however, this follows German pronounciation. a is spoken like in "thus", in most modern dialects more like "action" or the German "ä", i "this", u "look" or "roof", in dialect it resembles more an "o". Maybe confusing for English readers. --Elian

Yes, but short vowels and sukun are normally not marked at all. FvdP

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You need to do the HTML Unicode in decimal, not hexadecimal. Using hexadecimal reduces even further the number of browsers on which it will work. --Zundark 21:17 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)

Done.. --Gabbe 18:04 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)

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The French Wikipedia article really is much better than this one. Does anyone want to start the process of translating the French article to English? -- The Anome 10:52, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

See Arabic alphabet/from the French Wikipedia for a start on this translation process. Anyone want to translate a paragraph? -- The Anome 13:32, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Can anyone tell me how to write articles using Arabic script? I have absolutely no idea on how to do it! ThaGrind 02:48, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Huh? Please clarify. Jeru 17:18, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Took the liberty to change ta to dal د in the vowels section for clarity. There was no reason to use ta, write it incorrectly and mislead the surfers. Jeru 17:18, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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There's a good list of languages using the Arabic script in the Arabic language article, for some reason. I'll see if I can find them a place here. - Mustafaa 18:00, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"When the moors ruled Spain"

When the moors ruled Spain they ruled Spain and Portugal and there was no spanish language. People spoke Latin in several variations, possibly dialectal, all called "Vulgar Latin". The emergence and separation of the national languages in the Iberian Peninsula happened for the most part in the last 1000 years. --213.22.166.118 03:13, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And the end of Moorish rule happened 500 years ago... - Mustafaa 09:37, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Never mind that. The language spoken in Granada was not spanish in the current understanding of the concept, i.e., the language that developped in the kingdom of Castille, was later influenced by arabic when Castille expanded south and then spread to vast territories throughout the world. The languages spoken in Granada, and before that in the rest of the iberian territories under arabic rule, was in part arabic, especially in administration and religious issues, but mostly a romance language, very influenced by arabic, called "mozarabic". That is (was) a language on its own, different from all the languages currently spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. 212.113.164.100 04:27, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, Mozarabic language was certainly used - but are you sure Spanish wasn't used as well towards the end? For instance, Arabic-Islamic.org describes Aljamiado as "lengua castellana escrita con grafía árabe" (in 1462, that is). - Mustafaa 01:39, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hum... I forgot about aljamia. Aljamia was a rather marginal use of the arabic script to write not only castillan (and not spanish, mind you - it's the same thing nowdays, but the term is more recent than the aljamias), but also catalan/aragonese and portuguese amongst the moorish communities that remained in the iberian territories conquered by the christian kingdoms. So, OK, you could say that the arabic script was used to write castillan, but in that case the list is misleading: Not only the usage of the script to write mozarabic was far more important, but also there are other aljamias, not only the castillan one. Furthemore, it wasn't used "when the moors ruled Spain", but by the moors that remeined when they no longer ruled Spain, precisely the other way around (remember that the last moorish communities were expelled from the Peninsula (or converted by force, together with the jews) only in early XVII century). I still think it should be changed. --212.113.164.98 17:25, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the entry to reflect this discussion. Let me know what you think. Were there any Portuguese aljamiado manuscripts? - Mustafaa 23:46, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, to tell the truth I'm not sure, since different authors have different understandings of what are exactly aljamiado texts. I know that most of what's known as portuguese aljamía is written in safi, not in portuguese. I'm not sure about the existence or not of aljamia in portuguese. In any case, there's a book that might answer that question (Lopes, David - Textos de Aljamía Portuguesa, Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa, 1897), but I do not have access to a copy. The title translates as "Texts of Portuguese Aljamía", BTW.

Regarding the entry, you could add aragonese to spanish. Unlike portuguese, aragonese was definitely aljamiado... in fact, the earliest example of aljamía known is written in aragonese, according to what I've found. Other than that, it's fine. --212.113.164.97 01:34, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! What was Safi? By the way, you know anyone can edit here - why not get a user account and start writing some articles yourself? You certainly seem knowledgeable on the subject, and it sounds interesting... - Mustafaa 08:05, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Argh! What did I write above? I should have been sleeping! I totally misread my sources!

Safi is not a language - it's a town in western Morocco that was under portuguese rule for a time (until 1541). That (the place and the time) is where the examples of portuguese aljamía come from.

It is true, though, that different authors have different understandings of what aljamía really is and that it leads to some discussions about the validity of calling aljamiado to these texts. They really were written in portuguese, though. --212.113.164.98 15:21, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

--- Persian, Dari, Farsi are all the names for one language i.e. Persian language. In the list these terms were used superfulously, so I edited it. --Mani1 16:14, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Persian and Farsi may mean the same thing, but Dari is NOT the same language as Farsi.

Aljamía was and still is in essence, the language of the Moorish descendants of Al Andalus, and thus it remains our language, the language of the Muslim mudejáres and moriscos!

(Al Fatiha)

(Çora l'alfátaha)-in aljamía

Nel nomme d'Allah, l'Arrahimo, l'Arrahimano.

