Persian alphabet

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The script used for the Persian language is a form of the Perso-Arabic script, which is derived from Arabic alphabet with four extra letters. Several letters are pronounced differently in Persian than in Arabic. The Persian alphabet is commonly written in a calligraphic style known as Nasta'liq.

Example showing Nastaʿlīq's proportion rules.

Letters

Below are the 32 letters of Persian.

Exceptions

There are seven letters in the Persian alphabet that do not connect to other letters like the rest of the letters in the alphabet. These seven letters do not have initial or medial forms but the solo and the final forms are used instead because they do not allow for a connection to be made on the left hand side to the other letters in the word. For example when the letter ا alef is at the beginning of a word such as اینجا "injā" (here), the initial form of alef is used. Or in the case of اِمروز "emruz" (today) the letter ﺮ re uses the final form and the letter و vāv uses the initial form although they are in the middle of the word.

Other characters

The following are not actual letters, but rather different orthographical shapes for letters, and in the case of the lām alef, a ligature. As to ﺀ hamze, it has only a single graphic, since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes 'seated' on a vāv, ye or alef, and in that case the seat behaves like an ordinary vāv, ye or alef respectively. Technically, hamze is not a letter, but a diacritic.

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. The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet, [p], [g], [ʧ] (ch – chair), [ʒ] (zh – measure):

Word boundaries

Typically words are separated from each other by a space. Certain morphemes (such as the plural ending '-hâ') are written without a space but separated from the previous word with a zero-width non-joiner.

See also

• Persian phonology
• Perso-Arabic script
• Scripts used for Persian
• Nasta'liq Script
• Persian numerals (http://www.laits.utexas.edu/rfpit/persianword/numbers.htm)

External links

• Persian Alphabet