Talk:Arabic alphabet/Archive 1

message: Currently the page says jeem can be pronounced either as ʒ or dʒ. However, shouldn't the dʒ be linking to Voiced palato-alveolar affricate instead of referring to d and ʒ separately?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.93.53.136 (talk) 23:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Jeem in IPA

message: In experimenting with the localization features of Windows XP, I see that there isn't a single "Arabic keyboard".   For example, the "Arabic - Iraq" keyboard has ذ ّ  in the key to the left of the Qwerty '1'/'!', while "Arabic - Saudi Arabia" has < >.  There are other more important changes between those two such as the location of vowel marks (I don't know the right terminology) in the position of the uppercase Qwerty keys X C V.
I haven't experimented with the other keyboard layouts beside Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to see how many other national variants exist.
I'm not at all sure how to reflect that in the article.   I made a small note in the article, but it deserves to be explained in more detail.
Bill Smith 18:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic keyboards 

message: hi can you show me the arabic alphebet then can you translate it for me? I have this really big project due on ancient islam tomorrow. this would really make my night a lot less hard than it already is.
thank you   alyssa
::Image:Arabic alphabet.png seems to include the alphabet with corresponding transcriptions. I'm not sure what else you're looking for, but you could try asking at Wikipedia:Reference desk. Cheers, -- Hadal 05:18, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  hi 

message: Unlike some of the commenters above, I can see all Arabic letters in the text correctly (maybe because I'm using Mozilla SeaMonkey on Linux, and have installed a number of additional fonts, including some for Arabic, and maybe also because my favourite Wikipedia skin is Cologne Blue, which uses larger text than the default Monobook). All the shapes in the table are correct (except of course insofar as isolated and final shapes of non-joining letters are also listed respectively as "initial" and "medial"), however some of the letters are listed with identical Unicode codepoints numbers (for contextual shapes relating to different letters), which cannot be correct. I don't have the time to correct that section now, but the reference PDF pages are http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0600.pdf for common codepoints and http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFE70.pdf for "Presentation forms B" (i.e., distinct codepoints for the various contextual shapes). — Tonymec (talk) 06:42, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Wrong Unicode codepoints

message: We all thank you for your new-found enthusiasm for the language, but please, please, please be sure of what you write, before you change something.
Someone just removed the dagger alif from 'allah' and replaced it with a fatha.  A first-year student, perhaps, who has just learned about the diacritics for the short vowels?
If I get some time, I'll try to clarify the section about the diacritics - the 'harakat' - but in the meantime, PLEASE do not 'fix' anything on your own unless you KNOW you are right.
Thanks.  Cbdorsett 15:31, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Arabs Achtung! I totally share Cbdorsett's conscern, but I would like to generalize his message to include Arabs as well. Being an Arab doesn't mean that you are expert on the alphabet and/or the language. Hakeem.gadi (talk) 10:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits by beginners 

message: The above is complete bullshit. "Alif maqsura" is a grammatical concept in the Arabic language; it is not a letter form. It can be represented by either a dotless ya (ى) or an alif. Furthermore, the dotless ya does not always mean "alif maqsura". The dotless ya is used in Arabic in all four forms. The problem, which can be traced to the stupidity of Unicode, is that a) "character" is not so obvious; and b) letterform shape is distinct from context. E.g. a so-called "initial form" can be used in the middle of a word: قائل for example.
[Well I can't say anything about where if came from or what it meant originally, but I can tell you that the alif letterform serves numerous functions *in the Arabic* writing system; other systems that use Arabic letterforms may do things differently. More to the point, it is *not* a consonant in modern Arabic (or in any Arabic so far as I can tell). Why not ask the locals? They will tell you that, where alif seems to indicate a long vowel, in fact it indicates the doubling of a short vowel, which is not quite the same thing. In other words, alif has *no primary phonological value* whatsoever, ever.]
* If you don't delete this paragraph, I will. Cbdorsett 10:04, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  some notes by 69.17.24.207 

message: I just went around lk-ing "vowel point", and in i think one case, "vowel mark" to Niqqud.
In this article the section "Ligatures" says 
:The latter is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word "Allah". Compare the display below, which depends on your browser and installed fonts:
I made no lk to the Hebrew word Niqqud, but is there an equivalent lk available or needed? Should this instance of "vowel mark" lk to Abjad?
--Jerzy (t) 20:55, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)
: Yes - harakat. - Mustafaa 03:13, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowel marks 

message: Reading the passage about sukun I encountered the use of o in the examples. I have seen this letter also in other transliterations, the majority of transliteration tables do not mention it however, telling about just three vowels - a,i and u. Could this be briefly clarified here too? 80.235.60.55 21:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: o in arabic?