1. Alhamdanzas ad Allah, arrabí dellos aílemos.

2. L'Arrahimo, l'Arrahimano.

3. Malico d'Alyamidino.

4. A bós t'albudamos, ed a bós anestainamos.

5. Alhedenáde-mos por l'alçerado almostaquino.

6. L'alçerado d'ellos que hádes almetado.

7. Non allos que amerraban. Ed allos albideros.

Xucrá, Ah'med Birzali!

hi

hi can you show me the arabic alphebet then can you translate it for me? I have this really big project due on ancient islam tomorrow. this would really make my night a lot less hard than it already is. thank you alyssa

Image:Arabic alphabet.png seems to include the alphabet with corresponding transcriptions. I'm not sure what else you're looking for, but you could try asking at Wikipedia:Reference desk. Cheers, -- Hadal 05:18, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Primary Letters

As a person who knows aboslutely nothing about Arabic, I find the 'Primary Letters' table to be quite useless. The text is too small to discern the characters, even when I view text in the largest size. Can something be done about this? RealGrouchy 17:13, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I second this. Ideally, some helpful soul who knows Arabic would contribute images of the letters, because (as demonstrated by the Allah example) some browsers cannot be trusted to render the letters properly. Thanks. --P3d0 03:33, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Something had already been done about this; the big image right up near the top. I would definitely not support removal of the Unicode; even if many browsers still can't handle it, it's the recognized standard, and in a few years they all will. - Mustafaa 17:06, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But the big table only shows the letters in isolation, not joined with other letters. I'd be happy if all variants of all letters were included in the table. --P3d0 19:39, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Ah. I see your point. - Mustafaa 11:07, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

All right, you guys. I checked all the Unicode characters myself, and they are all correctly inputted. However, my browser refuses to display them all (Internet Explorer 6.0). Since I do read, write and speak the language, I did not need clearer and larger images. When I have some time, I'll see what I can do about it. Cbdorsett 08:54, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Transcription used on the net

The Romanization I see most often in Internet use, uses digits in addition to letters, for example 3 for `ayn and 7 for Haa', based on visual similarity of the characters. I'd like information on it. Wikipedia has information on similar ASCII keyboard-friendly Internet transliterations for other non-Roman alphabets, for example Greeklish and Volapuk_encoding.

I deleted the "addition" of the numeric symbols for two reasons:

• There is no uniform agreement about which symbol should represent which Arabic letter. As far as I know, these numerals are only used in do-it-yourself language books.

They're used extensively online (DALnet, for example, join any Arabic-speaking channel), and there is a good deal of agreement on the most common ones: the ones I added. There's slight regional/national variation, like, some people use an 8 for qaf, but for the most part, 23679 are a de facto standard. — J’raxis 19:02, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

• The editor took the opportunity to change some of the Unicode symbols from decimal to hexadecimal, which many browsers (including mine) do not support, and in the process evidently tried to change what was originally represented.

I didn't just change them to hexadecimal; what I was primarily doing was changing letters that had combining diacritics after them with single characters that included the diacritics. The combining diacritics looked like a mess in the browser I was using, some crooked, some not "combining" at all, so I thought, for example, using "H with dot below" was better than "H" followed by "dot below."

I only used the hexadecimal because that's what I had (U+nnnn entities) on the Unicode chart I was using at the time. I didn't know there were still some browsers unable to handle the hex entities so I didn't take the time to convert them to decimal.

I wonder if it would be a good idea for the MediaWiki code itself to decimalize entities either on input to the database (might confuse editors as what they typed in isn't what they got back) or at the very least upon output when the Wiki markup is parsed to HTML.

— J’raxis 19:02, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

Great idea - how can I get involved in that? Cbdorsett 13:26, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a MediaWiki coder, so I'm not sure, but here's Wikipedia's project site: wikipedia.sourceforge.net.

— J’raxis 19:46, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

If the editor truly feels that the article can be improved by the addition of the numerical symbols, I suggest creating a page that deals with the various transliteration schemes, and adding an appropriate link.

I also rewrote the paragraphs about transliteration so that they are clearer. I disagree that the DIN standard should be used above all others in this article, as its symbols do not show up on Internet Explorer 6.0 (Microsoft's latest) and are not as accessible to readers who do not know the Arabic alphabet. Cbdorsett 09:35, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Since the digit representations are widely used and standardized, they should go back in the table or text. The table currently has as many as 4 transliterations per Arabic letter, some of which are used much less frequently than the digits. Also, the digits are used online where it is not obvious how to find a guide to their meaning, unlike printed academic works which usually include notes about the transliteration they use, if there is any doubt that readers will understand. --JWB 21:13, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The table also doesn't identify which transliterations of a letter are used by which transliteration system. DIN-31635 and SATTS are also stubs with no info. So effectively there is no info on transliteration systems at all, just a listing of the union of several systems, with emphasis on less used ones. --JWB 23:32, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Edits by beginners

We all thank you for your new-found enthusiasm for the language, but please, please, please be sure of what you write, before you change something.

Someone just removed the dagger alif from 'allah' and replaced it with a fatha. A first-year student, perhaps, who has just learned about the diacritics for the short vowels?

