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The Arabic alphabet, [a] or the 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, [b] of which most have contextual letterforms. Unlike the modern Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case.
In Arabic, alif maqsurah ى is not used initially or medially, and it is not joinable initially or medially in any font. However, the letter is used initially and medially in the Uyghur Arabic alphabet and the Arabic-based Kyrgyz alphabet, representing the vowel /ɯ/: (ىـ ـىـ ).
The first known recorded text in the Arabic alphabet is known as the Zabad inscription, composed in 512. It is a trilingual dedication in Greek, Syriac and Arabic found at the village of Zabad in northwestern Syria. The version of the Arabic alphabet used includes only 21 letters, of which only 15 are different, being used to note 28 phonemes:
Dagger alif, superscript alif in Arabic alphabet; Alif, the first letter of the Urdu alphabet; Alif, the eighth consonant of the Thaana abugida used in Dhivehi; Films ...
Alif is the first letter of the Urdu alphabet, and it is used exclusively as a vowel. At the beginning of a word, alif can be used to represent any of the short vowels: اب ab, اسم ism, اردو Urdū. For long ā at the beginning of words alif-mad is used: آپ āp, but a plain alif in the middle and at the end: بھاگنا bhāgnā.
Of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet, exactly one half appear as muqatta'at, either singly or in combinations of two, three, four or five letters. The fourteen letters are: ʾalif أ, hā هـ, ḥā ح, ṭā ط, yā ي, kāf ك, lām ل, mīm م, nūn ن, sīn س, ʿain ع, ṣād ص, qāf ق, rā ر.
[1] [2] As Wright notes "[alif] was at first more rarely marked than the other long vowels, and hence it happens that, at a later period, after the invention of the vowel-points, it was indicated in some very common words merely by a fatḥa [i.e. the dagger alif.]" [3] Most keyboards do not have dagger alif.
This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Arabic on Wikipedia. It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Arabic in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them.