Persian alphabet

The 32-letter alphabet used to write Persian, adapted from the Arabic script with four additional letters. It is written from right to left, and most letters change shape depending on their position in a word.

Arabic script: A right-to-left writing system used for Arabic and adapted for several other languages. Persian retains its basic letter forms and joining conventions from this writing system.
Arabic letter joining: Rules governing which Arabic-script letters connect to neighboring letters and how their shapes change. Persian letters follow these joining rules, with each join affecting a letter’s written form.
Arabic alphabet: The 28-letter alphabet used to write Arabic, written from right to left. Persian adopted its script but added four letters for sounds absent from standard Arabic.
Middle Persian script: A group of writing systems used for Middle Persian before the adoption of the Arabic script. These earlier systems provide the historical backdrop to Persian’s later script change.
Persian phonology: The sound system of Persian, including its consonants, vowels, and patterns of pronunciation. Sound differences between Persian and Arabic help explain the alphabet’s added letters and spelling conventions.
Isolated form: A letter shape used when a character connects to neither the preceding nor the following character. Every Persian letter has a form used when it stands unjoined.
Urdu alphabet: A modified Arabic-derived writing system used for Urdu, with additional letters and conventions. Urdu shares the script’s ancestry but differs in its letter inventory and orthographic conventions.
Islamic conquest of Persia: The seventh-century conquest that brought the Sasanian Empire under Muslim rule. The conquest preceded the gradual adoption of Arabic writing for Persian.
Persian orthography: The conventions governing how Persian words are spelled and written. It covers how the alphabet represents sounds, word boundaries, and borrowed forms.
Initial form: A letter shape used when a character connects to the following character but not the preceding one. Its shape shows how a Persian letter begins a joined sequence.

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