Persian alphabet

Persian alphabet
A page from a 12th century manuscript of "Kitab al-Abniya 'an Haqa'iq al-Adwiya" by Abu Mansur Muwaffaq with special Persian letters p (پ), ch (چ) and g (گ = ڭـ).
Script type	Abjad
Period	c. 7th century CE – present
Direction
Languages	Persian (including Iranian and Dari dialects), Mazanderani, Qashqai, Luri, Gilaki, Kurdish (excluding Kurds in Turkey), Talysh, Azerbaijani (in Iran), Pamir languages, Pashto, Urdu, Balochi, Sindhi (in Pakistan), Punjabi (in Pakistan), Uzbek (in Afghanistan), Turkmen (in Afghanistan), Saraiki, Hindko, Brahui, languages spoken in Kashmir
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic Persian alphabet
Child systems	Adyghe Arabic Arabi Malayalam (indirectly) Arabic Afrikaans Arwi (indirectly) Avar Arabic Azerbaijani Arabic Belarusian Arabic Chagatai Dobrujan Tatar Arabic Karachay-Balkar Arabic Karakalpak Arabic Kazakh Arabic⁹ Kumyk Arabic Kyrgyz Arabic İske imlâ Yaña imlâ Uyghur Sarikoli (with some influence from Pashto orthography) Chechen Arabic (indirectly) Gilaki Indo-Persian Aer Kashmiri Marwari Arabic Shahmukhi (Punjabi) Hindko Saraiki Urdu Balochi (indirectly) Balti Bangladeshi Arabic alphabet Brahui Burushaski Gawar-Bati Khowar Kohistani Shina Palula Rohingya Arabic Shina Torwali Wakhi (in Pakistan) Jawi (indirectly) Kabardian Arabic Khorasani Turkic Kurdo-Arabic Lak Arabic Lezgin Arabic Luri Northern Luri Bakhtiari Southern Luri Pashto Munji Ormuri Shughni Arabic Wakhi (in Afghanistan) Sindhi Parkari Koli Ottoman Turkish Arebica Albanian Arabic Crimean Tatar Arabic (could instead be a descendant of Chagatai) Greek Aljamiado Turkmen Arabic Xiao'erjing

The Persian alphabet (Template:Langx), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. An Arabic-based alphabet, it is largely identical to the Arabic alphabet with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', 'ch', and 'p', respectively), in addition to the obsolete that was used for the sound /β/. This letter is no longer used in Persian, as the [β]-sound changed to [b], e.g. archaic > 'language'. Although the sound /β/ () is written as "" nowadays in New Persian), it is different to the Arabic /w/ () sound, which uses the same letter.

It was the basis of many Arabic-based scripts used in Central and South Asia. It is used for both Iranian and Dari, which are standard varieties of Persian, and is one of two official writing systems for the Persian language, alongside the Cyrillic-based Tajik alphabet.

The script is mostly but not exclusively right-to-left; mathematical expressions, numeric dates and numbers bearing units are embedded from left to right. The script is cursive, meaning most letters in a word connect to each other; when they are typed, contemporary word processors automatically join adjacent letter forms. Persian is unusual among Arabic scripts because a zero-width non-joiner is sometimes entered in a word, causing a letter to become disconnected from others in the same word.

History

The Persian alphabet is directly derived and developed from the Arabic alphabet. The Arabic alphabet was introduced to the Persian-speaking world after the Muslim conquest of Persia and the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the 7th century. Following this, the Arabic language became the principal language of government and religious institutions in Persia, which led to the widespread usage of the Arabic script. Classical Persian literature and poetry were affected by this simultaneous usage of Arabic and Persian. A new influx of Arabic vocabulary soon entered the Persian language. In the 8th century, the Tahirid dynasty and Samanid dynasty officially adopted the Arabic script for writing Persian, followed by the Saffarid dynasty in the 9th century, gradually displacing the various Pahlavi scripts used for the Persian language earlier. By the 9th-century, the Perso-Arabic alphabet became the dominant form of writing in Greater Khorasan.

