The Arabic alphabet, or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most have contextual letterforms. The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad, with only consonants required to be written; due to its optional use of diacritics to notate vowels, it is considered an impure abjad.
The Hebrew alphabet, known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is traditionally an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. In modern Hebrew, vowels are increasingly introduced. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze. It is an offshoot of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet.
Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include consonant pointing known as iʻjām (إِعْجَام), and supplementary diacritics known as tashkīl (تَشْكِيل). The latter include the vowel marks termed ḥarakāt.
Abaza is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by Abazins in Russia. The language has gone through several different orthographies based primarily on Latin and Cyrillic letters. Its consonant-to-vowel ratio is remarkably high; making it quite similar to many other languages from the same parent chain. The language evolved in popularity in the mid to late 1800s, but has become an endangered language.
Bashkir or Bashkort is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. It is co-official with Russian in Bashkortostan. It is spoken by 1.09 million native speakers in Russia, as well as in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Estonia and other neighboring post-Soviet states, and among the Bashkir diaspora. It has three dialect groups: Southern, Eastern and Northwestern.
Avar, also known as Avaric, is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Avar–Andic subgroup that is spoken by Avars, primarily in Dagestan. In 2010, there were approximately 1 million speakers in Dagestan and elsewhere in Russia.
Kalmyk Oirat, commonly known as the Kalmyk language, is a variety of the Oirat language, natively spoken by the Kalmyk people of Kalmykia, a federal subject of Russia. In Russia, it is the standard form of the Oirat language, which belongs to the Mongolic language family. The Kalmyk people of the Northwest Caspian Sea of Russia claim descent from the Oirats from Eurasia, who have also historically settled in Mongolia and Northwest China. According to UNESCO, the language is "Definitely endangered". According to the Russian census of 2021, there are 110,000 speakers of an ethnic population consisting of 178,000 people.
While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in phonology, the contemporary spoken Arabic language is more properly described as a continuum of varieties. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions. MSA is used in writing in formal print media and orally in newscasts, speeches and formal declarations of numerous types.
Waw is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician wāw 𐤅, Aramaic waw 𐡅, Hebrew vav ו, Syriac waw ܘ and Arabic wāw و.
Yodh is the tenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician yōd 𐤉, Hebrew yud י, Aramaic yod 𐡉, Syriac yōḏ ܝ, and Arabic yāʾ ي. Its sound value is in all languages for which it is used; in many languages, it also serves as a long vowel, representing.
Aleph is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep 𐤀, Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap 𐡀, Syriac ʾālap̄ ܐ, Arabic ʾalif ا, and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez ʾälef አ.
Libyan Arabic, also called Sulaimitian Arabic by scholars, is a variety of Arabic spoken in Libya, and neighboring countries. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata. The Eastern variety extends beyond the borders to the east and share the same dialect with far Western Egypt, Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic, with between 90,000 and 474,000 speakers in Egypt. A distinctive southern variety, centered on Sabha, also exists and is more akin to the western variety. Another Southern dialect is also shared along the borders with Niger with 12,900 speakers in Niger as of 2021.
Three alphabets are used to write Kazakh: the Cyrillic, Latin and Arabic scripts. The Cyrillic script is used in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. An October 2017 Presidential Decree in Kazakhstan ordered that the transition from Cyrillic to a Latin script be completed by 2031. The Arabic script is used in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of China.
In the context of the recitation of the Quran, tajwīd is a set of rules for the correct pronunciation of the letters with all their qualities and applying the various traditional methods of recitation (Qira'at). In Arabic, the term tajwīd is derived from the verb جود, meaning enhancement or to make something excellent. Technically, it means giving every letter its right in reciting the Qur'an.
The Urdu alphabet is the right-to-left alphabet used for writing Urdu. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which itself is derived from the Arabic script. It has official status in the republics of Pakistan, India and South Africa. The Urdu alphabet has up to 39 or 40 distinct letters with no distinct letter cases and is typically written in the calligraphic Nastaʿlīq script, whereas Arabic is more commonly written in the Naskh style.
The hamza is an Arabic script character that, in the Arabic alphabet, denotes a glottal stop and, in non-Arabic languages, indicates a diphthong, vowel, or other features, depending on the language. Derived from the letter ʿAyn, the hamza is written in medial and final positions as an unlinked letter or placed above or under a carrier character. Despite its common usage as a letter in Modern Standard Arabic, it is generally not considered to be one of its letters, although some argue that it should be considered a letter.
Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world. The creator is Saint Clement of Ohrid from the Preslav literary school in the First Bulgarian Empire.
The Pashto alphabet is the right-to-left abjad-based alphabet developed from the Arabic script, used for the Pashto language in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It originated in the 16th century through the works of Pir Roshan.
Pegon is a modified Arabic script used to write the Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese languages, as an alternative to the Latin script or the Javanese script and the Old Sundanese script. It was used in a variety of applications, from religion, to diplomacy, to poetry. But today particularly, it is used for religious (Islamic) writing and poetry, particularly in writing commentaries of the Qur'an. Pegon includes letters that are not present in Modern Standard Arabic. Pegon has been studied far less than its Jawi counterpart which is used for Malay, Acehnese and Minangkabau.
The phonological system of the Hejazi Arabic consists of approximately 26 to 28 native consonant phonemes and 8 vowel phonemes:. Consonant length and vowel length are both distinctive in Hejazi.
