Punjabi,
Saraiki,
Sindhi and
Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to:
* People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir
* Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley
* Kashmiri language, their language
People with the name
* Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...
.
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
spoken within Iran, such as
Azerbaijani,
Turkmen,
Qashqai,
Chaharmahali, and
Khalaj use the Persian alphabet as well.
Letters
Below are the 32 letters of the modern Persian alphabet. Since the script is cursive, the appearance of a letter changes depending on its position: isolated, initial (joined on the left), medial (joined on both sides) and final (joined on the right) of a word.
The names of the letters are mostly the ones used in Arabic except for the Persian pronunciation. The only ambiguous name is , which is used for both and . For clarification, they are often called (literally "-like " after , the name for the letter that uses the same base form) and (literally "two-eyed ", after the contextual middle letterform ), respectively.
Overview table
Historically
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
, there was also a special letter for the sound . This letter is no longer used, as the /β/-sound changed to /b/, e.g. archaic /zaβān/ > /zæbɒn/ 'language'
Variants
Letter construction
The
i'jam diacritic characters are illustrative only; in most typesetting the combined characters in the middle of the table are used.
Persian Yē has 2 dots below in the initial and middle positions only. The
standard Arabic version always has 2 dots below.
Letters that do not link to a following letter
Seven letters (, , , , , , ) do not connect to the following letter, unlike the rest of the letters of the alphabet. The seven letters have the same form in isolated and initial position and a second form in medial and final position. For example, when the letter is at the beginning of a word such as ("here"), the same form is used as in an isolated . In the case of ("today"), the letter takes the final form and the letter takes the isolated form, but they are in the middle of the word, and also has its isolated form, but it occurs at the end of the word.
Diacritics
Persian script has adopted a subset of
Arabic diacritics
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , ').
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where s ...
: zebar ( in Arabic), zir ( in Arabic), and piš ''or'' ( in Arabic, pronounced ''zamme'' in
Western Persian),
tanwīne nasb and
šaddah (
gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
). Other Arabic diacritics may be seen in Arabic loanwords in Persian.
Short vowels
Of the four Arabic short vowels, the Persian language has adopted the following three. The last one,
sukūn
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , ').
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...
, has not been adopted.
In Iranian Persian, none of these short vowels may be the initial or final grapheme in an isolated word, although they may appear in the final position as an
inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
, when the word is part of a noun group. In a word that starts with a vowel, the first grapheme is a silent ''alef'' which carries the short vowel, e.g. (''omid'', meaning "hope"). In a word that ends with a vowel, letters , and respectively become the proxy letters for ''zebar'', ''zir'' and ''piš'', e.g. نو (''now'', meaning "new") or بسته (''bast-e'', meaning "package").
Tanvin (nunation)
Nunation ( fa, تنوین, ) is the addition of one of three vowel diacritics to a noun or adjective to indicate that the word ends in an alveolar nasal sound without the addition of the letter nun.
Tašdid
Other characters
The following are not actual letters but different orthographical shapes for letters, a ligature in the case of the . As to (''
hamza''), it has only one graphic since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes 'seated' on a vâv, ye or alef, and in that case, the seat behaves like an ordinary vâv, ye or alef respectively. Technically, ''hamza'' is not a letter but a diacritic.
Although at first glance, they may seem similar, there are many differences in the way the different languages use the alphabets. For example, similar words are written differently in Persian and Arabic, as they are used differently.
Novel letters
The Persian alphabet has four extra letters that are not in the Arabic alphabet: , (''ch'' in ''chair''), (''s'' in ''measure''), .
Deviations from the Arabic script
Persian uses the
Eastern Arabic numerals
The Eastern Arabic numerals, also called Arabic-Hindu numerals or Indo–Arabic numerals, are the symbols used to represent numerical digits in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet in the countries of the Mashriq (the east of the Arab world) ...
, but the shapes of the digits 'four' (), 'five' (), and 'six' () are different from the shapes used in Arabic. All the digits also have different codepoints in
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
:
* However, the Arabic variant continues to be used in its traditional style in the
Nile Valley, similarly as it is used in Persian and Ottoman Turkish.
Comparison of different numerals
Word boundaries
Typically, words are separated from each other by a space. Certain morphemes (such as the plural ending '-hâ'), however, are written without a space. On a computer, they are separated from the word using the
zero-width non-joiner
The zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ) is a non-printing character used in the computerization of writing systems that make use of ligatures. When placed between two characters that would otherwise be connected into a ligature, a ZWNJ causes them to b ...
.
Cyrillic Persian alphabet in Tajikistan
As part of the "
russification
Russification (russian: русификация, rusifikatsiya), or Russianization, is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians, whether involuntarily or voluntarily, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian cultur ...
" of
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
, the Cyrillic script was introduced in the late 1930s. The alphabet remained Cyrillic until the end of the 1980s with the disintegration of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. In 1989, with the growth in
Tajik nationalism, a law was enacted declaring Tajik the
state language
An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...
. In addition, the law officially equated Tajik with
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, placing the word ''Farsi'' (the endonym for the Persian language) after Tajik. The law also called for a gradual reintroduction of the Perso-Arabic alphabet.
The Persian alphabet was introduced into
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
and public life, although the banning of the
Islamic Renaissance Party in 1993 slowed adoption. In 1999, the word ''Farsi'' was removed from the state-language law, reverting the name to simply ''Tajik''. the ''de facto'' standard in use is the
Tajik Cyrillic alphabet, and only a very small part of the population can read the Persian alphabet.
See also
*
Scripts used for Persian
*
Romanization of Persian
Romanization of Persian or Latinization of Persian ( fa, لاتیننویسی فارسی, Lâtin-Nevisi-ye Fârsi, link=no, ) is the representation of the Persian language ( Iranian Persian, Dari and Tajik) with the Latin script. Several diff ...
*
Persian braille
Persian Braille ( Persian: بریل فارسی) is the braille alphabet for the Persian language. It is largely compatible with Arabic Braille, which may be found (in uncontracted form) within Persian Braille texts. There are a few additional Per ...
*
Persian phonology
The Persian language has between six and eight vowels and 26 consonants. It features contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters.
Vowels
The chart to the right reflects the vowels of many educated Persian speakers from Tehran.
Th ...
*
Abjad numerals
The Abjad numerals, also called Hisab al-Jummal ( ar, حِسَاب ٱلْجُمَّل, ), are a decimal alphabetic numeral system/alphanumeric code, in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values. They have been us ...
*
Nastaʿlīq
''Nastaliq'' (; fa, , ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'', is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script in the Persian and Urdu languages, often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, rarely for Arabic. ''Nast ...
, the calligraphy used to write Persian before the 20th century
References
External links
Dastoore khat- The Official document in Persian by
Academy of Persian Language and Literature
The Academy of Persian Language and Literature (APLL) ( fa, فرهنگستان زبان و ادب فارسی, ''Farhangestân-e Zabân-o Adab-e Fârsi'') is the regulatory body for the Persian language, headquartered in Tehran, Iran. Formerly know ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perso-Arabic Script
Persian alphabets
Arabic alphabets
Persian orthography
Alphabets
Persian scripts
Officially used writing systems of India