![Elements of Arabic script improved](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Elements_of_Arabic_script_improved.png)
The
Arabic script has numerous
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s, 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
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
, where short consonants and long vowels are represented by letters but short vowels and
consonant length
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 ...
are not generally indicated in writing. ' is optional to represent missing vowels and consonant length. Modern Arabic is always written with the ''i‘jām''—consonant pointing, but only religious texts, children's books and works for learners are written with the full ''tashkīl''—vowel guides and consonant length. It is however not uncommon for authors to add diacritics to a word or letter when the grammatical case or the meaning is deemed otherwise ambiguous. In addition, classical works and historic documents rendered to the general public are often rendered with the full ''tashkīl'', to compensate for the gap in understanding resulting from stylistic changes over the centuries.
Tashkil (marks used as phonetic guides)
The literal meaning of ' is 'forming'. As the normal Arabic text does not provide enough information about the correct pronunciation, the main purpose of ' (and ') is to provide a phonetic guide or a phonetic aid; i.e. show the correct pronunciation. It serves the same purpose as
furigana
is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also kn ...
(also called "ruby") in
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
or
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally writte ...
or
zhuyin
Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...
in
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
for children who are learning to read or foreign learners.
The bulk of Arabic script is written without ' (or short vowels). However, they are commonly used in texts that demand strict adherence to exact pronunciation. This is true, primarily, of the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
(') and
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
. It is also quite common to add ' to
hadith
Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approva ...
s ('; plural: ') and the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
. Another use is in children's literature. Moreover, ' are used in ordinary texts in individual words when an ambiguity of pronunciation cannot easily be resolved from context alone. Arabic dictionaries with vowel marks provide information about the correct pronunciation to both native and foreign Arabic speakers. In art and
calligraphy, ' might be used simply because their writing is considered
aesthetically pleasing.
An example of a fully ''vocalised'' (''vowelised'' or ''vowelled'') Arabic from the ''
Basmala
The ''Basmala'' ( ar, بَسْمَلَة, ; also known by its incipit ; , "In the name of Allah"), or Tasmiyyah (Arabic: ), is the titular name of the Islamic phrase "In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful" (Arabic: , ) ...
'':
Some Arabic textbooks for foreigners now use ' as a phonetic guide to make learning reading Arabic easier. The other method used in textbooks is phonetic
romanisation
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
of unvocalised texts. Fully vocalised Arabic texts (i.e. Arabic texts with '/diacritics) are sought after by learners of Arabic. Some online bilingual dictionaries also provide ' as a phonetic guide similarly to English dictionaries providing transcription.
Harakat (short vowel marks)
The ' , which literally means 'motions', are the short vowel marks. There is some ambiguity as to which ' are also '; the ', for example, are markers for both vowels and consonants.
Fatḥah
The is a small diagonal line placed ''above'' a letter, and represents a short (like the /a/ sound in the English word "cat"). The word ' itself () means ''opening'' and refers to the opening of the mouth when producing an . For example, with ''
'' (henceforth, the base consonant in the following examples): .
When a is placed before a plain letter (''
'') (i.e. one having no hamza or vowel of its own), it represents a long (close to the sound of "a" in the English word "dad", with an open front vowel /æː/, not back /ɑː/ as in "father"). For example: . The ' is not usually written in such cases. When a fathah placed before the letter ⟨⟩ (yā’), it creates an (as in "lie"); and when placed before the letter ⟨⟩ (wāw), it creates an (as in "cow").
Although paired with a plain letter creates an open front vowel (/a/), often realized as near-open (/
æ/), the standard also allows for variations, especially under certain surrounding conditions. Usually, in order to have the more central (/
ä/) or back (/
ɑ/) pronunciation, the word features a nearby back consonant, such as the emphatics, as well as ''
'', or ''
''. A similar "back" quality is undergone by other vowels as well in the presence of such consonants, however not as drastically realized as in the case of .
[Karin C. Ryding, "A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic", Cambridge University Press, 2005, pgs. 25-34, specifically “Chapter 2, Section 4: Vowels”]
Kasrah
A similar diagonal line ''below'' a letter is called a and designates a short (as in "me", "be") and its allophones
, ɪ, e, e̞, ɛ(as in "Tim", "sit"). For example: .
When a ' is placed before a plain letter (''
''), it represents a long (as in the English word "steed"). For example: . The ' is usually not written in such cases, but if ''
'' is pronounced as a diphthong , ' should be written on the preceding consonant to avoid mispronunciation. The word ' means 'breaking'.
