Arabic Writing Pdf Download

[Niobe Hennigan]

TheArabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script),[2] the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese scripts).[3]

The script is written from right to left in a cursive style, in which most of the letters are written in slightly different forms according to whether they stand alone or are joined to a following or preceding letter. The script does not have capital letters.[7] In most cases, the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, so most Arabic alphabets are abjads, with the versions used for some languages, such as Kurdish dialect of Sorani, Uyghur, Mandarin, and Bosniak, being alphabets. It is the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy.

The Arabic alphabet is derived either from the Nabataean alphabet[8][9] or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac alphabet,[10] which are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet (which also gave rise to the Hebrew alphabet), which, in turn, descended from the Phoenician alphabet. In addition to the Aramaic script (and, therefore, the Arabic and Hebrew scripts), the Phoenician script also gave rise to the Greek alphabet (and, therefore, both the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet used in America and most European countries.).

In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, northern Arab tribes emigrated and founded a kingdom centred around Petra, Jordan. These people (now named Nabataeans from the name of one of the tribes, Nabatu) spoke Nabataean Arabic, a dialect of the Arabic language. In the 2nd or 1st centuries BCE,[11][12] the first known records of the Nabataean alphabet were written in the Aramaic language (which was the language of communication and trade), but included some Arabic language features: the Nabataeans did not write the language which they spoke. They wrote in a form of the Aramaic alphabet, which continued to evolve; it separated into two forms: one intended for inscriptions (known as "monumental Nabataean") and the other, more cursive and hurriedly written and with joined letters, for writing on papyrus.[13] This cursive form influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed into the Arabic alphabet.

The Arabic script has been adapted for use in a wide variety of languages aside from Arabic, including Persian, Malay and Urdu, which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology. For example, the Arabic language lacks a voiceless bilabial plosive (the [p] sound), therefore many languages add their own letter to represent [p] in the script, though the specific letter used varies from language to language. These modifications tend to fall into groups: Indian and Turkic languages written in the Arabic script tend to use the Persian modified letters, whereas the languages of Indonesia tend to imitate those of Jawi. The modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars.[citation needed]

When the Arabic script is used to write Serbo-Croatian, Sorani, Kashmiri, Mandarin Chinese, or Uyghur, vowels are mandatory. The Arabic script can, therefore, be used as a true alphabet as well as an abjad, although it is often strongly, if erroneously, connected to the latter due to it being originally used only for Arabic.[citation needed]

Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, developed with the spread of Islam. To a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb (for instance the position of the dots in the letters fāʼ and qāf).[14][15] Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate the writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language. The term ʻAjamī, which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign", has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages.[citation needed]

Today Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and China are the main non-Arabic speaking states using the Arabic alphabet to write one or more official national languages, including Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Brahui, Persian, Pashto, Central Kurdish, Urdu, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Uyghur.[citation needed]

I have a character who is a Syrian refugee to Canada. His first language is Arabic, but he's lived in Canada long enough that he's learned English and uses this as his primary spoken language. On occasion he'll use Arabic words in his speech, such as when he's not sure what the English translation is, but I'm unsure how this should be written in text for an English audience.

As you are mainly writing in English your target audience is probably from English speaking countries without a lot of knowledge about Arabic. It's not a common language to learn when compared to something like French or Spanish as far as I am aware of. As such you should be careful about using a language other than English in your text. I am from Germany for example and have never learned to speak Arabic. I would have absolutely no idea how to pronounce the second version, which is a problem for me when I am reading something because it completely breaks immersion. I would need to think about what the character in my head would say and how it would sound. And that's not possible when I can't read the word.

With the phonetic spelling I have a pretty good idea of how the character would say it. It's probably still quite far off, because I can't understand Arabic and wouldn't know a native Arabic speaker would actually pronounce it, but I would have an idea. And that's what I need to stay immersed in the story.

Especially when you are doing this more than just once or twice I would be careful. The second version is factually more correct than the first one, but for people who can't speak and read Arabic it's impossible to have a feeling for how your character sounds, which many people don't like.

You could also try to get around this whole issue by describing what he really wants to say with an addition that he is saying it in a different language than you are using for the reader's convenience. Something like:

It's easy to do and won't lead to any kind of confusion. Because the first version you propose could lead to a bit of confusion with people who speak Arabic and might wonder what word you mean exactly with the phonetic spelling as it's written completely different from the "real thing". And your second version will lead to confusion with people who don't speak Arabic, because they won't have a clue about how to pronounce that and whether they got the meaning right from the context.

There is no "correct" way. Only different ways with different levels of clarity for different target audiences. For the general English speaking public you just want to be careful with incorporating different languages into your text.

When you're dealing with alphabets that are very different (or in some languages, not alphabets at all), not to mention the issue of the direction of the writing, someone who doesn't read it will get nothing from it if you use the non-translated version.

If your character says "Alaistirkha" several times over the course of the novel, the reader will figure out the rough meaning (or at least one that works for them). But an unfamiliar script won't stick in the reader's head. S/he won't even be able to tell if one phrase is the same as another.

If the look of the phrase is important, you can put in a graphic insert, but you will also need to translate and transliterate it. Sometimes you can get away without translating (like in your example, where it's not strictly necessary). But always transliterate.

It's relatively common to transclude a few foreign words into an English passage for the reasons you state. However, I wouldn't recommend creating your own phonetic transliteration. There are several standardized methods of "Romanizing" Arabic, I would suggest picking one, and using it consistently.

The reason is that it's easier for someone used to the latin alphabeth, like english readers, to read and recognize very unfamiliar words such "alaistirkha". Your audience won't have a clue on how that word is spelled correctly, but that's beyond the point: the point is giving the idea of a foreign language while still preserving readability.The next time alaistirkha appears, some people will recognize the word. The third time most of your audience will.

On the other hand, writing it in Arabic would be certainly more faithful, but you'd just be alienating your audience. There's a good chance that non-arabic readers would have troubles searching for the meaning of that word, unless they can copy-paste it into a search engine. Also, it would be difficult to recognize the word on multiple occurences, since the audience is not used to the alphabeth (the same thing goes for cyrillic, or Asian ideogram-based words).

Arabic Calligraphers usually use an ancient handmade pens made of bamboo for the large letters, and 'Hatat nibs with a holder' for the small letters that could be modified by grinding (I found this too hard to write with, this why I'm searching for a fountain pen).

Osama, I don't think you will find a left oblique nib at that size that is suitable for Arabic Calligraphy. The Dollar Qalam is about 1mm broad but the stroke transition is not really sharp enough for the job - it needs to be modified (i.e. made thinner) for it to write well even at that size.

You can search for Manuscript sets with left-oblique nibs. They come in sets that have several nibs. I don't think you'll find one as small as .7mm though. The smallest they have is about 1mm. You can try grinding the sides off a bit but even then at this small size the flow of the ink is going to make it tough to maintain the stroke transitions from thick to thin. The smaller your nib, the more dependent the results are on paper and ink.

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