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.
Gamma is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop IPA:[ɡ]. In Modern Greek, this letter normally represents a voiced velar fricative IPA:[ɣ], except before either of the two front vowels, where it represents a voiced palatal fricative IPA:[ʝ]; while /g/ in foreign words is instead commonly transcribed as γκ).
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.
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters in predictable ways, such as Greek ⟨α⟩ → ⟨a⟩, Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ → ⟨d⟩, Greek ⟨χ⟩ → the digraph ⟨ch⟩, Armenian ⟨ն⟩ → ⟨n⟩ or Latin ⟨æ⟩ → ⟨ae⟩.
Ğ is a Latin letter found in the Turkish and Azerbaijani alphabets as well as the Latin alphabets of Zazaki, Laz, Crimean Tatar, Tatar, and Kazakh. It traditionally represented the voiced velar fricative or the voiced uvular fricative. However, in Turkish, the phoneme has in most cases been reduced to a silent letter, serving as a vowel-lengthener.
Ge, ghe, or he is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It represents the voiced velar plosive, like ⟨g⟩ in "gift", or the voiced glottal fricative, like ⟨h⟩ in "heft". It is generally romanized using the Latin letter g or h, depending on the source language.
Tsade is the eighteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ṣādē 𐤑, Hebrew ṣādī צ, Aramaic ṣāḏē 𐡑, Syriac ṣāḏē ܨ, Ge'ez ṣädäy ጸ, and Arabic ṣād ص. Its oldest phonetic value is debated, although there is a variety of pronunciations in different modern Semitic languages and their dialects. It represents the coalescence of three Proto-Semitic "emphatic consonants" in Canaanite. Arabic, which kept the phonemes separate, introduced variants of ṣād and ṭāʾ to express the three. In Aramaic, these emphatic consonants coalesced instead with ʿayin and ṭēt, respectively, thus Hebrew ereṣ ארץ (earth) is araʿ ארע in Aramaic.
Qoph is the nineteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician qōp 𐤒, Hebrew qūp̄ ק, Aramaic qop 𐡒, Syriac qōp̄ ܩ, and Arabic qāf ق.
Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician gīml 𐤂, Hebrew gīmel ג, Aramaic gāmal 𐡂, Syriac gāmal ܓ, and Arabic ǧīm ج. Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive ; in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a or for most Arabic speakers except in Northern Egypt, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive.
Ayin is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ʿayin 𐤏, Hebrew ʿayin ע, Aramaic ʿē 𐡏, Syriac ʿē ܥ, and Arabic ʿayn ع.
Ġ is a letter of the Latin script, formed from G with the addition of a dot above the letter.
The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of written and spoken Arabic in the Latin script. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles, cataloging Arabic language works, language education when used instead of or alongside the Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications by linguists. These formal systems, which often make use of diacritics and non-standard Latin characters and are used in academic settings or for the benefit of non-speakers, contrast with informal means of written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-based Arabic chat alphabet.
The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabeezi, Arabish or Franco-Arabic refer to the romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Arabic numerals. These informal chat alphabets were originally used primarily by youth in the Arab world in very informal settings—especially for communicating over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones—though use is not necessarily restricted by age anymore and these chat alphabets have been used in other media such as advertising.
Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet is the second letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician bēt 𐤁, Hebrew bēt ב, Aramaic bēṯ 𐡁, Syriac bēṯ ܒ, and Arabic bāʾ ب. Its sound value is the voiced bilabial stop ⟨b⟩ or the voiced labiodental fricative ⟨v⟩.
Ǧ/ǧ is a letter used in several Latin orthographies.
Ṯāʾ (ث) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two from the Phoenician alphabet. In Modern Standard Arabic it represents the voiceless dental fricative, also found in English as the "th" in words such as "thank" and "thin". In Persian, Urdu, and Kurdish it is pronounced as s as in "sister" in English.
Ḍād (ﺽ) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet. In name and shape, it is a variant of ṣād. Its numerical value is 800.
Ẓāʾ, or ḏ̣āʾ (ظ), is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet. In name and shape, it is a variant of ṭāʾ. Its numerical value is 900.
Gh is a digraph found in many languages.
Begadkefat is the phenomenon of lenition affecting the non-emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not geminated. The name is also given to similar cases of spirantization of post-vocalic plosives in other languages; for instance, in the Berber language of Djerba. Celtic languages have a similar system.
