Persian alphabet

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Persian alphabet الفبای فارسی Alefbâ-ye Fârsi
A page from a 12th century manuscript of "Kitab al-Abniya 'an Haqa'iq al-Adwiya" by Abu Mansur Muwaffaq with special Persian letters p (پ), ch (چ) and g (گ = ڭـ).
Script type	Abjad
Time period	c. 7th century CE – present
Direction	Right-to-left script
Languages	Persian, Mazanderani[a], Moghol, Qashqai
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic Persian alphabet
Child systems	Adyghe Arabic Arabi Malayalam[1] (indirectly) Arabic Afrikaans Arwi (indirectly) Avar Arabic Azerbaijani Arabic Belarusian Arabic Chagatai Dobrujan Tatar Arabic Karachay-Balkar Arabic Karakalpak Arabic Kazakh Arabic⁹ Kumyk Arabic Kyrgyz Arabic İske imlâ Yaña imlâ Uyghur Sarikoli (with some influence from Pashto orthography) Chechen Arabic (indirectly) Gilaki Indo-Arabic[b] Aer Kashmiri Marwari Arabic Shahmukhi Hindko Saraiki Urdu Balochi (indirectly) Balti Brahui Burushaski Gawar-Bati Khowar (can also be considered a descendant of the Pashto alphabet) Kohistani Shina Palula Rohingya Arabic Shina Torwali Wakhi (in Pakistan) Kabardian Arabic Khorasani Turkic Kurdo-Arabic Lak Arabic Lezgin Arabic Luri Northern Luri Bakhtiari Southern Luri Pashto Munji Ormuri Shughni Arabic Wakhi (in Afghanistan) Sindhi Parkari Koli Ottoman Turkish Arebica Albanian Arabic Crimean Tatar Arabic (could instead be a descendant of Chagatai) Greek Aljamiado Turkmen Arabic Xiao'erjing
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

This article contains Persian text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

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The Persian alphabet (Persian: الفبای فارسی, romanized: Alefbâ-ye Fârsi), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: پ چ ژ گ (the sounds 'g', 'zh', 'ch', and 'p', respectively), in addition to the obsolete ڤ that was used for the sound /β/. This letter is no longer used in Persian, as the [β]-sound changed to [b], e.g. archaic زڤان /zaβɑn/ > زبان /zæbɒn/ 'language'.^[2][3]

It was the basis of many Arabic-based scripts used in Central and South Asia. It is used for both Iranian and Dari: standard varieties of Persian; and is one of two official writing systems for the Persian language, alongside the Cyrillic-based Tajik alphabet.

The script is mostly but not exclusively right-to-left; mathematical expressions, numeric dates and numbers bearing units are embedded from left to right. The script is cursive, meaning most letters in a word connect to each other; when they are typed, contemporary word processors automatically join adjacent letter forms. Persian is unusual among Arabic scripts because a zero-width non-joiner is sometimes entered in a word, making a letter becoming not connected by others.

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