message: I propose resorting the letters table to reflect the Abgadi order rather than the current Hega'i. This will help those who want to compare Arabic letters to their countrparts in other alphabets. Addtionally, the image that has the letters' names and shapes depicts the hega'i order, so having the other will be a benefit, not to mention it being the original and the one used in numbering. --Alif 16:54, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Abjadi order is very much less widely used than Hija'i order; maybe a separate article linked from here would be a better place for such a table? Also, we should note that the Abjadi order used in the Maghreb and West Africa is slightly different to the normal one. - Mustafaa 18:59, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abgadi order 

message: The abjad order doesn't really "preserve" the older Phoenician/Hebrew/Aramaic alphabet order, since the Abjad order was pretty much created after the Arabic alphabet had already been expanded to 28 letters, by matching each Aramaic letter with a corresponding letter of the fully consonant-dotted Arabic alphabet (with six Arabic letters left over at the end).  If the Abjad order PRESERVED the older order, then there would be no Arabic letter corresponding to the Aramaic letter semkat (samekh) in the Aramaic alphabet ordering (i.e. 15th position), since no Arabic letter is derived from Aramaic samekh. AnonMoos 01:01, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand your argument, but it would be nice to have a solid reference on it; what is your source? --Macrakis 15:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Abjadi order

message: I would expect a clear division between sections talking about the Arabic script itself (as it has been used on paper) and sections talking electronic-data related issues. The computer-related sections should refer back to the normal paper sections discussing corresponding computer-related issues. 
I do not know what the best structure of the article would be: 
* either there are computer-related subsections of the primary sections spread all over the article (but clearly marked as being computer-related)
* or all computer-related stuff moved to one big section at the end (into the existing Arabic alphabet#Computers and the Arabic alphabet).
I'm uncomfortable with reading Unicode codes when I'm just reading about the script. For example: 
* Arabic alphabet#Notes: "...Unicode...", 
* Arabic alphabet#Ligatures: "...fonts...", "...text processors...", "...U+FDF2..."
and perhaps other.
I would move this information out of the main sections.
Best regards,--Imz 22:21, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking the same thing.  I find the Unicode stuff useful, but it's certainly not what a casual user interested in the alphabet (especially in learning the alphabet) would care about. --Saforrest 02:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion: Computer-related information must appear only in dedicated sections  

message: In the initial paragraph, I chnaged transcribe other languages to write other languages, simply because transcribe appeared to me an inappropriate special term. From Merriam-Webster:
: 2 a : to represent (speech sounds) by means of phonetic symbols
Then, I thought perhaps there was some significance in the word. Perhaps, it was meant that the way they adopted it for other languages was similar to transcribing what they heard, not trying to respect some other sides of the other language's structure. But anyway, I'm not an expert, and that was not clear from the text. So, if someone has the required knowledge, you could write about it more somewhere in the article.--Imz 19:14, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The meaning I generally associate with "transcribe", especially in a context like this, is to translate written text from one alphabet to another.  For example, I might "transcribe" my first name to Arabic as "ستيفن". --Saforrest 03:41, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic alphabet and other languages: ''transcribe'' vs. ''write'' 

message: I don't know much about Arabic, but I feel that the 2 tables and 1 image are redundant.  Both the "Primary Letters" and "Other Characters" tables are useful enough, but the image is redundant.  Not knowing anything about Arabic, I didn't want to delete it unless it wasn't really useful. --Limetom 04:50, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Not only is the image redundant and, it is not searchable. The only plus I can see is for browsers/OSes that can't render Arabic text correctly, but I feel the cons outweigh the pros. In any case, I'm removing it. chet the gray (talk) 07:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Arabic Characters Table

