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However, most modern abjads, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Pahlavi, are "impure" abjads – that is, they also contain symbols for some of the vowel phonemes, although the said non-diacritic vowel letters are also used to write certain consonants, particularly approximants that sound similar to long vowels.
Instead of writing the letter twice, Arabic places a W-shaped sign called shaddah, above it. Note that if a vowel occurs between the two consonants the letter will simply be written twice. The diacritic only appears where the consonant at the end of one syllable is identical to the initial consonant of the following syllable.
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.
Vowel chart representing the pronunciation of diphthongs by a Palestinian speaker educated in Beirut. From Thelwall (1990:38) Modern Standard Arabic has six vowel phonemes forming three pairs of corresponding short and long vowels (/a, aː, i, iː, u, uː/). Many spoken varieties also include /oː/ and /eː/.
The Nabataean alphabet was designed to write 22 phonemes, but Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes; thus, when used to write the Arabic language, 6 of its letters must each represent two phonemes: d د also represented ḏ ذ , ħ ح also represented ḵ خ , ṭ ط also represented ẓ ظ , ʕ ع also represented ḡ غ ,
A = The letter is used for most languages and dialects with writing systems based on Arabic. MSA = Letters used in Modern Standard Arabic. CA = Letters used in Classical Arabic. AD = Letters used in some regional Arabic Dialects. "Arabic" = Letters used in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and most regional dialects. "Farsi" = Letters ...
Abugidas are writing systems with characters comprising consonant–vowel sequences. Alphabets without obligatory vowels are called abjads, with examples being Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac. The omission of vowels was not always a satisfactory solution due to the need of preserving sacred texts. "Weak" consonants are used to indicate vowels.
Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct. [citation needed] Transliteration is the direct representation of foreign letters using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually transcription systems, which represent the sound of the language, since short vowels and geminate consonants, for example, does not usually appear in ...