Script guide › Arabic Script
Arabic vs Persian (Farsi)
Arabic and Persian (Farsi) sit in the same corner of the writing-system map — Grafle's Arabic Script group — and players mix them up constantly. Here's the fastest way to tell them apart.
The tell
Persian has four letters Arabic lacks: پ چ ژ گ. Arabic's tell is the constant ال (alif-lam) article.
Side by side
Arabic
يولد جميع الناس أحراراً متساوين في الكرامة.
مرحبا بك في العالم العربي.
الشمس تشرق من الشرق.
Arabic's own tells
- The article ال (alif-lam) starts words constantly.
- Never has پ, چ, گ or ژ — those extra letters mean Persian, Urdu or Kurdish.
On signs in:
- Saudi Arabia
- Egypt
- Iraq
- Morocco
- United Arab Emirates
- Algeria
- Syria
- Jordan
- Yemen
- Libya
- Sudan
- Oman
- Qatar
- Kuwait
- Tunisia
- Lebanon
- Mauritania
- Bahrain
- Djibouti
- Comoros
- Somalia
- Chad
- West Bank
Persian (Farsi)
همه انسانها آزاد و برابر به دنیا میآیند و زندگی حق همه است.
سلام، حال شما چطور است؟
تهران پایتخت ایران است.
Persian (Farsi)'s own tells
- Has the four extra letters پ چ ژ گ that Arabic lacks.
- Word-final ی without dots, and no constant ال articles.
On signs in:
- Iran
- Afghanistan