Efforts to reform Arabic script made more sense decades ago when illiteracy was high. But once the internet came along, the young people across the Arabic-speaking world who might have once been illiterate, took to literacy very keenly: you had to be at least at little literate to SMS with friends, access internet porn, and get sweet dopamine hits on social media. Suddenly Arabic script turned out not to be that big of a problem after all.
Those same teens came up with Arabizi so they could text. It consists of the Roman alphabet plus the numbers 3,5,7 and 9. It's written left to right and was created for texting on feature phones. Everyone can read it in any Arabic-speaking country. Given that so little is published in Arabic, a change to this grassroots script is long overdue.
Rate of published words per person per language is a fascinating stat. I did a quick estimate and got Icelandic first, Mandarin last, with Arabic between Russian and Spanish.
When I used to communicate in Arabiz I would rarely use 5, 6 or 9 too, but I get why they are there.
The problem with 6 and 9 is that there are 2 very unrelated sounds for t and d in Arabic. Mixing them is a hallmark of non-native speakers tell signs and to an Arabic speaker’s ear sounds broken. It’s like when German speakers mix th and z sounds in English. It’s very jarring to the ear and requires you to parse the same word you’re reading twice in your mind to tell whether it was 6 or t (or 9 or d) especially that very similar words might exist like 6atreb and tarteb or trab and 6arb. I usually don’t use 6 and 9 either except when I want to emphasis the 6 or 9 sound in a word.
Kh and gh are problematic mainly because you’re relying on the special rule in Arabic that you can’t have 2 constants like k, g and h sounds after one another in a word. You’re relying on the wrongness of a kh or gh construct in Arabic to realize they must be standing for something else. I prefer them tbh, but I get the desire of some to have symbols for them.
غ Is sometimes 3’ but I have seen more gh than 3’ especially that 3’ mixes the academic romanization with the “Arabiz” romanization
My biggest problem letter is mim. It essentially disappears in a lot of styles. If I was more fluent I’m sure I’d recognize the words more readily and know when to look for it. I don’t find the rest of the letters too difficult even at my basic level.
I was struck by the lack of books in the homes of even educated people in Yemen. I once went to a book fair in Sana’a that was well attended. Think it was on a college campus. I don’t remember seeing many novels in Arabic, they were mostly in English and French. I had been told that if someone sent me any books in the mail they would have to be cleared by the censor before I would get them. That pretty much equated to never getting them. The book fair was a relief. I picked up David Copperfield and Women in Love and that was enough to last me until I made a trip out of the country.
The lack of books and therefore lack of reading leads to reduce vocabulary. I read somewhere the average of known words by an Arabic speaker was substantially lower than English speakers.
When I switch to speaking Arabic (poorly) I struggle to find words because my vocab level is so bad. Imagine for an every day person, not being able to effectively express themselves. It would lead to a ton of frustration, miscommunication and misunderstanding.
To be fair, modern "English" is a nebulous smorgasbord of words from a lot of different languages. I'm sure we could afford to drop a lot of the words from clusters of synonyms.
> we could afford to drop a lot of the words from clusters of synonyms
Not really, because every synonym imparts a slightly different meaning, usually perceptable only to native speakers. That's why they persist, because they are useful even if not strictly necessary.
I recall a team working on machine translation starting by translating English into a simpler form before translating that into the target languages. This was a couple of decades ago. Perhaps not a new idea even then.
For all the boneheaded/bad decisions that Mao Zedong made, simplifying the Chinese script turned out to be an excellent one, greatly increasing literacy and having a good side effect of making Chinese writing much accessible and legible at smaller sizes (found in modern print and on screen).
When it comes to typing on computer/phones, nowadays Chinese type Latin letters (pinyin) that approximate a Chinese sound, which then reveals Chinese characters that relate to that sound, which they can then select. it's much faster than using root strokes to "build" the character. I was wondering if any similar technique is used in Arabic?
Arabic doesn't need it because it's based on a finite number of letters and each letter is a sound, pretty much like latin.
It does also contain a 4x2 nunation[1] system that acts as short vowels and/or stress but it's apart from the stress, it's optional and can be mostly* derived from context.
