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, Mazanderani, Moghol, Qashqai
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic Persian alphabet; ; ; ; ; ;
Child systems	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 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'. Although the sound /β/ (ڤ) is written as "و" nowadays in Farsi (Dari-Parsi/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: 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.