Ḍammah
The is a small curl-like diacritic placed above a letter to represent a short /u/ (as in "duke", shorter "you") and its allophones
, ʊ, o, o̞, ɔ(as in "put", or "bull"). For example: .
When a is placed before a plain letter ('), it represents a long (like the 'oo' sound in the English word "swoop"). For example: . The ' is usually not written in such cases, but if ' is pronounced as a diphthong , ' should be written on the preceding consonant to avoid mispronunciation.
The word ''ḍammah'' (ضَمَّة) in this context means ''rounding'', since it is the only rounded vowel in the vowel inventory of Arabic.
Alif Khanjariyah
The
superscript (or dagger) ' ('), is written as short vertical stroke on top of a consonant. It indicates a long sound for which ''
'' is normally not written. For example: (') or (').
The dagger ' occurs in only a few words, but they include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts. Most keyboards do not have dagger ''.'' The word
Allah () is usually produced automatically by entering ''.'' The word consists of ' + ligature of doubled ' with a ' and a dagger ' above '.
Maddah
The is a
tilde
The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) i ...
-shaped diacritic, which can only appear on top of an ''
'' (آ) and indicates a
glottal stop followed by a long .
In theory, the same sequence could also be represented by two 's, as in *, where a hamza above the first ' represents the while the second ' represents the . However, consecutive 's are never used in the Arabic orthography. Instead, this sequence must always be written as a single ' with a ' above it, the combination known as an '. For example: .
Alif waslah
The , or looks like a small letter ''
'' on top of an ' (also indicated by an ' without a '). It means that the ' is not pronounced when its word does not begin a sentence. For example: ('), but (''imshū'' not ''mshū''). This is because no Arab word can start with a vowel-less consonant (unlike the English ''school'', or ''skateboard''). But when it happens, an ''alif'' is added to obtain a vowel or a vowelled consonant at the beginning of one's speech. In English that would result in *''ischool'', or *''iskateboard''.
It occurs only in the beginning of words, but it can occur after prepositions and the definite article. It is commonly found in imperative verbs, the perfective aspect of verb stems VII to X and their
verbal nouns ('). The ''alif'' of the definite article is considered a '.
It occurs in phrases and sentences (connected speech, not isolated/dictionary forms):
* To replace the elided hamza whose alif-seat has assimilated to the previous vowel. For example: or (') ‘in Yemen’.
* In hamza-initial imperative forms following a vowel, especially following the conjunction (') ‘and’. For example: َ (') ‘rise and then drink the water’.
Like the superscript alif, it is not written in fully vocalized scripts, except for sacred texts, like the Quran and Arabized Bible.
Sukūn
The is a circle-shaped diacritic placed above a letter ( ْ). It indicates that the consonant to which it is attached is not followed by a vowel, i.e.,
zero
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usual ...
-vowel.
It is a necessary symbol for writing consonant-vowel-consonant syllables, which are very common in Arabic. For example: (').
The may also be used to help represent a diphthong. A ' followed by the letter (''
'') with a over it () indicates the diphthong ' (
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
). A ', followed by the letter (') with a ', () indicates .
The may have also an alternative form of the small high head of
' (), particularly in some Qurans. Other shapes may exist as well (for example, like a small comma above ⟨ʼ⟩ or like a
circumflex ⟨ˆ⟩ in
').
Tanwin (final postnasalized or long vowels)
The three vowel diacritics may be doubled at the end of a word to indicate that the vowel is followed by the consonant ''n''. They may or may not be considered and are known as , or nunation. The signs indicate, from left to right, .
These endings are used as non-pausal grammatical indefinite case endings in
Literary Arabic or
classical Arabic (
triptotes only). In a vocalised text, they may be written even if they are not pronounced (see
pausa). See ''
'' for more details. In many spoken Arabic dialects, the endings are absent. Many Arabic textbooks introduce standard Arabic without these endings. The grammatical endings may not be written in some vocalized Arabic texts, as knowledge of ''
'' varies from country to country, and there is a trend towards simplifying Arabic grammar.
The sign is most commonly written in combination with (''
''), (''
''), (alif hamzah) or stand-alone ('). ' should always be written (except for words ending in ' or diptotes) even if ' is not. Grammatical cases and ' endings in indefinite triptote forms:
* ':
nominative case
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
;
* ':
accusative case, also serves as an adverbial marker;
* ':
genitive case.