Simplified Chinese don't make much sense. The idea is that humans write everything manually forever, so simplifying saves time. But that's moot with computers that system coupled with high resolution monitors, and IMO it just leaves less clues for learners and less literate to infer meanings. They're also less visually balanced than the traditional.
There's an Arabic version of pinyin called Arabizi which consists of the Roman alphabet plus the numbers 3,5,7 and 9. It's written left to right and was created for texting on feature phones. Everyone can read it in any Arabic-speaking country. Given that so little is published in Arabic, a change to this grassroots script is long overdue.
This made the rounds on HN a few ... weeks? months? ago, and it's also about Arabic typesetting, and it's a very interesting read: https://lr0.org/blog/p/arabic/
I'm a little surprised that Nasri Khattar wasn't mentioned in it.
One of the hardest thing for me when reading Arabic is to identify the start and end of letters. I have started using monospace Arabic font with little gaps. Works great. https://github.com/eliheuer/hasubi-mono
It's easy to see how it could simplify typesetting, I would think computers though have that mostly covered now. Making Arabic easier to read is interesting, it would help new learners potentially, but I am not surprised that existing readers and writers might not warm to the idea. I wonder if Simplified Mandarin isn't a little similar, mostly accepted, but with a little pushback.
I don't think Arabic script is that hard. It's nearly phonetic, unlike English. It's not super broad and hard to memorized like kanji. I don't know, maybe I'm just removed from the struggles of people learning it for the first time.
When I was studying it, we were told Syro-lebanese was the cleanest and most easily understandable, with Egyptian a distant second despite being quite peculiar due to widespread popularity of their media production.
Fus-ha Arabic (High Arabic) is intelligible as it is used in official communication, academia, news papers, documentaries, etc. But obviously it is not spoken day to day.
But it's mostly like all the dialects, with some extra stuff on top that the dialects tend to drop.
I'd say if you just want to quickly be able to speak with people around you, learn the local dialect, but if you want to really learn Arabic long-term, learn fusha, and you'll have easier time understanding most dialects later.
You’re up against a tall order trying to modernize Arabic. Arabic is half a language and half a religious practice in itself. Arabic speakers, who are absolute majority Muslims, have explicit statement from God that Arabic is a holy language sent by God as the most perfect language PERIOD. It’s why he chose it for the Quran, and why it should remain unchanged. All attempts to “improve” it would be an admission of some problem or some deficiency which is heresy in itself. How can you improve on what God has already declared perfect? The solution is often to go back to the older style of Arabic instead of your local dialect if you really want the perfect Arabic, not to invent new concepts.
Even though Arabic script itself isn’t necessarily mentioned in the Quran and Muslims will generally accept that the script itself was “standardized” after the Quran, they would also argue the concept of “Authority of Al-Salaf” which is the belief that the closer the generation is to the prophet, the more authority that generation had on whatever topics they ruled on. There is an important hierarchy of authority in Islam where the Quran is at the top, followed by any saying or a judgement by the prophet, then followed by those of his direct followers, then their followers, then scholars of their followers, then their followers, all the way down to today. Since according to the most accepted story, Arabic and its script were “standardized” in the few decades following the Muslim prophet by his direct followers, you can’t really improve it. Or rather, you have to have a really enormous social influence and respect to be able to even make the slight modifications. There has been few influential Caliphates or scholars in history that have been able to do so, but it’s hard to imagine anyone today with that level of importance or influence.
This seems wrong. There's a lot of diversity in Arabic, there has been modernization in Arabic, and the Quran does not declare Arabic a perfected language. Arabic has changed already.
I'm not saying this project will be successful and I'm sure the cultural importance of Classical Arabic is one of its obstacles but I don't believe this is a language group that is religiously forbidden to modernize its typography.
Maybe I was wrong in saying it “declares it perfect”, but the Quran declares itself as “sent in Arabic, clear and free from crookedness” or in “a clear Arabic tongue”. Scholars (from Ahl Al Salaf, so they have more authority) often interpreted that as God deliberately choosing Arabic to communicate his message as Arabic was the best language that God chose to communicate his final message in its clearest form to humans. There are further sayings by the prophet that reciting the Quran and prayers in full proper Arabic has a special place to God.
