User:Любослов Езыкин/List of the Arabic letters

Preliminary note

 * Every Arabic letter has four presentations forms according to its position in a text string: isolated, intital, medial, final.
 * Some letters lack initial and medial forms, this is shown with an m-dash.
 * Presentations forms of additional letters are written like the forms of the basic letters.
 * Some letters have particular forms, it will be shown below.
 * If the first value shown without the language name then it's used in the most languages (to list them all is unpractical). Then goes deviations from the letter basic value.
 * Only values of Modern Standard Arabic shown for simplicity's sake. See Varieties of Arabic for phonology of particular dialects.
 * The Arabic scripts of the Turkic languages of the former USSR were written similarly to Tatar before the 1930th, so they are not listed.

N

 * The Urdu "nasalization nūn" is written without dots in its final and isolated forms, but does not have any differences in its other forms with basic nūn.
 * The three dots of Malay (Jawi) nūn are written below in the initial and medial forms, thus the letter is clearly different from Arabic thāʾ, but looks like Persian pe (this does not cause any ambiguity since Malay uses fāʾ with three dots ڤ for /p/).

H

 * There at least exist two forms of Arabic hāʾ: one is used in the Naskh style, the other one is in Nastaʿlīq. As Urdu nearly exclusively uses Nastaʿlīq, for compatibility the Nastaʿlīq hāʾ is encoded separately and given an Urdu name (though it is originally just a stylistic variation of the Arabic letter). Usually this code point (U+06C1) should not be used in contemporary situations, but the normal hāʾ (U+0647). It is up to the fonts to properly render hāʾ (U+0647) in the Nastaʿlīq way.
 * Urdu also uses another one hāʾ for aspiration. It does looks like the Naskh hāʾ even in Nastaʿlīq fonts, but differs in its final and isolated forms.

Y

 * Arabic uses two types of yāʾ: one is normal and the other one is for /-aː/. As its value is equal to ʾalif, it is called ʾalif maqṣūra. It is written only at the end of words and have no initial and medial forms.
 * Persian ye is a stylistic variation of Arabic yāʾ. It lacks dots in the final and isolated forms, hence they look like ʾalif maqṣūra. This variation is also used in some Arabic countries like Egypt. For compatibility this variation is encoded separately and given a Persian name. Although historically it is not an independent Persian letter, but just a variation of Arabic yāʾ.
 * There are also the third type of yāʾ. It has been used in Nastaʿlīq style for both Arabic, Persian and other languages. It might be called "returned yāʾ" for its particular final form. It was not a separate letter, but just a stylistic (calligraphic) variation. But in Urdu it has became an independent letter, given a separate code point and its Urdu name (ye baṛī). Its initial and medial forms are not different from basic yāʾ. But this causes several problems:
 * Technically both the font and the system should render its initial and medial forms as visually no different from yāʾ. But very few if not any fonts do this properly. Hence the result (1) from above: the right code points (U+06D2), but the wrong representations.
 * An ad hoc workaround for this is to use yāʾ (U+064A) when the letter at the beginning or in the middle of words, but ye baṛī (U+06D2) at the end. Hence the result (2) from above: the wrong code points (U+064A) for the initial and medial forms, but the right representations. Though it does look good, but technically this is not right. This situation must be resolved in the future by font designers and software developers.

K

 * Arabic has had three shapes of kāf:
 * ك (U+0643) is used in all contemporary situations.
 * ک (U+06A9) and ڪ (U+06AA), "swash kāf", are historical and may usually appear in Quranic texts.
 * Persian uses exclusively ک (U+06A9), though its initial and medial shapes are no different from "Arabic" kāf. This shape is also used in the languages of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
 * Sindhi treats both "Persian kāf" and "swash kāf" as two independent letters. ك (U+0643) is not used in Sindhi.

F and Q

 * In Standard Arabic fāʾ and qāf are differentiated largely by the number of the superscript dots. In old Arabic manuscripts fāʾ was written with a dot below while qāf with a dot above. This ancient practice survives in Maghrebi Quranic manuscripts.


 * In Maghreb qāf with three dots above is used for /ɡ/. In Morocco ݣ (U+0763) is preferred.
 * In Maghreb fāʾ with three dots either above or below is used for /v/. The former (ڤ) can be hardly distinguished from the three-dotted qāf, so should be avoided.