Belarusian Arabic alphabet

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The Belarusian Arabic alphabet was based on the Arabic script and was developed in the 16th, possibly 15th, century from the need to write down the Belarusian language in the Arabic script. It had consisted of twenty-eight graphemes, however, adjusting for the Belarusian phonetics forced some pecularities, namely:

For the sounds [ʒ] (ж), [ʧ] (ч) and [p] (п), which are absent from the Arabic language, Persian graphemes

پ چ ژ

respectively were used.

For the denoting of the soft [ʣ] (дз) and [ʦ] (ц) sounds, the graphemes

and

respectively, were constructed. These graphemes had been consistently used during the 18th-20th centuries.

The separate grapheme for the sound [w] (ў) had not been introduced, and it had been denoted by the same grapheme, as the sound [v] (в).

The users of the Belarusian Arabic alphabet were the Lipka Tatars, who had been invited to settle on Belarusian territories, and during the 14th-16th centuries had gradually stopped using their own language and started using the Old Belarusian language rendered in the Belarusian Arabic alphabet. The books of «Kitab» are the notable heritage of that literary tradition. There also existed Polish texts written in the Arabic script, dated not earlier than 17th cent.

[edit] References

Д-р Я. Станкевіч. Беларускія мусульмане і беларуская літаратура арабскім пісьмом. [Адбітка з гадавіка Беларускага Навуковага Таварыства, кн. I.] – Вільня : Друкарня Я. Левіна, 1933 ; Менск : Беларускае коопэрацыйна-выдавецкае таварыства ″Адраджэньне″, 1991 [факсімільн.]. – 3-е выд.