There were modest attempts at reform and improvements, but they were never titled as “improvements” or “modernization” especially that the latter is a word with negative connotations in Islam, but rather as something more pragmatic or logistical like the adoption of new words, or dropping some complex rule or style.
There is indeed a great diversity in Arabic, but there is 1 “correct” Arabic which is the Quranic/Classical Arabic. Egyptian, Levantine, Hejazi, and Maghrabie are only some of the main variations on Arabic, but all those speakers would agree that it’s not the “correct” Arabic. Reciting the Quran or quoting the prophet in such dialect would be extremely disrespectful. Most religious authorities might speak in that dialect to help with communication, then revert to Classical Arabic when quoting either of those.
The most “moderination” Classical Arabic got was Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) which was really about accepting some simplified grammar and prose in professional writing rather than introducing anything completely novel or new. It made it acceptable to write books or articles in simpler prose rather than requiring or expecting the extremely elaborate writing style of true Classical Arabic. Most importantly, it didn’t forbid or declare anything from Classical Arabic “outdated” or “wrong” but rather just saying “it’s a bit too much, maybe”
The resistance to modify the typography is definitely there, but I wasn’t saying that it will necessarily succeed in preventing the modification. The Quran in its 7th century form will have to remain the authority on Arabic, followed by all the writings and literature of the following centuries. However you can find the Quran written phonetically in “Academic Romanization” format as Muslim view it more of a translation of sorts, rather than an actual reproduction of the Quran. I don’t know of any “Arabiz” versions of the Quran, and I suspect it would be viewed as disrespectful by many, but I won’t be surprised if some were on the internet or would appear in print at some point.
FWIW, I don’t think many (of the reasonable people) would oppose the changes proposed by this typography changes, but I suspect that most would either view it as strange or unnecessary because at the end of the day it just looks like a broken font more than anything.
Edit: Theology gets complicated but The Mu'tazilite split in the 9-10th century was mainly about the true nature of the Quran. They argued that it was a created vs being an eternal attribute of God. They lost the debate in the Muslim world and the opinion that won was that the Quran was the literate word of God that is eternal and wasn't created but always existed. The debate wasn't about language, but language (being the medium of the Quran) was part of it where Mu'tazilite had to try to define the difference between expression, and linguistic limitations in communication. They lost the debate and their influence weaned in general though left remnants in post-prophet history of Islam.
The delicate discussion of why this project failed does not obscure its actual shape. The failure to embrace has cost decades of progress in most critical dimension of society.
Reminds me of another story about older scripts being hard to read:
I found a paperback with Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England[1]. In the intro, it explains how they made the deliberate decision to render them as pixel-for-pixel copies of the original texts, so you could get the most pure, unadulterated form.
I'm like lol whatever, you act like you're doing the world a huge favor by not transcribing it into something legible for modern readers, forcing them to navigate around stuff like the s's looking like f's. No, dude, anyone who actually needs that level of authenticity is a scholar who already knows how to find the originals. You don't want that in a publication for a mass audience.
Efforts to reform Arabic script made more sense decades ago when illiteracy was high. But once the internet came along, the young people across the Arabic-speaking world who might have once been illiterate, took to literacy very keenly: you had to be at least at little literate to SMS with friends, access internet porn, and get sweet dopamine hits on social media. Suddenly Arabic script turned out not to be that big of a problem after all.
Those same teens came up with Arabizi so they could text. It consists of the Roman alphabet plus the numbers 3,5,7 and 9. It's written left to right and was created for texting on feature phones. Everyone can read it in any Arabic-speaking country. Given that so little is published in Arabic, a change to this grassroots script is long overdue.
> Given that so little is published in Arabic,
Rate of published words per person per language is a fascinating stat. I did a quick estimate and got Icelandic first, Mandarin last, with Arabic between Russian and Spanish.
I still maintain to this day that the original usable numbers were 2, 3, and 7.
All that 5 and 6 and 9 crap is useless and those letter were and could be done with normal latin letters:
5 already has kh, 6 already has t, 9 already has d, don't know what people used for غ but you can write it with gh
When I used to communicate in Arabiz I would rarely use 5, 6 or 9 too, but I get why they are there.
