TheRohingya Arabic Alphabet is a modifiedArabic script for theRohingya language. Rohingya today is written in three scripts,Hanifi Rohingya script, Arabic (Rohingya Fonna) Alphabet, and Latin (Rohingyalish). Rohingya was first written in the 19th century with a version of thePerso-Arabic script. In 1975, an orthographic Arabic script was developed and approved by the community leaders, based on theUrdu alphabet but with unique innovations to make the script suitable to Rohingya.^[1][2]

In the 1980s,Mohammad Hanif and his colleagues created the suitablephonetic script based on Arabic letters; theHanifi Rohingya script; it has been compared to theN’ko script. This script has gained popularity among Rohingya speakers, challenging the position of Arabic script, and presenting itself as a uniquely Rohingya script.

Nevertheless, as most Rohingya children attend Arabic and Quranic classes and are intimately familiar with theArabic script, Rohingya Arabic script remains suitable and relevant for Rohingya language. Tests that have been conducted suggest that this script can be learned in a matter of hours if the reader has learned Arabic in amadrassa.

One of the most significant advocates of Rohingya Arabic script has beenKyaw Hla Aung, a world-renowned Rohingya lawyer and civil rights activist.^[1]

One of the most important features of Rohingya Arabic Alphabet, a feature which makes this script unique among other adaptions of the Arabic script, is tone markers. Another feature of Rohingya Arabic script is that unlike its parent systems,Persian andUrdu, vowel diacritics are essential for writing in Rohingya. Whereas Persian and Urdu use three diacritics (rarely written) as well as three letters to represent their 6 vowel sounds, Rohingya has been modified to eliminate the reliance on such a dual system, instead solely relying on diacritics. In doing so, 3 new diacritics have been introduced to Rohingya, which are"curly" versions of the three existing diacritics.

Rohingya Arabic script consists of 40 letters, of which 36 are from its parent systems, Arabic, Persian, and Urdu alphabets. 4 are new characters unique to Rohingya. These new consonants represent consonants that undergofusion with a consonant preceding them. 10 of these letters are exclusively used in writing of loanwords from Arabic or from European languages.^[1][3][4]

Letters in yellow boxes are solely used in loanwords. Letters in green boxes are uniquely Rohingya.

The purpose of vowel diacritics in anAbjad script is to give vowels to each consonants. Unlike parent system,Persian andUrdu, Rohingya cannot be written or read without diacritics. The shape and position of diacritic is very important. There are 7 diacritics in Rohingya Arabic Alphabet, which include theSukun diacritic (zero-vowel), the3 diacritics inherited from Arabic, representing sounds /a/, /i/, and /u/, as well as three new diacritics unique to Rohingya, representing vowel sounds /ɔ~ɑ/, /e/, and /o/. All of these diacritics represent short vowel sounds.

6Tanween (double) diacrictics are also used to represent the post-nasalized versions of the 6 vowel sounds. Alternatively, a "ں‎, ـں‎, ـنـ" (dotless "n") can be used as well.

Tashdid (◌ّ) diacritic is used forgemination (doubling of consonant).

When a syllable starts with a vowel, be it the first syllable of the word, or a syllable in the middle of the word, the letteralif is used as vowel carrier. Examples include:

• اَكُوَشَّ‎ (အကုအာဣစ္စာ, akuaicca,𐴀𐴝𐴑𐴟𐴖𐴝𐴙𐴐𐴧𐴝)[ɑ.ku.ˈwəʃ.ˌʃʲə](meaning inconvenient, difficult)
• بࣦاَرَمۡ‎ (ဘီအာရာမ်, biaram,𐴁𐴞𐴘𐴝𐴌𐴝𐴔)[ˈbi.jɑ.ɾɑm](meaning illness)

Rohingya is atonal language. Historically Arabic script has been adopted and used by many tonal languages, examples includeXiao'erjing forMandarin Chinese as well asAjami script adopted for writing various languages of Western Africa. However, one of the shortcomings of Arabic, especially in comparison to Latin-derived scrips or other indigenous writing systems was that Arabic did not have a way of indicating tones.

However, in the adoption of the Arabic Script forRohingya language, in a unique modification, tone markers have been introduced to the Arabic script. Three (3) tone markers have been developed and are used in Rohingya.^[1][2]

Tone markers act as "modifiers" of vowel diacritics. In simpler words, they are "diacritics for the diacritics". They are written "outside" of the word, meaning that they are written above the vowel diacritic if the diacritic is written above the word, and they are written below the diacritic if the diacritic is written below the word. They are only ever written where there are vowel diacritics. This is important to note, as without the diacritic present, there is no way to distinguish between tone markers andI‘jām i.e. dots that are used for purpose of phonetic distinctions of consonants.

TheHārbāy (represented with diacritic◌𐴤 inHanifi script, and with anacute accent ◌́/á in Latin): a single dot that's placed on top ofFatḥah andḌammah, orcurly Fatḥah andcurly Ḍammah (vowel diacritics unique to Rohinghya), or their respectiveFatḥatan andḌammatan versions, and it's placed underneathKasrah orcurly Kasrah, or their respectiveKasratan version. (e.g.دً࣪ / دٌ࣪ / دࣨ࣪ / دٍ࣭‎) This tone marker indicates ashort high tone (/˥/).^[1][2]

TheṬelā (represented with diacritic◌𐴥 inHanifi script, and with double vowels withacute accent on the first; ◌́◌/áa in Latin):, is two dots that are placed on top ofFatḥah andḌammah, orcurly Fatḥah andcurly Ḍammah, or their respectiveFatḥatan andḌammatan versions, and it's placed underneathKasrah orcurly Kasrah, or their respectiveKasratan version. (e.g.دَ࣫ / دُ࣫ / دِ࣮‎) This tone marker indicates along falling tone (/˥˩/).^[1][2]

TheṬāna (represented with diacritic◌𐴦 inHanifi script, and with double vowels withacute accent on the first; ◌◌́/aá in Latin), is a fish-like looping line that is placed on top ofFatḥah andḌammah, orcurly Fatḥah andcurly Ḍammah, or their respectiveFatḥatan andḌammatan versions, and it's placed underneathKasrah orcurly Kasrah, or their respectiveKasratan version. (e.g.دࣤ࣬ / دࣥ࣬ / دࣦ࣯‎) This tone marker indicates along rising tone (/˨˦/).^[1][2]

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The following is a sample text in Rohingya of Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights with English, contrasted with versions of the text in Bengali and Assamese.

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