Script guide › Arabic Script
Arabic vs Urdu
Arabic and Urdu 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
Urdu slopes diagonally (nastaliq) with the wide ے; Arabic sits on a flat baseline with ال starting words everywhere.
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
Urdu
تمام انسان آزاد پیدا ہوتے ہیں اور عزت میں برابر ہیں۔
آپ کیسے ہیں؟ سب ٹھیک ہے؟
پاکستان ایک خوبصورت ملک ہے۔
Urdu's own tells
- Written in hanging nastaliq style — lines slope diagonally down to the left.
- The wide ے at word ends is Urdu-only; so are ٹ ڈ ڑ (a tiny ط on top).
On signs in:
- Pakistan
- India