On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Marco Cimarosti wrote:

> I wonder what non-Arabs users of the Arabic script call it. Perhaps Roozbeh
> Pournander and N.R. Liwal can help us: how is the "Arabic alphabet" called
> in Farsi, Urdu, and Pashtun?

Persian speakers call it "alefbaa-ye faarsi". Persian Alphabet. The
problem is similiar to the Chinese case. They consider it offensive to
refer to the script as the Arabic alphabet.

They also think that Persian speakers have contributed enough to the
script to call it their own. For example, I have heard (I'm not sure) that
Arabic vowels (e.g. U+064B..U+0655) are invention of Persians who needed
to read Koran right.

There are few people who refer to it as Arabic script, namely some
linguists and some Unicodies.

--roozbeh

PS: Please do not use my yahoo email address. It is something I needed to
subscribe to groups such as qalam, because our university filters Yahoo
Groups emails.



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