Under the influence of various Persian Empires, many languages in Central and South Asia that adopted the Arabic script use the Persian Alphabet as the basis of their writing systems. Today, extended versions of the Persian alphabet are used to write a wide variety of Indo-Iranian languages, including Kurdish, Balochi, Pashto, Urdu (from Classical Hindustani), Saraiki, Panjabi, Sindhi and Kashmiri. In the past the use of the Persian alphabet was common among Turkic languages, but today is relegated to those spoken within Iran, such as Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Chaharmahali and Khalaj. The Uyghur language in western China is the most notable exception to this.

During the Soviet period many languages in Central Asia, including Persian, were reformed by the government. This ultimately resulted in the Cyrillic-based alphabet used in Tajikistan today. See: Tajik alphabet § History.

Letters

File:Persian Nastaʿlīq's proportions.jpg

Example showing the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic style's proportion rules

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. These include 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet, in addition to 4 other letters.

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. There are nine Persian letters that are mainly used in Arabic or foreign loanwords and not in native words: , , , , , , , and . These nine letters are also commonly used only in proper names. Unlike Arabic, the Persian language does not have pharyngealization at all. Although the letter is mainly used in Arabic loanwords, there are some native Persian words with this letter: , , etc. The pronunciation of these letters in Persian can differ from their pronunciation in Arabic. For example, the letter ث is pronounced as /s/ in Persian, while it is pronounced as /θ/ in Arabic.

Letter	Persian	Arabic
ث	/s/	/θ/
ح	/h/	/ħ/
ذ	/z/	/ð/
ص	/s/	/sˤ/
ض	/z/	/dˤ/
ط	/t/	/tˤ/
ظ	/z/	/ðˤ/
ع	/ʔ/	/ʕ/
غ	[ɢ] or [ɣ]	/ɣ/

Overview table

#	Name (in Persian)	Name (transliterated)	Transliteration	IPA	Unicode	Contextual forms
						Final	Medial	Initial	Isolated
0				Glottal stop [ʔ]	U+0621	—Template:Screen reader-only	—Template:Screen reader-only	—Template:Screen reader-only
					U+0623
					U+0626
					U+0624
1				[ɒ]	U+0627
2				[b]	U+0628
3				[p]	U+067E
4				[t]	U+062A
5			/	[s]	U+062B
6			/	[d͡ʒ]	U+062C
7				[t͡ʃ]	U+0686
8		()	/	[h]	U+062D
9				[x]	U+062E
10				[d]	U+062F
11			/	[z]	U+0630
12				[r]	U+0631
13				[z]	U+0632
14				[ʒ]	U+0698
15				[s]	U+0633
16				[ʃ]	U+0634
17			/	[s]	U+0635
18			/	[z]	U+0636
19			/	[t]	U+0637
20			/	[z]	U+0638
21				[ʔ], [æ]/[a]	U+0639
22				[ɢ], [ɣ]	U+063A
23				[f]	U+0641
24				[q]	U+0642
25				[k]	U+06A9
26				[ɡ]	U+06AF
27				[l]	U+0644
28				[m]	U+0645
29				[n]	U+0646
30		(in Farsi)	/ / /	[uː], , [v], [o] (only word-finally)	U+0648
		(in Dari)	/ / /	[uː], [w], , [oː]
31		()		[h], or [e] and [a] (word-finally)	U+0647
32			/ / / (Also / in Dari)	[j], [i], [ɒː] ( / [eː] in Dari)	U+06CC

Historically, in Early New Persian, there was a special letter for the sound /β/. This letter is no longer used, as the -sound changed to /b/, e.g. archaic /zaβān/ > 'language'.

Name (in Persian)	Name (transliterated)	Transliteration	Sound	Isolated form	Final form	Medial form	Initial form
ڤ	ve	/ /	/β/

Another obsolete variant of the twenty-sixth letter /ɡ/ is which used to appear in old manuscripts.