If I get some time, I'll try to clarify the section about the diacritics - the 'harakat' - but in the meantime, PLEASE do not 'fix' anything on your own unless you KNOW you are right.

Thanks. Cbdorsett 15:31, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

some notes by 69.17.24.207

The above is complete bullshit. "Alif maqsura" is a grammatical concept in the Arabic language; it is not a letter form. It can be represented by either a dotless ya (ى) or an alif. Furthermore, the dotless ya does not always mean "alif maqsura". The dotless ya is used in Arabic in all four forms. The problem, which can be traced to the stupidity of Unicode, is that a) "character" is not so obvious; and b) letterform shape is distinct from context. E.g. a so-called "initial form" can be used in the middle of a word: قائل for example.

[Well I can't say anything about where if came from or what it meant originally, but I can tell you that the alif letterform serves numerous functions *in the Arabic* writing system; other systems that use Arabic letterforms may do things differently. More to the point, it is *not* a consonant in modern Arabic (or in any Arabic so far as I can tell). Why not ask the locals? They will tell you that, where alif seems to indicate a long vowel, in fact it indicates the doubling of a short vowel, which is not quite the same thing. In other words, alif has *no primary phonological value* whatsoever, ever.]

• If you don't delete this paragraph, I will. Cbdorsett 10:04, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vowel marks

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I just went around lk-ing "vowel point", and in i think one case, "vowel mark" to Niqqud.

In this article the section "Ligatures" says

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 "Allah". Compare the display below, which depends on your browser and installed fonts:

I made no lk to the Hebrew word Niqqud, but is there an equivalent lk available or needed? Should this instance of "vowel mark" lk to Abjad?
--Jerzy (t) 20:55, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

Yes - harakat. - Mustafaa 03:13, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the section "Vowels" is the following paragraph:
"Note that when the acute-shaped fatḥa which denotes a short a is added on top of a geminated consonnant (i.e. after a šadda), the fatha accent takes a vertical shape to make the composition more distinctable from the tanwiin vowel sign fatḥatan (which marks a /-an/ ending with indeterminate nunation in fully vocalized texts, see below). For an example, see the encoded ligature for ʻAllah above."
Which is unfortunately, incorrect. A šadda may be accompanied by fatḥa, damma or kasra(written below the šadda or below the letter) of which all may be single or tanwiin(nunated). A single fatḥa above a šadda is not written in a vertical shape. This "vertical shape" is the alif ḫanjariyyah or "dagger alif" which indicates an unwritten alif, as found in allāh or ar-raḥmān where the alif in both of these words is denoted with a ḫanjar rather than a full alif character). 86.136.191.158 21:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Help with Transliteration

Can anyone tell me what the following Arabic phrase would be written in Latin is? The phrase in question is, ما الخليفة أين?

This is not an intelligible phrase! --Alif 22:02, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, that would explain why it won't translate. The phrase I want, in English is, 'Where is the Caliph?' Kaiser Matias 02:00 Apr 4 2005 (UTC)

That would be أين الخليفة 'ayna lkhalîfah? - Mustafaa 20:30, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it. Kaiser Matias 02:02 Apr 5 2005 (UTC)

o in arabic?

Reading the passage about sukun I encountered the use of o in the examples. I have seen this letter also in other transliterations, the majority of transliteration tables do not mention it however, telling about just three vowels - a,i and u. Could this be briefly clarified here too? 80.235.60.55 21:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

O is sometimes used in transliterations for damma instead of u: Mohammad, Muhammad. U follows academic transliteration styles (Encyclopedia of Islam, MELA, etc.), o follows how it sounds in some vernaculars.

alt transliterations

Just made a couple edits (cells misaligned, non-IPA diacritics in the IPA column, etc.). Also a couple alternate transcriptions. Since the under-dot diacritic doesn't work for all browsers, I added the unicode letters with the under-dot as a second variant. Some people have complained about one and some about the other in the comments above, so hopefully by offering both, at least one version will work for everybody. kwami 21:21, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

Persian Alphabet + Gim

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I think that the Persian Alphabet article should not be redirected here, and requireds a dedicated article, since the Persian alphabet has additional letters and different sounds. Likewise, there should be a note in the article indicating that Geem is the Egyptian pronounciation for Jeem, as it is known in the rest of the Arab world, and in Fusha and Classical Arabic. DigiBullet 19:14, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

It's also Geem in Yemen.

There are lots of adaptations of the Arabic alphabet, so it's nice to have them all grouped together here for easy reference. But you're right, lots of languages using the Latin alphabet have their own alphabet pages. I imagine it's just that no one's gotten around to making a special page for Persian. I'd do it myself, but I'm afraid I'd mess up the more subtle details. kwami 20:19, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

I gree that Persian alphabet needs a page of its own. The Arabic alphabet, like the Latin, is the basis for many writing systems, but this doesn't mean that the English alphabet is the same as Italian or German.

