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Deciphering basmala

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Re: Deciphering basmala

#21

Post by noufalibrahim »

asibahi wrote: post #16
noufalibrahim wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I practice western calligraphy but haven't been able to make much inroads into Arabic. Partly because of the lack of high quality instruction material (which is available as books for Western calligraphy) and partly because of the complexity. The fact that it's right to left and I'm right handed presents some challenges too (my hand will come over letters I've just written and there's a risk of smudging them). T…

> right handed presents some challenges too (my hand will come over letters I've just written and there's a risk of smudging them You’re supposed to place your hand under the line you’re writing. Not to the right of it.

Yes I know but it's not always that straightforward and my muscle memory from western hands interferes.

Re: Deciphering basmala

#22

Post by ivanbakel »

saadat wrote: post #17
tekacs wrote: post #2

﷽ It's pretty great fun pasting it into various text entry fields to see how they behave. In standard-ish single-line-ish Apple text fields on my Mac (iMessage text entry field, Chrome Omnibox), it renders like this, which... I'm not sure is correct? https://cleanshot.com/share/0GkNJGQ7 On the other hand it renders akin to Chrome in TextEdit.

In your iMessage screenshot, this character is being rendered in Noto Nastaliq Urdu[1], which is a font that uses the nastaliq flavor of the Arabic script (as compared to the more widely used naskh flavor, which you're most probably seeing in Chrome's rendering). What's curious to me is that Apple only uses Noto Nastaliq Urdu if Urdu is enabled in preferred languages and is higher than any other Arabic-script languag…

In some discussion about Arabic rendering on another website[0], it was pointed out that the Basmala is its own codepoint in part because it is (or was?) a legal requirement on Pakistani documents and comes from an Urdu character-set. It's possible that, as a character effectively originating from and used by Urdu speakers, Apple defaults it to Nastaliq regardless of your font settings.

0: https://lobste.rs/s/7s4sjp/u_fdfd_arabic_ligature_bismillah_...

Re: Deciphering basmala

#23

Post by n4r9 »

othmanosx wrote: post #7

Arabic is so dense, and Quran came to perfect it. Reading the following verse from Quran, makes me proud that I'm a native Arabic speaker: "إِنَّا أَنزَلْنَاهُ قُرْآنًا عَرَبِيًّا لَّعَلَّكُمْ تَعْقِلُونَ" "Indeed, We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an that you might understand." Quran 12:2

In case anyone is interested in a secular perspective, I would phrase this as: "the Prophet's tribe's own linguistic heritage dominated following his success as a religious leader".

At the time of Prophet Muhammad, Arabic was broken into various dialects, with a notable split between Western (Hijazi) and Eastern (Najdi) Arabic. Muhammad belonged to the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, whose dialect was Western.

The Islamic empire rapidly grew to include different Arabic dialects and non-Arabs after Muhammad's death. A linguistic unification of the Quran's text and pronunciation was needed. The third "Caliph" (religious leader), Uthman ibn Affan, developed a single definitive version based on the Quraysh dialect and rigorously destroyed all variants.

Subsequently, non-Arab scholars - who had less native intuition of the Quraysh dialect - codified Arabic grammar based on the Quran and pre-Quranic poetry. This included the system of lines and dots above and below letters to indicate the shape of short vowels.

Re: Deciphering basmala

#24

Post by mda »

othmanosx wrote: post #7

Arabic is so dense, and Quran came to perfect it. Reading the following verse from Quran, makes me proud that I'm a native Arabic speaker: "إِنَّا أَنزَلْنَاهُ قُرْآنًا عَرَبِيًّا لَّعَلَّكُمْ تَعْقِلُونَ" "Indeed, We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an that you might understand." Quran 12:2

I have a question, what do you understand from verse 12:2, what is your personal interpretation?

Re: Deciphering basmala

#25

Post by Cthulhu_ »

tekacs wrote: post #2

﷽ It's pretty great fun pasting it into various text entry fields to see how they behave. In standard-ish single-line-ish Apple text fields on my Mac (iMessage text entry field, Chrome Omnibox), it renders like this, which... I'm not sure is correct? https://cleanshot.com/share/0GkNJGQ7 On the other hand it renders akin to Chrome in TextEdit.

Interestingly, pasting it in a new VS Code tab renders it like the browser does (the wide version), but the tab and suggested filename is the Nastaliq style.

Re: Deciphering basmala

#26

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mjd wrote: post #3

I've been having fun getting better at understanding where the letters begin and end. Something like this is easy for me now: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:-516170388361w7xlt8c... Next I'm going to learn the rest of the letters and try to start reading menus.