message: With the browser I was using (Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7) the two sets of lines demonstrating the Abjadi orders in Arabic and roman letters were misaligned, so I decided to put them in tables. It turned out Firefox was also being too clever and rendering them right to left, which put them in the wrong order. So these are now both in the right order and properly aligned.
I may have inadvertently introduced some errors into the order (I am not familiar with Arabic myself). I would appreciate it if someone who knows what they're doing would check this over.
Hairy Dude 17:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abjadi orders tabulated 

message: Currently the section titled Numerals has the following table:
{|              	
Standard numerals	Standard numerals
                 	0
                 	1
                 	2
                 	3
                 	4
                 	5
                 	6
                 	7
                 	8
                 	9
When I first read this and saw an asterisk near the ٢, I thought that meant it was part of the letter. However, in the paragraph below it has this: "*Standard form of number 2 in Egypt is slightly different". Isn't there a better way to do this? Kirbytime 19:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully you'll find the new table addresses this issue.  –jonsafari 20:19, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a better way besides an asterisk? 

message: What is the term for the Arabic alphabet/abjad in the relevant languages? The North Indian script is called Devanāgarī, the East Asian is called Hanzi in Chinese and Kanji in Japanese and Hanja in Korean and Hán tự in Vietnamese. How do the users of this alphabet refer to it? Could someone please add that information to the article? -leigh (φθόγγος) 05:49, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: الابجديه العربيه  is what Google's machine translator gives me. -Fsotrain09 02:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Arabic term for "Arabic alphabet"

message: This strikes me as a bit odd:
: Unlike Arabic alphabetic characters, Arabic numerals are written from left to right.
Isn't this sort of a matter of perspective?  We think of reading a number from left to right starting with the highest digit because that's our experience as English speakers and that's how our language works, but in older days they used constructions like "four-and-twenty blackbirds" (this is still used in German as vierundzwanzig) and so "42" might have been quite a natural way to write "twenty-four" in English had things happened differently.
With this in mind, we could say that Arabic numerals are read from right-to-left, by reading the ones-place first (e.g. 316 is "6 and 10 and 300"), and it's the European languages which had things backwards.  I guess this only makes sense if the way numbers are spoken in Arabic sounds somewhat like "four-and-twenty", though. --Saforrest 02:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  I thought that the whole reason columns of numbers have to be justified on the right side, backwards from columns of text, was that we'd inherited this system from a language that wrote right to left.  Could somebody who knows how to speak numbers in Arabic comment on which digits of a multidigit number are actually pronounced first? EbonyTotem 01:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't speak Arabic, but for 11-99 it usess the "four and twenty" order. Hundreds, thousands and above precede, I think, although this could also be a later development. --JWB 03:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: JWB is right about the order. But in any case, Arabs do generally write numbers from left to right; it's not a matter of perspective, if they're writing ٧٤٦٥٨ they start with the ٧! So for example if you are writing a telephone number in Arabic and the number is 092 353484, you'll begin on the left with the zero, just like in the Latin alphabet. Palmiro | Talk 20:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of numeral systems? 

message: The Arabic alphabet isn't "the script used for writing in the Arabic language" any more than the Latin alphabet is the script used to write the Latin language. The Latin alphabet article doesn't ignore J, U, W, or even Ŋ, so why does this article not make any mention of letters like چ? --Ptcamn 09:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What are you talking about? Giim is certainly listed in the article. --Gene_poole 23:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Count the dots. Giim (ج) has one, che (چ) has three. --Ptcamn 02:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: These are legitimate concerns. After all, the Latin Alphabet article almost immediately mentions variations, while here I really only find vowel variations, à la Mater lectonis. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article combines the general Arabic script and the specific writing system for the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet.  For example, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and Uyghur all use forms of the Arabic script, but each has their own specific implementation and pronunciations (eg. how ﻕ and ﺽ are pronounced).  Having an article that discusses both the Arabic script and the specifics of how it's used for the Arabic language would be like having an article about both Cyrillic and the Russian alphabet (or OCS), or the Latin script and how the Romans pronounced the letters.  In following the conventions of most parallel articles, I think we should have an Arabic script article discuss the general features of the the writing system not specific to the Arabic language, akin to Cyrillic script or Devanagari, and have Arabic alphabet cover the specifics of how the script is used for the Arabic language (eg. that ﻕ is pronounced [q], that ﺽ is pronounced [dˁ], etc.)  –jonsafari 00:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I absolutely agree. Arabic alphabet should have all the details of the implementation of the Arabic script for the Arabic language. Arabic script should not be language-specific because doing so tends to marginalize the languages which are not Arabic. This article should be as international as possible. I think this issue is why the article was tagged with  --Cbdorsett 08:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  One can also argue that the Latin letters J, C, X can be pronounced differently according to the language.  But nevertheless in the Arabic script there are even more issues on the vowel sounds and what they represent- e/a in Arabic is ae in Farsi and a in Urdu; i in Arabic and Urdu is e in Persian, etc.  Also, there are articles about each specific version of the Arabic alphabet, like Persian alphabet and Urdu alphabet, so I'd think its safe to focus on Arabic in this article. Mar de Sin Talk to me! 18:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You'll notice in the Latin alphabet article that it clearly distinguishes between the graphemes and their usage in Latin.  The specific implementation of the Latin alphabet to Latin is covered in a separate article: Latin spelling and pronunciation.  It only touches on it as a historical note in the Evolution section, as would be understandable here too.  –jonsafari 01:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Globalize 