Also, the Egyptian (unvoiced) geem is not exclusively an Egyptian phenomena, it is the pronounciation of many Arabic speaking peoples, including some Yemenis like Kwamikagami mentioned above, and as mentioned in teh article itself. --Alif 16:48, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge Yemenis pronounce jim as j. They do however pronounce qaf as g. The Egyptian pronunciation of jim is mostly restricted to Africa, though Egyptian media dominance has made it more recognizable. Jim is pronounced sometimes as y in parts of Yemen and the Gulf. --71.224.54.51 22:51, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

IPA transcription

First of all, is خ really a fricative-trill combination? I thought it was a pure uvular fricative.

Second, ɢ for ق is simply not within the recorded variability of MSA; in modern Arabic, it's q or g, though in Sibawayh's time it may have been ɢ.

Third, I've never heard of غ being realized as ɣ, but maybe that's just me. - Mustafaa 21:03, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The IPA Handbook, which uses al-Shaam Arabic (one speaker from Safad/Beirut/Damascus) as a sample language, says "/x/ is accompanied by uvular trill", but treats it as a fricative. It looks like the research was done at the University of Kuwait. We should probably list other realizations of this phoneme (in Cairo, isn't it just [x]?), but al-Shaam is a prestige dialect, so I think we should keep it.

As for غ, the symbol is supposed to be a gamma: is it the wrong symbol, or are you saying that غ sould be an approximant, as g in Spanish? (I thought I'd always heard a fricative.) And for ق, please correct it; I don't know what I'm talking about! kwami 21:53, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

I believe both خ and غ are uvular rather than velar fricatives, but if the IPA handbook says otherwise, I guess that's a more reliable source... - Mustafaa 22:14, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd always just assumed they were both velar because they don't affect vowels the way the uvular qof does (at least not in Cairene). It's pretty common for all uvulars to have such an effect - Yup'ik, for example, though that's hardly confirmation. The Handbook just lists the ghayn as velar in the chart, and never mentions it again, which suggests by omission that there's nothing special about it. And the xaa has uvular accompaniment. Another possibility is that they're velar, but further back than English velars. Such sounds are very often called "uvular" in the literature even when they don't involve the uvula. A lot of "uvulars" in the American Pacific Northwest are actually back velars, for example. But of course in other dialects they may very well be true uvulars. kwami 19:50, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)

Interesting. In Algerian pronunciation, they do both affect vowels the way qaf does. Maybe this is the effect of the Berber substratum... - Mustafaa 20:52, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

We might want to confirm, but that's good reason to suspect that the frics are uvular in Maghrebi Arabic. I'd say put them in as alternate pronunciations if you're comfortable with it. (If that's your native language, you should be able to see it in a (dentist's?) mirror, or maybe just feel it.) kwami 23:10, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)

They do so too in some Khaliji and Iraqi accents, specially where the madd (long vowel a) is made to sound like how Farsi speakers would pronounce the long vowl in 'Iran'; slightly to the O. Does this only occure in Arabic when a long vowel a is follows the xaa or ghayn? What are your examples, Mustafa? In Qur'anic recitation both velar and uvelar sounds occure, as I recall. --Alif 11:56, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Abgadi order

I propose resorting the letters table to reflect the Abgadi order rather than the current Hega'i. This will help those who want to compare Arabic letters to their countrparts in other alphabets. Addtionally, the image that has the letters' names and shapes depicts the hega'i order, so having the other will be a benefit, not to mention it being the original and the one used in numbering. --Alif 16:54, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Abjadi order is very much less widely used than Hija'i order; maybe a separate article linked from here would be a better place for such a table? Also, we should note that the Abjadi order used in the Maghreb and West Africa is slightly different to the normal one. - Mustafaa 18:59, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

mods

Latest comment: 20 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion

my browser [latest ie] doesn't display a lot of symbols unless they are surrounded by {{IPA|}}, so i added that. i know it's a hack; wikipedia really needs to fix this itself. [anyone know where i can suggest this/complain?]

The problem is in not using a modern browser. With IE, the best you can do is a hack. It's a well known issue; it either isn't "fixable" in Wikipedia, or else isn't worth the trouble. kwami

also, some of the IPA renderings of the letters were wrong or strange. most obviously was /x/; trying to represent a "uvular trill offglide" that may be peculiar to one particular dialect, but is certainly not representative, is strange, at best. also, ayn is glottalized only in Iraq and Kuwait.

Benwing 06:36, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Ayn is not 'glottalized' but a glottal in the al-Shaam standard, at least according to the IPA handbook. In Cairene it sounds glottal to my ear, but I don't know for sure. It doesn't seem to be a pharyngeal approximant, however (and certainly not a fricative!). As for the 'strange' /x/, that wasn't an offglide. The IPA tie bar means that the sounds are pronounced simultaneously. See the discussion above. As is, there is an odd and probably artificial assymmetry between kh and gh. kwami 07:22, 2005 July 11 (UTC)

you are right, "offglide" isn't right. i did see the discussion above but i didn't look quite closely enough. however, no authorities i can find indicate that there is an accompanying trill, so i don't think this belongs unless we can show that it is *widespread* not just in one particular dialect, "prestige" or not. [the authorities disagree on whether it's velar or uvular and indicate it may vary dialectally.]