The problem with 6 and 9 is that there are 2 very unrelated sounds for t and d in Arabic. Mixing them is a hallmark of non-native speakers tell signs and to an Arabic speaker’s ear sounds broken. It’s like when German speakers mix th and z sounds in English. It’s very jarring to the ear and requires you to parse the same word you’re reading twice in your mind to tell whether it was 6 or t (or 9 or d) especially that very similar words might exist like 6atreb and tarteb or trab and 6arb. I usually don’t use 6 and 9 either except when I want to emphasis the 6 or 9 sound in a word.
Kh and gh are problematic mainly because you’re relying on the special rule in Arabic that you can’t have 2 constants like k, g and h sounds after one another in a word. You’re relying on the wrongness of a kh or gh construct in Arabic to realize they must be standing for something else. I prefer them tbh, but I get the desire of some to have symbols for them.
غ Is sometimes 3’ but I have seen more gh than 3’ especially that 3’ mixes the academic romanization with the “Arabiz” romanization
Crazy to say that 9 is a d when it's clearly a قـ not a د Could be a regional thing because in north africa it's not a d
They’re saying it is ض, which is a letter us North Africans generally struggle to differentiate from ظ :)
Also, afaik 9 is a ص in many countries, while 8 is a ق. But it is definitely my first time hearing of a 9 used as ض.
My biggest problem letter is mim. It essentially disappears in a lot of styles. If I was more fluent I’m sure I’d recognize the words more readily and know when to look for it. I don’t find the rest of the letters too difficult even at my basic level.
I was struck by the lack of books in the homes of even educated people in Yemen. I once went to a book fair in Sana’a that was well attended. Think it was on a college campus. I don’t remember seeing many novels in Arabic, they were mostly in English and French. I had been told that if someone sent me any books in the mail they would have to be cleared by the censor before I would get them. That pretty much equated to never getting them. The book fair was a relief. I picked up David Copperfield and Women in Love and that was enough to last me until I made a trip out of the country.
The lack of books and therefore lack of reading leads to reduce vocabulary. I read somewhere the average of known words by an Arabic speaker was substantially lower than English speakers.
When I switch to speaking Arabic (poorly) I struggle to find words because my vocab level is so bad. Imagine for an every day person, not being able to effectively express themselves. It would lead to a ton of frustration, miscommunication and misunderstanding.
I really need to improve my Arabic!
That really interesting.
To be fair, modern "English" is a nebulous smorgasbord of words from a lot of different languages. I'm sure we could afford to drop a lot of the words from clusters of synonyms.
> we could afford to drop a lot of the words from clusters of synonyms
Not really, because every synonym imparts a slightly different meaning, usually perceptable only to native speakers. That's why they persist, because they are useful even if not strictly necessary.
I recall a team working on machine translation starting by translating English into a simpler form before translating that into the target languages. This was a couple of decades ago. Perhaps not a new idea even then.
You can take those 'useless', redundant synonyms from my cold, dead brain cells!
For all the boneheaded/bad decisions that Mao Zedong made, simplifying the Chinese script turned out to be an excellent one, greatly increasing literacy and having a good side effect of making Chinese writing much accessible and legible at smaller sizes (found in modern print and on screen).
When it comes to typing on computer/phones, nowadays Chinese type Latin letters (pinyin) that approximate a Chinese sound, which then reveals Chinese characters that relate to that sound, which they can then select. it's much faster than using root strokes to "build" the character. I was wondering if any similar technique is used in Arabic?
> it's much faster than using root strokes to "build" the character.
In fact, input methods like this not only exist—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method—but are in more common use than you might expect! I've met more than one (regular-person, non-technical) office worker who could barely hunt & peck on a coworker's Chewing but could fly with Cangjie. e.g., https://youtu.be/sVAQSBU5OOo?t=98
Coïncidentally (or not,) they also had very high written character recall and speed… (a skill that is notably very weak among syllabic-IME users…)
But doesn’t Taiwan use the traditional script? And over in Taiwan they don’t seem to have issues with literacy or using smaller screens?
Arabic doesn't need it because it's based on a finite number of letters and each letter is a sound, pretty much like latin. It does also contain a 4x2 nunation[1] system that acts as short vowels and/or stress but it's apart from the stress, it's optional and can be mostly* derived from context.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunation
Simplified Chinese don't make much sense. The idea is that humans write everything manually forever, so simplifying saves time. But that's moot with computers that system coupled with high resolution monitors, and IMO it just leaves less clues for learners and less literate to infer meanings. They're also less visually balanced than the traditional.