message: Some people (like me) can't see some unicode symbols (sadda, sukum, harakat).
Isn't a good idea to create some .png to resolve this problem? Lemke --201.34.159.35 00:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: the problem being on your end, I think it would be a good idea for you to fix your browser / install unicode fonts instead. dab (ᛏ) 15:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I think the problem is here on the page. There are tons and tons of transliterations using the old ArabDIN encoding instead of Unicode. See the Abjadi Order section. 
--Cbdorsett 09:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode problem 

message: Why the particular phrase "in the hotel" used as the example phrase in the infobox? AnonMoos 15:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "In the hotel"

message: I have noticed that several pages for Arabic alphabet letters, such as , , and , redirect to a page titled for the equivalent Hebrew letter. I think this might be inappropriate. What does anyone else think? 129.12.200.49 16:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic and Hebrew letters 

message: I know Arabic is said to be displayed "right-to-left" though is technically bidirectional because, I think, some string are displayed LTR (ie numbers). So is a sentence displayed right to left character by character (CBA), word by word (ghi def abc) or concept by concept (ccc ddd aaa bbb). It seems like a basic question but I can't find the answer. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gfannick (talk • contribs) 16:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I must point out that in Arabic, numbers (at least the smaller ones) are read right-to-left, with the text.  --Xyzzyva (talk) 21:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bi-directional order 

message: In an effort to improve this article, I'd like to suggest the following changes:
* Split content into two parts:
** General issues relating to all Arabic-based scripts, entitled Arabic script
*** Remove the redirect
** Language-specific issues, entitled
*** Arabic alphabet
*** Jawi script
*** Persian alphabet
*** Urdu alphabet
*** Pashto alphabet
*** Kurdish alphabet
*** Sindhi alphabet
*** and so on
This should universalize the content sufficiently to remove the  tag.
* Convert all of the ArabDIN 31635 characters representing alif and ‘ain so that they render correctly in common browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.0.
* Combine the two alphabet tables into a single table. This should be done as a text exercise, not cutting and pasting images from the large graphic that came from the German Wikipedia.
* Combine the two explanations of the four letter forms into a single explanation.
* Briefly explain the usage of abjad and alphabet in the head section.
* Move the section on collation order (now called Abjadī order) to after the presentation of the alphabet, and change the title to Collation order.
* Increase the size of the characters displayed in the collation order section.
* Move the "modified letters" section to the pages for Arabic Alphabet and Persian alphabet, and correct the IPA rendition of ta’ marbuta.
* Move the long description of diacritics to Arabic alphabet, with a very short summary section and an appropriate  tag.
* Delete the section on numerals, but leave a link at the bottom of the page.
* Fix the map entitled "Worldwide use of the Arabic alphabet" - it should indicate Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pilipinas, Pattani and Singapore. Maybe it could also mark the countries where the alphabet was used in the past?
* The section Computers and the Arabic Alphabet should be shorter summaries, with references to the appropriate main articles where the topics are fleshed out in full.
* PLEASE find a better text to illustrate the script. Fi'l-funduq ("in the hotel") is just too prosaic. I'll check my own photos to see if any are suitable.
* We should have a References section for all the footnotes to appear in. We have a lot of unsupported assertions now, and this situation should be remedied ASAP.
* Add an appropriate reference to Category:Arabic-derived alphabets
--Cbdorsett 06:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed changes January 2007 