"glottalization" is not wrong as it can mean "glottal accompaniment" [see wikipedia article]. as for ayn, i've heard quite a lot of egyptian and moroccan arabic, and there is no glottal accompaniment in it. if there were, it would be obvious -- you'd hear a closure. what you're probably hearing is creaky voice. cf. Anatole V. Lyovin "An Introduction to the Languages of the World": "[ayn] is phonetically a creaky-voice, pharyngealized resonant (there does not seem to be much air friction if there is any at all) that mimics the following vowel, or if such does not exist, the preceding one". actual glottal closure occurs only in Iraqi and Kuwaiti Arabic. Benwing 21:46, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Okay, might want to add an under-trema to the notation then. Your explanation of the glottalization sounds reasonable. However, in the Handbook description, it was not glottal accompaniment, but pharyngeal accompaniment - equivalent to the emphatic consonants. kwami

"glottal accompaniment" meaning a glottal closure in addition to the pharyngeal constriction that is used elsewhere. Benwing 03:24, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Geem, and shadda on final yaa

Latest comment: 20 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Macrakis wrote: Use 'j' consistently for ج (g is Egyptian); final shadda on yaa (-iyyun) is usually transliterated ī Unlike what the common belief, g is NOT an exclusively Egyptian phenomena. This has been clarified elsewhere. As such, we should be able to use g and j interchangeably, and still be correct.

On the otherhand I'm not sure whether we should follow the practice of transliterating the final yaa which has shadda on it as ī, even if it is indeed common, as this leads to confusion due to omitting the marking of a grammatical feature, namely AlNisba[h]

--Alif 11:05, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

About g: I do understand that it is not exclusively Egyptian. However, the article should be internally consistent in its usage. Otherwise, the reader may think that they're two different phonemes, or phonetic variants within a single dialect.

Transliterating -iyyun as -yy is as far as I know completely non-standard. Though -iyy and -īy might be more logical than -ī, I don't think they're standard usage. Anyway, there's no particular need in an English encyclopedia to make the Nisba nature of the suffix transparent. --Macrakis 16:45, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I've seen both -iyy and -īy used, mostly in more technical contexts. - Mustafaa 22:40, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, there's no particular need in an English encyclopedia to make the Nisba nature of the suffix transparent.

But is does affect pronunciation, at least in classical Arabic. --Alif 21:39, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Mystery character set for Arabic

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have a document, found on the Net, which appears to be in ISO8859-6, except that there are some "extra" letters. One, in particular, I think is supposed to represent a "g" sound (which is of course not available in the standard Arabic alphabet). Is there a standard superset of ISO8859-6, perhaps used for Farsi, that includes more letters? (specifically, the word "Grendizer" appears to be written in Arabic, and all letters appear to translate okay except for the "g")

You can compare ISO 8859-6 with some other Arabic script encoding schemes here. ISO 8859-6 doesn't appear to resemble other encodings very much. They could be using private/unused space, which is plenty. And no, there's no standard superset of ISO 8859-6 for Farsi/Persian. --jonsafari 15:14, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

The way I remember it from ages ago the g in Grendizer was realized as a ghayn.

Abjadi order

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The abjad order doesn't really "preserve" the older Phoenician/Hebrew/Aramaic alphabet order, since the Abjad order was pretty much created after the Arabic alphabet had already been expanded to 28 letters, by matching each Aramaic letter with a corresponding letter of the fully consonant-dotted Arabic alphabet (with six Arabic letters left over at the end). If the Abjad order PRESERVED the older order, then there would be no Arabic letter corresponding to the Aramaic letter semkat (samekh) in the Aramaic alphabet ordering (i.e. 15th position), since no Arabic letter is derived from Aramaic samekh. AnonMoos 01:01, 6 September 2005 (UTC) 05:01, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I understand your argument, but it would be nice to have a solid reference on it; what is your source? --Macrakis 15:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion: Computer-related information must appear only in dedicated sections

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I would expect a clear division between sections talking about the Arabic script itself (as it has been used on paper) and sections talking electronic-data related issues. The computer-related sections should refer back to the normal paper sections discussing corresponding computer-related issues.

I do not know what the best structure of the article would be:

• either there are computer-related subsections of the primary sections spread all over the article (but clearly marked as being computer-related)
• or all computer-related stuff moved to one big section at the end (into the existing Arabic alphabet#Computers and the Arabic alphabet).

I'm uncomfortable with reading Unicode codes when I'm just reading about the script. For example:

• Arabic alphabet#Notes: "...Unicode...",
• Arabic alphabet#Ligatures: "...fonts...", "...text processors...", "...U+FDF2..."

and perhaps other.

I would move this information out of the main sections.

