Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet is used for writing of several languages over the world. The most common language using Arabic letters is Arabic. There are 200 million native Arabic speakers in 20 countries. It is also used by one billion Muslims as liturgical language. Arabic alphabet is considered as second most used alphabet after Latin.

It’s written from right to left. Letters are not separated. They are connected in similar way the letters are connected in English handwriting. Arabic alphabet doesn’t distinguish between uppercase and lowercase. However there are different forms of letters according to the position of the letter in the sentence (see table below). Short vowels are normally not written at all. It’s impossible to give exact overview of pronunciation of Arabic letters, because some of the sounds don’t exist in English alphabet. On the other hand some of the sounds are quite close or almost the same as in English. Therefore take the transliteration only as approximation.