Makes me wonder how well people that grew up with Arabic script can learn european cursive.

but I also wonder if younger generations still learn cursive, I can imagine it's impossible to read if you've never seen it before)

Re: Deciphering basmala

#27

Post by downsplat »

Cool article, but the one it acknowledges and riffs off of, at https://lr0.org/blog/p/arabic/ , is much more informative, and tells all about how we got decent Arabic script rendering on our browers and OSs, but still notably imperfect.

Which makes me think: come on, in the age of Claude, the gap between "we know what to do" and "here is the working code" is narrower than ever.

Who will be the one to pick up the job? Has to be an Arabic speaker I guess!

Re: Deciphering basmala

#28

Post by saadat »

ivanbakel wrote: post #22
saadat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your iMessage screenshot, this character is being rendered in Noto Nastaliq Urdu[1], which is a font that uses the nastaliq flavor of the Arabic script (as compared to the more widely used naskh flavor, which you're most probably seeing in Chrome's rendering). What's curious to me is that Apple only uses Noto Nastaliq Urdu if Urdu is enabled in preferred languages and is higher than any other Arabic-script languag…

In some discussion about Arabic rendering on another website[0], it was pointed out that the Basmala is its own codepoint in part because it is (or was?) a legal requirement on Pakistani documents and comes from an Urdu character-set. It's possible that, as a character effectively originating from and used by Urdu speakers, Apple defaults it to Nastaliq regardless of your font settings. 0: https://lobste.rs/s/7s4sjp/…

Ah!

Or, it could be that out of all system fonts on MacOS, only Noto Nastaliq Urdu has a glyph for the bismillah, and thus the system uses it as a fallback...

Re: Deciphering basmala

#29

Post by za3faran »

n4r9 wrote: post #23
othmanosx wrote: post #7

Arabic is so dense, and Quran came to perfect it. Reading the following verse from Quran, makes me proud that I'm a native Arabic speaker: "إِنَّا أَنزَلْنَاهُ قُرْآنًا عَرَبِيًّا لَّعَلَّكُمْ تَعْقِلُونَ" "Indeed, We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an that you might understand." Quran 12:2

In case anyone is interested in a secular perspective, I would phrase this as: "the Prophet's tribe's own linguistic heritage dominated following his success as a religious leader". At the time of Prophet Muhammad, Arabic was broken into various dialects, with a notable split between Western (Hijazi) and Eastern (Najdi) Arabic. Muhammad belonged to the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, whose dialect was Western. The Islamic em…

That's not entirely accurate. The Quran, to this day, is recited in different "dialects"/recitations (Qira'aat), not just that of Quraish. In fact, Quraish did not use to pronounce the Hamzah (glottal stop) for example, in words such as Mu'min (مؤمن). However, the most popular recitation today (Hafs 'an 'Asim) recites with the glottal stop, as do some others.

Other kinds of pronunciation include the way the Alif Maqsoorah is uttered. For example the name Moses is pronounced Moosa or Moosé (or varying degrees in between) depending on the recitation. These kinds of recitations trace their ways back to how different tribes spoke.

You can hear an example of such recitations for the first Surah of the Quran here[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMVDdztN6fg

Re: Deciphering basmala

#30

Post by n4r9 »

za3faran wrote: post #29
n4r9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone is interested in a secular perspective, I would phrase this as: "the Prophet's tribe's own linguistic heritage dominated following his success as a religious leader". At the time of Prophet Muhammad, Arabic was broken into various dialects, with a notable split between Western (Hijazi) and Eastern (Najdi) Arabic. Muhammad belonged to the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, whose dialect was Western. The Islamic em…

That's not entirely accurate. The Quran, to this day, is recited in different "dialects"/recitations (Qira'aat), not just that of Quraish. In fact, Quraish did not use to pronounce the Hamzah (glottal stop) for example, in words such as Mu'min (مؤمن). However, the most popular recitation today (Hafs 'an 'Asim) recites with the glottal stop, as do some others. Other kinds of pronunciation include the way the Alif Maqs…

Thanks for the info! You've inspired me to research the topic a little more. My impression is that there's debate over whether the qira'aat represent pre-Islamic dialects or a curated set of recitation variations.

Nevertheless, at least from a secular standpoint it feels more like Arabic was standardised using the Qur'an as a primary anchor, rather than the Qur'an stepping in to "perfect" Arabic and give it rules.

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