What is the Arabic Alphabet?

What is the Arabic Alphabet?

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The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 letters, reading from right to left.
Shown below are the basic forms of the letters. 

• Arabic doesn't have a case distinction. There are no upper case or lower case letters .
  
  
• When combined into words, most letters connect with one another, using slight modifications to the basic letter forms (see more on this below).
  
  
• The letters are all consonants, but three of them also represent long vowels.
  
  
• In addition to the letters shown above, there are three short vowels, which are added as small marks above or below the consonants. There are also other marks, signifying things like "silent vowel", "doubling of the consonant", etc.
  

How are Arabic letters written?

The letters in the table above, are all shown in their isolated form. This is the basic, original form of the letters.

• To write a word, we need to make slight modifications to the isolated forms of the letters, to enable them to join with their "neighbours".

For example, when kaaf begins a word, we call it the "initial" form, and it looks like this:

When kaaf comes anywhere between the first and the last letter of the word, we call it the "middle" form, and it looks like this:

When kaaf is the last letter of the word, we call it the "end" form, and it looks like this:

Let's now try and build a simple word - the verb kataba. This word means "to write", and consists of the letters kaaf, taa' and baa'.

To write the word kataba, we will again need to use the initial form of kaaf, but this time we will add a short "a"-vowel - looking like a short stroke - above the kaaf:

What we have written so far, reads ka.

We are now going to add the second letter, called taa'. The isolated form of taa' is shown in the alphabet table above. It is in the first row, the third letter from the right.

We will need the middle form of taa' in order to connect it to kaaf. Below you can see the middle form of taa', before we connect it to kaaf:

After connecting taa' to kaaf, we add a short "a"-vowel above the taa':

What we have written so far, reads kata.

We will now add the third letter, called baa'. The isolated form of baa' is in the alphabet table above. It is in the first row, the second letter from the right.

Below we can see the end form of baa', before we connect it to taa':

After connecting baa' to taa', we add yet another short "a"-vowel, this time above the baa'.

The word is now complete, and reads kataba.

• Arabic is usually written unvocalized, meaning that the text is written without the short vowels. Short vowels are mostly added in poetry and texts for Arabic learners (including children's books).
  
  
• The most prominent example of a vocalized (complete with short vowels) text is the Quran.
  
  
• Reading unvocalized text is possible because of the strict grammatical structure of the language. A person with knowledge of Arabic grammar knows which vowels should be where, when reading unvocalized Arabic text.

Source: [1]

What is the Arabic language?

What is the Arabic language?

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Arabic is one of the world's great languages. Its graceful script, magnificent style and rich vocabulary give the language a unique character and flavor.

Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family, which also includes languages like Hebrew and Aramaic. Like most other Semitic languages, Arabic is written from right to left.

Where did the Arabic language begin?

Calligraphy with text from the Quran, at a mosque entrance.

The origins of the Arabic language go back to pre-islamic Arabia, where the tribes spoke local Arabic dialects.

Poetry played an important role in the culture of pre-Islamic Arabia. The poet represented the prestige and importance of an individual tribe. Okaz, a market town a short distance from the city of Makkah (Mecca) in western Arabia, used to play host to a regular poetry festival where the craft of the poets would be exhibited.

Makkah was an urban centre of trade, culture and religion. The powerful Quraish clan was the most influential in Makkah, and their language became the dominant dialect.
When the Quran (the holy scripture of Islam) was revealed, its unique, elaborate style and challenging message came to change Arabian society for ever. The revelation of the Quran signifies the very beginning of Arabic as a world language. The language of the Quran is still the "benchmark" on which Arabic linguists and grammarians still rely.

As Islam spread to lands beyond the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabic language eventually came to develop a literature spanning numerous forms of expression, styles and genres.

This classical language later developed into what we call "Modern Standard Arabic". The page called, "What is Modern Standard Arabic?", tells you more about this modern form of Arabic.

Arabic loan words

Modern Standard Arabic is the language of the media.

With the spread of Islam, Arabic began its journey from being a regional language, to becoming an international language of major importance. As the Arabic language spread in Spain in the 8th century, its influence on European languages began.

During the Muslim era in Spain, the Spanish language acquired a large number of words from Arabic. Many place names in Spain bear witness to their Arabic past, such as the famous "Alhambra" palace in Granada. Its name originates from the Arabic word "al-hamraa'", meaning "the Red".

Arabic loan words have also found their way into many other European languages. To name a few, the English words "Admiral", "Algebra", "Coffee" and "Giraffe", are of Arabic origin.

Many languages in the Muslim world have, to varying degrees, been influenced by Arabic. Persian is strongly Arabized in both vocabulary and grammar. Urdu - the official language of Pakistan and one of the major languages in India - also contains a great many words of Arabic origin.

Where is Arabic spoken today?

Cairo is the largest city in the Arab world.

• Arabic is today spoken by more than 200 million people in the Arab World, and it is an official language in 22 countries.
  
  
• Arabic is also an important language in many countries bordering on the Arab World, like Mali, Niger, Chad, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. There are also Arabic-speaking populations in parts of southern Turkey and southwestern Iran.
  
  
• With the migration of Arab nationals to countries outside of the Arab World, the Arabic language has spread to practically all corners of the Earth.
  
  
• Arabic has held the status of official language at the United Nations since 1974.
  
  
• Being the language of the Quran, Arabic is highly respected across the Muslim world. Many non-Arab Muslim children begin learning Arabic at early age, to enable them to read and understand the Quran.

source: [1] [2]