Best regards,--Imz 22:21, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. I find the Unicode stuff useful, but it's certainly not what a casual user interested in the alphabet (especially in learning the alphabet) would care about. --Saforrest 02:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Arabic alphabet and other languages: transcribe vs. write

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

In the initial paragraph, I chnaged transcribe other languages to write other languages, simply because transcribe appeared to me an inappropriate special term. From Merriam-Webster:

2 a : to represent (speech sounds) by means of phonetic symbols

Then, I thought perhaps there was some significance in the word. Perhaps, it was meant that the way they adopted it for other languages was similar to transcribing what they heard, not trying to respect some other sides of the other language's structure. But anyway, I'm not an expert, and that was not clear from the text. So, if someone has the required knowledge, you could write about it more somewhere in the article.--Imz 19:14, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

The meaning I generally associate with "transcribe", especially in a context like this, is to translate written text from one alphabet to another. For example, I might "transcribe" my first name to Arabic as "ستيفن". --Saforrest 03:41, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Hamza rules

the hamza rules page is left unedited. i've found this nice thread. http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=43789 someone should form it well and edit Arabic alphabet (writing of the hamza)

Arabic Characters Table

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I don't know much about Arabic, but I feel that the 2 tables and 1 image are redundant. Both the "Primary Letters" and "Other Characters" tables are useful enough, but the image is redundant. Not knowing anything about Arabic, I didn't want to delete it unless it wasn't really useful. --Limetom 04:50, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Additional letters?

Latest comment: 19 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I've encountered usage of "extended" letters to transliterate foreign sounds (such as p, g, v) in Arabic. Could someone clarify this issue? --194.226.235.251 18:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about p and v, but "g" is not a foreign sound in Arabic - it's quite common, and is represented by the 5th letter of the alphabet - geem. --Gene_poole 03:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The [v] sound is sometimes written with the letter fa, but with three dots over it, rather than one. I think that using the Persian [p] letter (ba with three dots under it, rather than one) is rarer. As for a [g] sound, [g] is the ordinary pronunciation of the letter jim among Egyptians (but the standard Arabic pronunciation of this same letter is with a "j", and a common Syrian pronunciation is with a "zh"). Non-Egyptian Arabs occasionally use a letter jim with three dots under it to transcribe a [g], but I'm not sure how widely that would be understood (the Persian use of this same symbol is to transcribe a "ch" or "tsh" sound). AnonMoos 15:15, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

beh with three dots below is pretty much automatically understood to mean P. feh with three dots above is equally understood to mean V. G is transliterated using standard geem in Egypt, and ghayn in the sham. geem with three dots inside indicates a zh voice in Egypt and sometimes called a zheem (e.g. as in garage = geem - reh - aleph - zheem)

Alphabet vs. script

Latest comment: 19 years ago11 comments4 people in discussion

This is a question for native English speakers: Does the opening sentence »The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing in the Arabic language.« make sense in English? Can an alphabet be a script, or are these two different terms? Judging on the use in my native Slovenian, I would call »a script« a set of defined symbols used to write a language, and »an alphabet« a common, or defined, order of these symbols. Consistent with this, we are talking about Latin script, but about English alphabet, and, for instance, about different positions of letters Ä and Ö in German and Swedish alphabets. Judging from the usage in Wikipedia, though, I would say that the terms »alphabet« and »alphabetic writing system« are used more loosely and perhaps interchangeably in English. Please comment on this. --Peterlin 15:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Well actually this isn't an alphabet. An alphabet represents vowel sounds while an abjad only represents the consonants. This isn't a pure abjad, but that's how it would be best described. I'm not sure why this is under Arabic alphabet. It should be moved. --LakeHMM 03:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe because Alphabet is the traditional and commonly-used term, while "abjad" in that particular sense is a rather recently-coined esoteric technical linguistics term. AnonMoos

I don't think that's a very good reason. It's incorrect, and Wikipedia should, of course, be correct. --LakeHMM 00:30, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Dude, it's a "consonantal alphabet", if that will salve your conscience. There's no need for Wikipedia to be so pedantic that it impedes understanding. AnonMoos 02:15, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Dude, that's kind of an oxymoron. I mean, there's a reason Chinese alphabet redirects to Chinese character and not the other way around. Calling it an abjad and linking to the definition of an abjad doesn't impede understanding, it aids it. My conscience isn't at issue here. Let's stay on topic. --LakeHMM 04:00, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

regarding the original question, "script" is used synonymously with "writing system", and alphabets are a subset of these. The Chinese script isn't an "alphabet", being ideo-/logographical, that's not an issue here. If the Arabic alphabet isn't considered an "alphabet" in the strict technical sense, that's still what it is commonly called. Yes, it is an abjad, but we won't move the article to Arabic abjad or Arabic consonantal alphabet because of that. An abjad is, in common usage, considered an alphabet, because it maps phonemes to symbols. In contexts where pedantry is required, it can be identified as an abjad, or if that term is considered too opaque, a consonantal alphabet. dab (ᛏ) 13:53, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. I realize, however, that my question probably wasn't clear enough, since no answer actually answered what I hoped I had asked. So I will try to rephrase it. I believe I understand the difference between an alphabet, an abjad and an abugida, and I also know that Arabic is an abjad, even though professor Daniels considers it shouldn't be called an abjad, since it actually has characters for some vowels (alif, for instance). My question was not, however, whether the article should be renamed from Arabic alphabet to Arabic abjad or even Arabic impure abjad, but whether Arabic script would be a more appropriate term for it. Wikipedia applies this term to Indic scripts, e.g., Gujarati script, Gurmukhi script, Malayalam script, Tamil script or Telugu script, to name a few. The titles Gujarati alphabet, Gurmukhi alphabet, Malayalam alphabet, Tamil alphabet and Telugu alphabet exist as redirections for the above mentioned articles. In Arabic (and numerous other articles) the redirection goes the other way round. --Peterlin 08:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