Shaddah (consonant gemination mark)
The shadda or shaddah ('), or tashdid ('), is a diacritic shaped like a small written Latin "
w".
It is used to indicate
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 ...
(consonant doubling or extra length), which is phonemic in Arabic. It is written above the consonant which is to be doubled. It is the only ' that is commonly used in ordinary spelling to avoid
ambiguity. For example: ; ' ('school') vs. ' ('teacher', female).
I‘jām (phonetic distinctions of consonants)
![Kufic Quran, sura 7, verses 86-87](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Kufic_Quran%2C_sura_7%2C_verses_86-87.jpg)
The ''i‘jām'' (sometimes also called ''nuqaṭ'') are the diacritic points that distinguish various consonants that have the same form ('), such as ب, ت, ث, ن, and ي. Typically ''i‘jām'' are not considered diacritics but part of the letter.
Early manuscripts of the ''
'' did not use diacritics either for vowels or to distinguish the different values of the ''.'' Vowel pointing was introduced first, as a red dot placed above, below, or beside the ', and later consonant pointing was introduced, as thin, short black single or multiple dashes placed above or below the ''rasm'' (
image). These ''i‘jām'' became black dots about the same time as the ' became small black letters or strokes.
Typically, Egyptians do not use dots under final ' , which looks exactly like ' in handwriting and in print. This practice is also used in copies of the ''
'' (
Qurʾān
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God in Islam, God. It is organized in 114 surah, cha ...
) scribed by
. The same unification of ' and ' has happened in
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 ...
, resulting in what
the Unicode Standard
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
calls "", that looks exactly the same as ' in initial and medial forms, but exactly the same as ' in final and isolated forms .
Several ways of writing .
At the time when the ''i‘jām'' was optional, unpointed letters were ambiguous. To clarify that a letter would lack ''i‘jām'' in pointed text (i.e. , , , , , , , , ), the letter could be marked with a small v- or
seagull-shaped diacritic above, also a superscript semicircle (crescent), a subscript dot (except in the case of ; three dots were used with ), or a subscript miniature of the letter itself. A superscript stroke known as ''jarrah'', resembling a long ''fatħah'', was used for a contracted (assimilated) ''sin''. Thus were all used to indicate that the letter in question was truly and not . These signs, collectively known as ''‘alāmātu-l-ihmāl'', are still occasionally used in modern
Arabic calligraphy
Arabic calligraphy is the artistic practice of handwriting and calligraphy based on the Arabic alphabet. It is known in Arabic as ''khatt'' ( ar, خط), derived from the word 'line', 'design', or 'construction'. Kufic is the oldest form of t ...
, either for their original purpose (i.e. marking letters without ''i‘jām''), or often as purely decorative space-fillers. The small above the
''kāf'' in its final and isolated forms was originally an ''‘alāmatu-l-ihmāl'' that became a permanent part of the letter. Previously this sign could also appear above the medial form of ''kāf'', when that letter was written without the stroke on its
ascender. When ''kaf'' was written without that stroke, it could be mistaken for ''lam'', thus ''kaf'' was distinguished with a superscript ''kaf'' or a small superscript ''
hamza'' (''nabrah''), and ''lam'' with a superscript ''l-a-m'' (''lam-alif-mim'').
Hamza (glottal stop semi-consonant)
Although normally a diacritic is not considered a letter of the alphabet, the hamza (',
glottal stop), often stands as a separate letter in writing, is written in unpointed texts and is not considered a ''.'' It may appear as a letter by itself or as a diacritic over or under an ', ', or '.
Which letter is to be used to support the ' depends on the quality of the adjacent vowels;
* If the glottal stop occurs at the beginning of the word, it is always indicated by hamza on an ': above if the following vowel is or and below if it is .
* If the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word, ' above ' is used only if it is not preceded or followed by or :
** If is before or after the glottal stop, a ' with a ' is used (the two dots which are usually beneath the ' disappear in this case): .
** Otherwise, if is before or after the glottal stop, a ' with a ' is used: .
* If the glottal stop occurs at the end of the word (ignoring any grammatical suffixes), if it follows a short vowel it is written above ', ', or ' the same as for a medial case; otherwise on the line (i.e. if it follows a long vowel, diphthong or consonant).
