Yet Another Arabic English Alphabet يەط اَناذَر ارابيك يعگليش ەَلفَبَط

The Arabic script, one of the most widely used writing systems in the world, is easy to recognise due to its very distinctive aesthetic: connected letterforms of swishes, lines, curves and loops, many of which are interconnected to each other in a stream of sorts, with dots above or below to distinguish each distinct letterform. Unlike the Western alphabets, Arabic script runs from the right to the left and only tends to represent consonantal sounds, leaving the vowels largely unwritten, just like the Aramaic script which was once widely used across the Middle East a few thousand years ago and from which both Arabic and Hebrew scripts have descended from. Although it had originated in Arab-speaking regions, it has since then been adapted to write a wide variety of languages such as Persian (Farsi), Urdu and Malay.

Having said that, what would it take to make a version of Arabic for English? Let’s find out.

Since many others have also had a go at using Arabic to write English, I’m going to call this ‘Yet Another Arabic English Alphabet’, or YAAEA for short.

Adaptation process

Most consonant letters were fairly straightforward: ف = /f/, س = /s/, ر = /ɹ/, etc. Unlike many of the other writing systems out there, it also has distinct letters for /θ/ ث and /ð/ ذ.