Sound	Isolated form	Final form	Medial form	Initial form	Name
/ɡ/

Another obsolete variant of the twenty-fifth letter /k/ is which used to appear in old manuscripts.

Sound	Isolated form	Final form	Medial form	Initial form	Name
/k/

The archaic letter /ɡ/ was also used as a substitute for the twenty-sixth letter of the Persian alphabet, , which was used to appear in the older manuscripts of Persian in the late 18th century to the early 19th century.

Sound	Isolated form	Final form	Medial form	Initial form	Name
/ɡ/

Variants

File:Farsi in 16 fonts 2020-03-22 213757.png	•	Noto Nastaliq Urdu
	•	Scheherazade
	•	Lateef
	•	Noto Naskh Arabic
	•	Markazi Text
	•	Noto Sans Arabic
	•	Baloo Bhaijaan
	•	El Messiri SemiBold
	•	Lemonada Medium
	•	Changa Medium
	•	Mada
	•	Noto Kufi Arabic
	•	Reem Kufi
	•	Lalezar
	•	Jomhuria
	•	Rakkas
The alphabet in 16 fonts: Noto Nastaliq Urdu, Scheherazade, Lateef, Noto Naskh Arabic, Markazi Text, Noto Sans Arabic, Baloo Bhaijaan, El Messiri SemiBold, Lemonada Medium, Changa Medium, Mada, Noto Kufi Arabic, Reem Kufi, Lalezar, Jomhuria, and Rakkas.

Letter construction

forms (i)	isolated
	start
	mid
	end
	i'jam (i)
Unicode				0621 ..	0627 ..	0649 ..	06BA ..	066E ..	062D ..	0633 ..	0635 ..	0637 ..	0639 ..	06A1 ..	066F ..	066F ..	0644 ..	0645 ..	062F ..	0631 ..	0648. ..	0647 ..
1 dot below
Unicode	FBB3.							0628 ..	062C ..
1 dot above
Unicode	FBB2.						0646 ..		062E ..		0636 ..	0638 ..	063A ..	0641 ..					0630 ..	0632 ..
2 dots below (ii)
Unicode	FBB5.					06CC ..
2 dots above
Unicode	FBB4.							062A ..							0642 ..							0629 ..
3 dots below
Unicode	FBB9. FBB7.							067E ..	0686 ..
3 dots above
Unicode	FBB6.							062B ..		0634 ..										0698 ..
line above
Unicode	203E.															06AF ..
none
Unicode				0621 ..	0627 ..	0649 ..	06BA ..		062D ..	0633 ..	0635 ..	0637 ..	0639 ..			066F ..	0644 ..	0645 ..	062F ..	0631 ..	0648. ..	0647 ..
madda above
Unicode	06E4. 0653.				0622 ..
Hamza below
Unicode	0655.				0625 ..
Hamza above
Unicode	0674. 0654.				0623 ..	0626 ..															0624 ..	06C0 ..

^i. The i'jam diacritic characters are illustrative only; in most typesetting the combined characters in the middle of the table are used.

^ii. 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: /æ/ ( in Arabic), /e/ ( in Arabic), and /ou̯/ or /o/ ( in Arabic, pronounced in Western Persian), and (gemination). Other Arabic diacritics may be seen in Arabic loanwords in Persian.

180

Nastaliq Persian Calligram the Persian letter Mem

Short vowels

Of the four Arabic diacritics, the Persian language has adopted the following three for short vowels.

Short vowels (fully vocalized text)	Name (in Persian)	Name (transliterated)	Trans.(a)	Value (b) (Farsi/Dari)
064E ◌َ‎		/		/æ/	/a/
0650 ◌ِ‎		/	;	/e/	/ɪ/; /ɛ/
064F ◌ُ‎		/	;	/o/	/ʊ/

^a. There is no standard transliteration for Persian. The letters 'i' and 'u' are only ever used as short vowels when transliterating Dari or Tajik Persian. See Persian Phonology

^b. Diacritics differ by dialect, due to Dari having 8 distinct vowels compared to the 6 vowels of Farsi. See Persian Phonology

In Farsi, 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, when the word is part of a noun group. In a word that starts with a vowel, the first grapheme is a silent which carries the short vowel, e.g. (, meaning "hope"). In a word that ends with a vowel, letters , and respectively become the proxy letters for , and , e.g. (, meaning "new") or (, meaning "package").