* Two 's in succession are never allowed: is written with ''
'' and is written with a free ' on the line .
Consider the following words: ("brother"), ("Ismael"), ("mother"). All three of above words "begin" with a vowel opening the syllable, and in each case, ' is used to designate the initial glottal stop (the ''actual'' beginning). But if we consider ''middle'' syllables "beginning" with a vowel: ("origin"), ("hearts"—notice the syllable; singular ), ("heads", singular ), the situation is different, as noted above. See the comprehensive article on ' for more details.
History
![Arabic script evolution](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Arabic_script_evolution.svg)
According to tradition, the first to commission a system of ''harakat'' was
Ali
ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب; 600 – 661 CE) was the last of four Rightly Guided Caliphs to rule Islam (r. 656 – 661) immediately after the death of Muhammad, and he was the first Shia Imam ...
who appointed
Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali
Abu al-Aswad al-Duʾali ( ar, أَبُو ٱلْأَسْوَد ٱلدُّؤَلِيّ, '; -16 BH/603 CE – 69 AH/689 CE), whose full name is ʾAbū al-Aswad Ẓālim ibn ʿAmr ibn Sufyān ibn Jandal ibn Yamār ibn Hīls ibn Nufātha ibn al-ʿĀd ...
for the task. Abu al-Aswad devised a system of dots to signal the three short vowels (along with their respective allophones) of Arabic. This system of dots predates the ', dots used to distinguish between different consonants.
File:Basmala kufi.svg, Early Basmala Kufic
File:Kufi.jpg, Middle Kufic
File:Folio from a Qur’an, sura 91,14-15; sura 92,1-5 (F1929.70).jpg, Modern Kufic in Qur'an
Abu al-Aswad's system
Abu al-Aswad's system of Harakat was different from the system we know today. The system used red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel.
A dot above a letter indicated the vowel ', a dot below indicated the vowel ', a dot on the side of a letter stood for the vowel ', and two dots stood for the ''
''.
However, the early manuscripts of the Qur'an did not use the vowel signs for every letter requiring them, but only for letters where they were necessary for a correct reading.
Al Farahidi's system
The precursor to the system we know today is Al Farahidi's system. ''
'' found that the task of writing using two different colours was tedious and impractical. Another complication was that the ' had been introduced by then, which, while they were short strokes rather than the round dots seen today, meant that without a color distinction the two could become confused.
Accordingly, he replaced the ' with small superscript letters: small alif, yā’, and wāw for the short vowels corresponding to the long vowels written with those letters, a small ''s(h)īn'' for ''shaddah'' (geminate), a small ''khā’'' for ''khafīf'' (short consonant; no longer used). His system is essentially the one we know today.
Automatic diacritization
The process of automatically restoring diacritical marks is called diacritization or diacritic restoration. It is useful to avoid ambiguity in applications such as
Arabic machine translation,
text-to-speech
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langua ...
, and
information retrieval. Automatic diacritization algorithms have been developed. For
Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; occasionally, it also ref ...
, the
state-of-the-art algorithm has a
word error rate Word error rate (WER) is a common metric of the performance of a speech recognition or machine translation system.
The general difficulty of measuring performance lies in the fact that the recognized word sequence can have a different length from ...
(WER) of 4.79%. The most common mistakes are proper
nouns
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
and
case endings
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomina ...
. Similar algorithms exist for other
varieties of Arabic
The varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. There are considerable variati ...
.
See also
*
Arabic alphabet:
** ''
'' (), the case system of Arabic
** ''
'' (), the basic system of Arabic consonants
** ''
'' (), the phonetic rules of recitation of Qur'an in Arabic
*
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
:
**
Hebrew diacritics
Hebrew orthography includes three types of diacritics:
* ''Niqqud'' in Hebrew is the way to indicate vowels, which are omitted in modern orthography, using a set of ancillary glyphs. Since the vowels can be understood from surrounding, context ...
, the Hebrew equivalent
** ''
Niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
,'' the Hebrew equivalent of '
** ''
Dagesh
The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of modi ...
,'' the Hebrew diacritic similar to Arabic ' and shaddah
References
Alexis Neme and Sébastien Paumier (2019), "Restoring Arabic vowels through omission-tolerant dictionary lookup", ''Lang Resources & Evaluation'', Vol. 53, pp. 1-65
{{Navbox diacritical marks
Arabic words and phrases
Quranic orthography
Phonetic guides