Persian alphabet

Persian alphabet
الفبای فارسی
*Alefbâ-ye Fârsi*
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
Period	c. 7th century CE – present
Direction	Right-to-left script
Languages	Persian (including Iranian and Dari dialects), Mazanderani, Qashqai, Luri, Gilaki, Kurdish (excluding Kurds in Turkey), Talysh, Azerbaijani (in Iran), Pamir languages, Pashto, Urdu, Balochi, Sindhi (in Pakistan), Punjabi (in Pakistan), Uzbek (in Afghanistan), Turkmen (in Afghanistan), Saraiki, Hindko, Brahui, languages spoken in Kashmir
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic Persian alphabet; ; ; ; ; ;
Child systems	List Adyghe Arabic; Arabi Malayalam (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-Persian Aer; Kashmiri; Marwari Arabic; Shahmukhi (Punjabi) Hindko; Saraiki; ; Urdu Balochi (indirectly); Balti; Bangladeshi Arabic alphabet; Brahui; Burushaski; Gawar-Bati; Khowar; Kohistani Shina; Palula; Rohingya Arabic; Shina; Torwali; Wakhi (in Pakistan); ; ; Jawi (indirectly); 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; ;

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. An Arabic-based alphabet, it is largely identical to the Arabic alphabet with four additional letters: پ, چ, ژ, and گ (the sounds 'p', 'ch', 'zh', and 'g', 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'. Although the sound /β/ (ڤ) is written as "و" nowadays in New Persian), it is different to the Arabic /w/ (و) sound, which uses the same letter.

It was the basis of many Arabic-based scripts used in Central and South Asia. It is used for both Iranian and Dari, which are 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, causing a letter to become disconnected from others in the same word.