but the question whether the Arabic script is an alphabet is related to your question. We seem to use "script" for abugidas, and we seem to allow "alphabet" for abjads. That makes sense, since abjads are traditionally called alphabets. The difference between "abjad" and "alphabet" would be difficult to translate into Arabic, since I understand "abjad" is simply the Arabic generic term for "alphabet" (ar:أبجدية -- is there a difference between abjad, abjadi and abjadiyyah?). It wouldn't be false to move the article to Arabic script, but clearly the same would then apply for Hebrew script, Nabatean script, Syriac script, Proto-Canaanite script etc. These are all commonly called "alphabets", and by MoS I argue that this is where we should keep them. dab (ᛏ) 11:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

My Arabic dictionary translates Abjad as "alphabet". Abjadi is the adjective form "alphabetical". Abjadiya is the feminine singular (and inanimate plural) form of the adjective, which could theoretically be used as an abstract noun (though I'm not sure what this abstract noun would mean). AnonMoos 19:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

yes, the point is that the ar-wiki article on "Alphabet" is on "abjadiyyah", and not on "abjad", so I wonder whether "abjad" is even in use anymore... dab (ᛏ) 19:48, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. see Talk:Elative (gradation) commenting on an article you originated. AnonMoos 17:37, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Abjadi orders tabulated

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

With the browser I was using (Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7) the two sets of lines demonstrating the Abjadi orders in Arabic and roman letters were misaligned, so I decided to put them in tables. It turned out Firefox was also being too clever and rendering them right to left, which put them in the wrong order. So these are now both in the right order and properly aligned.

I may have inadvertently introduced some errors into the order (I am not familiar with Arabic myself). I would appreciate it if someone who knows what they're doing would check this over.

Hairy Dude 17:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Is there a better way besides an asterisk?

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Currently the section titled Numerals has the following table:

Standard numerals Template:Arabiyyah 0 Template:Arabiyyah 1 Template:Arabiyyah 2 Template:Arabiyyah 3 Template:Arabiyyah 4 Template:Arabiyyah 5 Template:Arabiyyah 6 Template:Arabiyyah 7 Template:Arabiyyah 8 Template:Arabiyyah 9

East Arab numerals Template:Arabiyyah 0 Template:Arabiyyah 1 Template:Arabiyyah 2 Template:Arabiyyah 3 Template:Arabiyyah 4 Template:Arabiyyah 5 Template:Arabiyyah 6 Template:Arabiyyah 7 Template:Arabiyyah 8 Template:Arabiyyah 9

When I first read this and saw an asterisk near the ٢, I thought that meant it was part of the letter. However, in the paragraph below it has this: "*Standard form of number 2 in Egypt is slightly different". Isn't there a better way to do this? Kirbytime 19:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully you'll find the new table addresses this issue. –jonsafari 20:19, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Arabic term for "Arabic alphabet"

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

What is the term for the Arabic alphabet/abjad in the relevant languages? The North Indian script is called Devanāgarī, the East Asian is called Hanzi in Chinese and Kanji in Japanese and Hanja in Korean and Hán tự in Vietnamese. How do the users of this alphabet refer to it? Could someone please add that information to the article? -leigh (φθόγγος) 05:49, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

الابجديه العربيه is what Google's machine translator gives me. -Fsotrain₀₉ 02:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Order of numeral systems?

Latest comment: 18 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

This strikes me as a bit odd:

Unlike Arabic alphabetic characters, Arabic numerals are written from left to right.

Isn't this sort of a matter of perspective? We think of reading a number from left to right starting with the highest digit because that's our experience as English speakers and that's how our language works, but in older days they used constructions like "four-and-twenty blackbirds" (this is still used in German as vierundzwanzig) and so "42" might have been quite a natural way to write "twenty-four" in English had things happened differently.

With this in mind, we could say that Arabic numerals are read from right-to-left, by reading the ones-place first (e.g. 316 is "6 and 10 and 300"), and it's the European languages which had things backwards. I guess this only makes sense if the way numbers are spoken in Arabic sounds somewhat like "four-and-twenty", though. --Saforrest 02:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I thought that the whole reason columns of numbers have to be justified on the right side, backwards from columns of text, was that we'd inherited this system from a language that wrote right to left. Could somebody who knows how to speak numbers in Arabic comment on which digits of a multidigit number are actually pronounced first? EbonyTotem 01:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't speak Arabic, but for 11-99 it usess the "four and twenty" order. Hundreds, thousands and above precede, I think, although this could also be a later development. --JWB 03:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