message: Should the article be titled "Arabic alphabet"? By definition, it's not an alphabet, but an Impure Abjad. Therefore, it should be "Arabic abjad," or at least "Arabic script." Any thoughts? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:53, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP uses the most common English name for things.  "Abjad" vs. "alphabet" is a useful distinction when discussing writing systems, but pedantic and unhelpful as a title.  "Arabic script" would make sense, but I see no compelling reason to change. --Macrakis 20:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

text: That was previously discused up above in the #Alphabet vs. script section... AnonMoos 21:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I went over the talkpage looking for this topic and somehow missed that. Still, the fact that "alphabet" is technically (and perhaps politically) incorrect is a well enough reason to change the wording to "script." Its definition as an "alphabet" seems a bit elementary. True, "abjad" is not mainstream, but "alphabet" is wrong, so "script" works out best. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:29, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but alphabet wasn't "incorrect" until one person started inventing new terms ("abugida") and rather arbitrarily and whimsically changing the meaning of old words ("abjad") rather less than 20 years ago.  It's nice that linguists recently have some shiny new terminology to play around with, but that doesn't all of a sudden make the meaning of the word "alphabet" -- as it has been used for many centuries -- somehow now allegedly "incorrect"[sic]. AnonMoos 08:06, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The creation of new terms and new meaning for existing terms is a feature of language evolution that has been going on for quite a long while, not just the last 20 years, and not just the last few centuries. Daniels's coopting of "abjad" for a new use and coining "abugida" was neither arbitrary nor whimsical - it served a definite purpose, and since the introduction of these innovations, linguists have apparently found the distinction to be useful. I suggested changing the title of this article to Arabic script because all the titles of all the other writing system articles use the term "script" instead of "alphabet." Where the term "alphabet" is used, the articles relate to the adaptation of a particular script to a particular language. Cbdorsett 08:55, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: These things just don't work on "Internet time" -- a book published in 1996 has stirred up some discussion in certain specialist circles, but it has hardly served to significantly change the accepted definition of common words in general use, like "alphabet".  Ten years is not sufficient to decide that. AnonMoos 09:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm with Cbdorsett on this one: Arabic script is probably more used in any case: it gets around 805,000 hits on Google whereas Arabic alphabet gets around 288,000. It's more generic, and cannot be accused of being incorrect. Drmaik 13:56, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article title 

message: Can someone remove the "</noinclude>" wiki markup from the beginning of the article? I cannot even find the markup code in the article code. Very strange . . . can someone help please? Thanks! JeffreyN 23:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noinclude wiki markup at top of article 

message: Hello, I was hoping to find a little information about wasla on this page, but I can't find anything about it. Would anyone be kind enough to add it? I am referring to the thing on top of the ʼalif in this character: ٱ
-- 203.122.77.204 14:08, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you mean this   ء  so it's called Hamza not wasla..and it cuold be written in defferent shapes according to spelling and its position in the word like this:  ء أ ؤ ئ  orـئـ. --Lubna 10:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Wasla or Hamzt-ul-Wasl is a character that looks like a tiny little sad ص , and which indicates that the letter alif does not have a glottal stop sound (and does not have a long vowel sound either).  It's not really used except when writing full diacritics... AnonMoos 21:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wasla 

message: I remember this article earlier mentioning that the r is generally rolled /r/, except for in religious Quranic recitation. This is clearly true from hearing Quranic recitation, but this article should mention whatever consonant(s) are used to replace /r/.
Hello,
Would you please let me know where that has been mentioned? I am sure that the Quranic /r/ is a rolled one. I mean by "rolled" similar to the [spanish R] or [Italian R], it's an Alveolar trill consonant, not like the American /r/. Please play the sound sample on the right hand section of this page Alveolar trill.Opensourceit 19:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of 'r' 