It’s not needed. There are strict rules on how a letter is rendered based on where in the word it is.. and there are 28 letters (plus some variants).
Mao did not simplify Chinese. The First Chinese Character Simplification Scheme simply adopted simplified characters in common use.
But if it was such a great idea, why is it not an issue in Hong Kong which does not use it?
There's an Arabic version of pinyin called Arabizi which consists of the Roman alphabet plus the numbers 3,5,7 and 9. It's written left to right and was created for texting on feature phones. Everyone can read it in any Arabic-speaking country. Given that so little is published in Arabic, a change to this grassroots script is long overdue.
This made the rounds on HN a few ... weeks? months? ago, and it's also about Arabic typesetting, and it's a very interesting read: https://lr0.org/blog/p/arabic/
I'm a little surprised that Nasri Khattar wasn't mentioned in it.
One of the hardest thing for me when reading Arabic is to identify the start and end of letters. I have started using monospace Arabic font with little gaps. Works great. https://github.com/eliheuer/hasubi-mono
I had a similar issue yesterday with classical Greek. Some website used a typeface that renders one of the diacritics in a totally unfamiliar way.
I had to copy and paste the text into another doc and change the typeface to understand.
I suppose that you refer to the circumflex accent, because that can differ wildly between Greek typefaces.
Some render it similarly to a French circumflex accent, others render it like a tilde.
I think it was either the "smooth" or "acute" symbol, but it was originally rendered as (approximately) a vertical line.
It's easy to see how it could simplify typesetting, I would think computers though have that mostly covered now. Making Arabic easier to read is interesting, it would help new learners potentially, but I am not surprised that existing readers and writers might not warm to the idea. I wonder if Simplified Mandarin isn't a little similar, mostly accepted, but with a little pushback.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters
I don't think Arabic script is that hard. It's nearly phonetic, unlike English. It's not super broad and hard to memorized like kanji. I don't know, maybe I'm just removed from the struggles of people learning it for the first time.
I once was curious about possibly learning Arabic. I left more confused after my initial research than I went in.
What's a good Arabic dialect to learn such that you're as intelligible as possible?
When I was studying it, we were told Syro-lebanese was the cleanest and most easily understandable, with Egyptian a distant second despite being quite peculiar due to widespread popularity of their media production.
Fus-ha Arabic (High Arabic) is intelligible as it is used in official communication, academia, news papers, documentaries, etc. But obviously it is not spoken day to day.
But it's mostly like all the dialects, with some extra stuff on top that the dialects tend to drop.
I'd say if you just want to quickly be able to speak with people around you, learn the local dialect, but if you want to really learn Arabic long-term, learn fusha, and you'll have easier time understanding most dialects later.
It's interesting since a lot of language simplification attempts of that era did succeed, off the top of my head, Chinese (in the PRC) and Malayalam
Turkish as well. They moved from Arabic to Latin script.
And English :) to LOL Fook this. Fook that. Bro.
Younger generation of simplified brains will come up with even more simplified languages.
You’re up against a tall order trying to modernize Arabic. Arabic is half a language and half a religious practice in itself. Arabic speakers, who are absolute majority Muslims, have explicit statement from God that Arabic is a holy language sent by God as the most perfect language PERIOD. It’s why he chose it for the Quran, and why it should remain unchanged. All attempts to “improve” it would be an admission of some problem or some deficiency which is heresy in itself. How can you improve on what God has already declared perfect? The solution is often to go back to the older style of Arabic instead of your local dialect if you really want the perfect Arabic, not to invent new concepts.
Even though Arabic script itself isn’t necessarily mentioned in the Quran and Muslims will generally accept that the script itself was “standardized” after the Quran, they would also argue the concept of “Authority of Al-Salaf” which is the belief that the closer the generation is to the prophet, the more authority that generation had on whatever topics they ruled on. There is an important hierarchy of authority in Islam where the Quran is at the top, followed by any saying or a judgement by the prophet, then followed by those of his direct followers, then their followers, then scholars of their followers, then their followers, all the way down to today. Since according to the most accepted story, Arabic and its script were “standardized” in the few decades following the Muslim prophet by his direct followers, you can’t really improve it. Or rather, you have to have a really enormous social influence and respect to be able to even make the slight modifications. There has been few influential Caliphates or scholars in history that have been able to do so, but it’s hard to imagine anyone today with that level of importance or influence.