JWB is right about the order. But in any case, Arabs do generally write numbers from left to right; it's not a matter of perspective, if they're writing ٧٤٦٥٨ they start with the ٧! So for example if you are writing a telephone number in Arabic and the number is 092 353484, you'll begin on the left with the zero, just like in the Latin alphabet. Palmiro | Talk 20:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

farsi yeh

I have changed the sound of farsi yeh, form a to i (which is true for Egypt and Iran), but as Urdu is mentioned as a language using Farsi yeh as well, could someone confirm that for Urdu. Or we have to differentiate. Template:U+06D6

Arabic phrase needed

Latest comment: 19 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hi all -- looking for some kind soul to contribute the Arabic for Qisas Al-Anbiya at the article of the same name. If anyone here can do it that would be great. Many thanks! --Bookgrrl 03:15, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Looks like Al-Qisas and Al-Anbiya are at User:Grenavitar/sura. Putting them together: القصص الأنبياء

Deleting the first definite article: قصص الأنبياء

--JWB 03:27, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You are so quick!! Thanks (this place is so amazing...) --Bookgrrl 03:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Globalize

Latest comment: 18 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion

The Arabic alphabet isn't "the script used for writing in the Arabic language" any more than the Latin alphabet is the script used to write the Latin language. The Latin alphabet article doesn't ignore J, U, W, or even Ŋ, so why does this article not make any mention of letters like چ? --Ptcamn 09:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Giim is certainly listed in the article. --Gene_poole 23:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Count the dots. Giim (ج) has one, che (چ) has three. --Ptcamn 02:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

These are legitimate concerns. After all, the Latin Alphabet article almost immediately mentions variations, while here I really only find vowel variations, à la Mater lectonis. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

This article combines the general Arabic script and the specific writing system for the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet. For example, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and Uyghur all use forms of the Arabic script, but each has their own specific implementation and pronunciations (eg. how ﻕ and ﺽ are pronounced). Having an article that discusses both the Arabic script and the specifics of how it's used for the Arabic language would be like having an article about both Cyrillic and the Russian alphabet (or OCS), or the Latin script and how the Romans pronounced the letters. In following the conventions of most parallel articles, I think we should have an Arabic script article discuss the general features of the the writing system not specific to the Arabic language, akin to Cyrillic script or Devanagari, and have Arabic alphabet cover the specifics of how the script is used for the Arabic language (eg. that ﻕ is pronounced [q], that ﺽ is pronounced [dˁ], etc.) –jonsafari 00:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

One can also argue that the Latin letters J, C, X can be pronounced differently according to the language. But nevertheless in the Arabic script there are even more issues on the vowel sounds and what they represent- e/a in Arabic is ae in Farsi and a in Urdu; i in Arabic and Urdu is e in Persian, etc. Also, there are articles about each specific version of the Arabic alphabet, like Persian alphabet and Urdu alphabet, so I'd think its safe to focus on Arabic in this article. Mar de Sin ^{Talk to me!} 18:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

You'll notice in the Latin alphabet article that it clearly distinguishes between the graphemes and their usage in Latin. The specific implementation of the Latin alphabet to Latin is covered in a separate article: Latin spelling and pronunciation. It only touches on it as a historical note in the Evolution section, as would be understandable here too. –jonsafari 01:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Unicode problem

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Some people (like me) can't see some unicode symbols (sadda, sukum, harakat). Isn't a good idea to create some .png to resolve this problem? Lemke --201.34.159.35 00:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

the problem being on your end, I think it would be a good idea for you to fix your browser / install unicode fonts instead. dab (ᛏ) 15:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Writing Arabic letters separately for easy distinguishing

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I think that writing Arabic words without ligatures and joining letters will make reading Arabic text much easier. Why do not perform this reform at least in home? Example:

الله - word Allah (A LL^AH) written with joining - difficult to read, appears optically as three separate symbols - A and A are separated, but L, L, and H are joined into one symbol.

ا ل ل _ّ ه - word Allah (A L L A H) written without joining - easy to read, appears optically as five separate symbols - A, L, L, A and H are fully separated.

But writing that way would be like writing Japanese text in hiragana only. It's technically easier to read for learners, but you'll not find any authentic text written that way, except in various books written for those learning to read the language. The conventional way has always been natural Arabic script (ie with ligatures) plus a romanisation. Rhialto 00:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew is written with distinct letters, but why Arabic is not written that way, at least since modern times? Why Arabs never didn't performed this reform?

Hebrew was never written cursively (with systematically connected letters) in the main line of the history of the development its alphabet, but Arabic borrowed a cursive form of the Aramaic alphabet basically from the beginning. AnonMoos 03:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

"In the hotel"

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Why the particular phrase "in the hotel" used as the example phrase in the infobox? AnonMoos 15:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Arabic and Hebrew letters

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I have noticed that several pages for Arabic alphabet letters, such as Template:ArabDIN, Template:ArabDIN, and Template:ArabDIN, redirect to a page titled for the equivalent Hebrew letter. I think this might be inappropriate. What does anyone else think? 129.12.200.49 16:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, not quite. They redirect to pages for the common Semitic letters, and the titles of these pages are supposed to be the Phoenician names of the letters. It is true that many of these pages have more information on the Hebrew letter than on other letters; that should be corrected by adding more sections to those articles. --Macrakis 19:26, 15 November 2006 (UTC)