message: this chart is missing a letter, the seen.  even when I scroll down and specifically click on the seen it still takes me to the page about the sheen!  I need to refer to the seen in another article and I cant find the page.  I don't mind refering to something else but I specifically need to refer to the seen distinguishing it from the sheen and the saad, so this page only makes the reader more confused. --Maha Odeh 11:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the chart needs to be fixed. Who do we notify? Cbdorsett 12:05, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. However, the sheen article does have a small section at the bottom about this issue, distinguishing sin from shin. Drmaik 12:10, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, I read the sheen Article and noticed that.  But the chart is still missing a letter from the alphabet even if they both direct to the same page. --Maha Odeh 12:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing letter 

message: let's see what we can collect on these "word ligatures" at U+FDFx:
*U+FDF0 : "SALLA USED AS KORANIC STOP SIGN ISOLATED FORM"  "pray"
*U+FDF1 : "QALA USED AS KORANIC STOP SIGN ISOLATED FORM" 
*U+FDF2 : "ALLAH ISOLATED FORM" -- . nice to have an 'isolated form', dear UC, but we would prefer a non-isloated form.
*U+FDF3 : "AKBAR ISOLATED FORM" 
*U+FDF4 : "MOHAMMED ISOLATED FORM" 
*U+FDF5 : "SALAM ISOLATED FORM"  
*U+FDF6 : "RASOUL ISOLATED FORM" 
*U+FDF7 : "ALAYHE" 
*U+FDF8 : "WASALLAM"  
*U+FDF9 : "SALLA ISLOATED FORM" 
*U+FDFA : "SALLALLAHOU ALAYHA WASALLAM" 
*U+FDFB : "JALLAJALALOUHOU"  
*U+FDFC : Rial  
*U+FDFD : Basmala
FDF5 is the  "peace be upon him" interjection. FDF7, FDF8, FDF9 are required to typeset  صلى الله عليه وسلم and FDFA appears to repeat the entire phrase. FDFB jalla jalaluhu  appears to be a pious exclamation "majestic be his splendour" or something. I would really be interested in what "legacy encoding" we are looking at here. I doubt there is one. This is Unicode 1.1, when the UC was still enthusiastic about encoding ligatures. Now they decided to stop adding ligatures, and we are stuck with the useless "allah" ligature. The sensible course for the UC would be to deprecate FDF2 (since prescribed and actual usage have diverged beyond reparation), and introduce an actual "llah" ligature e.g. at FDFE. dab (𒁳) 08:10, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Arabic Presentation Forms-A

message: I get 119,000 google hits for the character. That's not very much compared to the 180M for  الله. There seem to be almost no pages in Arabic. There seems to be a fair number of Turkish pages, but in most cases, the character is apparently just used for decoration (myspace.com etc.)
*perhaps notable is :dv:ﷲ (Dhivehi Wikipedia) which has the Allah article located at that character.
*this page uses the character correctly (Unicode-compliant) in the takbir.
*this article appears to use it for llah.
dab (𒁳) 11:07, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: online use of the &#xfdf2; character

message: From my childhood I remember a comment about one letter "this letter is for the sound made by giaurs when they drink too much wine" (or something like that). What letter it may be and who is the author of this witticism? Is this remark famous enough to be included in the article about the letter? I would guess it is about Ayin. Any comments? `'Míkka 23:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please help to identify the letter/sound 

message: Why is Zāīn given as "Zāī" in the table? Badagnani 05:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: زاي is certainly the most common name of the letter in Arabic, as far as I'm aware (but should be transcribed Zāy, not Zāī). -- AnonMoos 10:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I'm aware, Zai (or zay, don't see any difference) is much more common. --Maha Odeh 11:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

text: a question of WP:CITE. My Standard Arabic textbook (Schulz-Krahl-Reuschel) gives . --dab (𒁳) 07:52, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zāīn 

message: What is the consensus on this undiscussed blanking? Are these extra letters never used to write the Arabic language, even when writing Persian names or phrases? 24.93.190.134 01:02, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: well, there are various 'extra' letters used around the Arab world, varying according to region. But the 'keheh' is widely used in North Africa, esp. in handwriting and children's books. People consider it just to be kaf. I'm not sure how that would be best handled... Drmaik 05:41, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of letters 