This seems wrong. There's a lot of diversity in Arabic, there has been modernization in Arabic, and the Quran does not declare Arabic a perfected language. Arabic has changed already.
I'm not saying this project will be successful and I'm sure the cultural importance of Classical Arabic is one of its obstacles but I don't believe this is a language group that is religiously forbidden to modernize its typography.
Maybe I was wrong in saying it “declares it perfect”, but the Quran declares itself as “sent in Arabic, clear and free from crookedness” or in “a clear Arabic tongue”. Scholars (from Ahl Al Salaf, so they have more authority) often interpreted that as God deliberately choosing Arabic to communicate his message as Arabic was the best language that God chose to communicate his final message in its clearest form to humans. There are further sayings by the prophet that reciting the Quran and prayers in full proper Arabic has a special place to God.
There were modest attempts at reform and improvements, but they were never titled as “improvements” or “modernization” especially that the latter is a word with negative connotations in Islam, but rather as something more pragmatic or logistical like the adoption of new words, or dropping some complex rule or style.
There is indeed a great diversity in Arabic, but there is 1 “correct” Arabic which is the Quranic/Classical Arabic. Egyptian, Levantine, Hejazi, and Maghrabie are only some of the main variations on Arabic, but all those speakers would agree that it’s not the “correct” Arabic. Reciting the Quran or quoting the prophet in such dialect would be extremely disrespectful. Most religious authorities might speak in that dialect to help with communication, then revert to Classical Arabic when quoting either of those.
The most “moderination” Classical Arabic got was Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) which was really about accepting some simplified grammar and prose in professional writing rather than introducing anything completely novel or new. It made it acceptable to write books or articles in simpler prose rather than requiring or expecting the extremely elaborate writing style of true Classical Arabic. Most importantly, it didn’t forbid or declare anything from Classical Arabic “outdated” or “wrong” but rather just saying “it’s a bit too much, maybe”
The resistance to modify the typography is definitely there, but I wasn’t saying that it will necessarily succeed in preventing the modification. The Quran in its 7th century form will have to remain the authority on Arabic, followed by all the writings and literature of the following centuries. However you can find the Quran written phonetically in “Academic Romanization” format as Muslim view it more of a translation of sorts, rather than an actual reproduction of the Quran. I don’t know of any “Arabiz” versions of the Quran, and I suspect it would be viewed as disrespectful by many, but I won’t be surprised if some were on the internet or would appear in print at some point.
FWIW, I don’t think many (of the reasonable people) would oppose the changes proposed by this typography changes, but I suspect that most would either view it as strange or unnecessary because at the end of the day it just looks like a broken font more than anything.
Edit: Theology gets complicated but The Mu'tazilite split in the 9-10th century was mainly about the true nature of the Quran. They argued that it was a created vs being an eternal attribute of God. They lost the debate in the Muslim world and the opinion that won was that the Quran was the literate word of God that is eternal and wasn't created but always existed. The debate wasn't about language, but language (being the medium of the Quran) was part of it where Mu'tazilite had to try to define the difference between expression, and linguistic limitations in communication. They lost the debate and their influence weaned in general though left remnants in post-prophet history of Islam.
The delicate discussion of why this project failed does not obscure its actual shape. The failure to embrace has cost decades of progress in most critical dimension of society.
I hope that's recognized and progress occurs.
Reminds me of another story about older scripts being hard to read:
I found a paperback with Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England[1]. In the intro, it explains how they made the deliberate decision to render them as pixel-for-pixel copies of the original texts, so you could get the most pure, unadulterated form.
I'm like lol whatever, you act like you're doing the world a huge favor by not transcribing it into something legible for modern readers, forcing them to navigate around stuff like the s's looking like f's. No, dude, anyone who actually needs that level of authenticity is a scholar who already knows how to find the originals. You don't want that in a publication for a mass audience.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentaries_on_the_Laws_of_En...
Good in theory, bad in practice