Tanvin (nunation)

Nunation (Template:Langx, ) 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.

Nunation (fully vocalized text)	Name (in Persian)	Name (transliterated)	Notes
064B َاً، ـاً، ءً ‎
064D ٍِ ‎			Never used in the Persian language. Taught in Islamic nations to complement Quran education.
064C ٌ ‎

Tašdid

Symbol	Name (in Persian)	Name (transliteration)
0651 ّ ‎	تشدید

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 graphical form since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes 'seated' on a , or , and in that case, the seat behaves like an ordinary , or respectively. Technically, hamza is not a letter but a diacritic.

Name	Pronunciation	IPA	Unicode	Final	Medial	Initial	Stand-alone	Notes
		[ɒ]	U+0622		—			The final form is very rare and is freely replaced with ordinary alef.
	or		U+06C0		—			Validity of this form depends on region and dialect. Some may use the two-letter or combinations instead.
			U+0644 (lām) and U+0627 (alef)
			U+0640	—		—		This is the medial character which connects other characters

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.

Unicode has accepted U+262B ☫ in the Miscellaneous Symbols range. In Unicode 1.0 this symbol was known as SYMBOL OF IRAN. It is a stylization of () used as the emblem of Iran. It is also a part of the flag of Iran.

The Unicode Standard has a compatibility character defined U+FDFC ﷼ () that can represent , the Persian name of the currency of Iran.

Novel letters

The Persian alphabet has four extra letters that are not in the Arabic alphabet: /p/, /t͡ʃ/ (ch in chair), /ʒ/ (s in measure), /ɡ/. An additional fifth letter was used for (v in Spanish ) but it is no longer used.

Sound	Shape	Name	Unicode code point
/p/			U+067E
/t͡ʃ/ (ch)			U+0686
/ʒ/ (zh)			U+0698
/ɡ/			U+06AF

Deviations from the Arabic script

Persian uses the Eastern Arabic numerals, 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:

Hindu-Arabic	Persian	Name	Unicode	Arabic	Unicode
0	۰	صفر sefr	U+06F0	٠	U+0660
1	۱	يک yek	U+06F1	١	U+0661
2	۲	دو do	U+06F2	٢	U+0662
3	۳	سه se	U+06F3	٣	U+0663
4	۴	چهار čahâr	U+06F4	٤	U+0664
5	۵	پنج panj	U+06F5	٥	U+0665
6	۶	شش šeš	U+06F6	٦	U+0666
7	۷	هفت haft	U+06F7	٧	U+0667
8	۸	هشت hašt	U+06F8	٨	U+0668
9	۹	نه no	U+06F9	٩	U+0669
-	ی	ye	U+06CC	ي	U+064A
	ک	kâf	U+06A9	ك	U+0643

Comparison of different numerals

Western Arabic	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Eastern Arabic
Persian
Urdu
Abjad 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.

Cyrillic Persian alphabet in Tajikistan

As part of the russification of Central Asia, the Cyrillic script was introduced in the late 1930s. The alphabet has remained Cyrillic since then. In 1989, with the growth in Tajik nationalism, a law was enacted declaring Tajik the state language. In addition, the law officially equated Tajik with Persian, 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 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.^[1] As of 2004 the de facto standard in use is the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet,^[2] and as of 1996 only a very small part of the population can read the Persian alphabet.^[3]

See also

• Scripts used for Persian
• Romanization of Persian
• Persian braille
• Persian phonology
• Abjad numerals
• Nastaʿlīq, the calligraphy used to write Persian before the 20th century

External links

• Dastoore khat – Official document in Persian by Academy of Persian Language and Literature