message: Information about the pronunciation of ص should be added at Tsade. Badagnani (talk) 21:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need pronunciation for ص 

message: Information about the pronunciation of ط should be added at Teth.
=== Arabic Wordlist ===
Arabic Wordlist ordered by frequency (in Arabic Wikipedia)  --212.186.64.225 (talk) 09:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need pronunciation for ط 

message: Arabic Wordlist ordered by frequency (in Arabic Wikipedia)  --212.186.64.225 (talk) 09:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic Wordlist 

message: Additional modified letters used in the Arabic alphabet for other languages and transliterating foreign words have been added. Can someone put them into the grid so that we have a complete listing, properly formatted? Most of the letters have their own Wikipedia articles. Many thanks for this. Badagnani (talk) 20:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think they can go in the grid because they aren't part of the canonical Arabic alphabet and have no place in its order, even though they obviously do within the adapted alphabets that use them. It wouldn't make any more sense to synthesize them all into a single ordering than it would be for an article on the Roman alphabet to include ll and ñ from Spanish and þ from Icelandic and ø from Danish and rh from Welsh. In fact, what about ö? That's a separate letter in Hungarian, and it comes right after o—but it's also a separate letter in Swedish, where it's the last letter, after z, å, and ä. I imagine the same problem prevails among the scripts that are based on Arabic. —Largo Plazo (talk) 21:20, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Not in the same grid! And as I noted, the order is arbitrary. For example, the o variants I cited aren't placed at the end as they are in Swedish. —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:33, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

text: That's good. However, let me stress that improving articles isn't the same is improving the things that the articles are about. It isn't up to you to improve the Arabic alphabet! And it's the job of the article not to present it as something other than what it is. Having a separate listing of letters that supplement the standard Arabic ones in languages that use the Arabic alphabet as their base is great, but don't confuse their status as such as meaning that they are part of the Arabic alphabet. —Largo Plazo (talk) 03:10, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: it might be a good idea to make a seperate page for all the letters derived from the Arabic alphabet, similar to List of Latin letters, which only lists the possible variants. --Maha Odeh (talk) 06:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional modified letters

message: I removed the sentence that someone else had tagged for a citation earlier today, claiming that support for the abjadi collation order isn't found in major software. I went found  and found that while this is true for most of the specific software I looked into that have any Arabic collation at all (Windows XP, SQL Server, MySQL), it isn't true for Oracle, which provides both collation options. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:07, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Availability of sorting in software 

message: In the Primary Letters table (see below), the two columns General Unicode and Contexual Isolated Forms have letters that are identical apart from the number below them. I suggest we merge the 2 columns together and have the both numbers listed below each letter. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 10:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The characters display the same in browsers which are able to display both, but they're different characters in the Unicode character set, serving separate functions... AnonMoos (talk) 12:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Arabic_alphabet#Primary_letters|Primary Letters]] table - General Unicode & Contexual Isolated Forms are identical 

message: I've tried to make these two sections more user-friendly, as I think the normal person coming to this article will be a beginner-learner of Arabic. PiCo (talk) 05:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits to gemination and nunation 

message: I would like to propose a link to a free course of the Arabic Alphabet:
* I Kinda Like Languages: Arabic Alphabet course
The course is not made by me (albeit it is hosted on my website). I think it genuinely is a useful resource.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyzazel (talk • contribs) 16:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link addition proposal 

message: Where the names of the letters are wikilinked, the underlining means that underbars to the letters disappear (and underdots etc become very indistinct); "tāʾ" and "ṯāʾ" are seen to be different - tāʾ and ṯāʾ render identically (in my browser, anyway). Not sure what a solution is - possibly something like ṯāʾ (article), although that's very messy.Pseudomonas(talk) 09:34, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Underlining in linked letter names overwrites subscript diacritics 

message: Since the Arabic writing system is technically not an alphabet (it is an abjad), wouldn't it be more appropriate to move this article to Arabic script? GSMR (talk) 18:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article name 

message: According to the language map ("Worldwide use of the Arabic alphabet"), Pakistan is a country "where the Arabic script is the only official orthography". However, English is an official language of Pakistan, so doesn't that mean that the Latin alphabet must also have official status? 86.161.43.54 (talk) 14:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pakistan