The Institute of Manuscripts: Early Alphabets in Azerbaijan

As might be expected, it soon became clear that the Arabic alphabet was not a perfect fit for the Azeri language. For instance, medieval Azerbaijani writers found that they had to add a new letter to the Arabic alphabet to represent a nasal consonant sound found in medieval Azeri. The consonant sounded similar to the "ng" in the English word "ring". For example, the Azeri word for sea, "Daniz", was pronounced "Dangiz". "Alini yu!" (Wash your hands!) was pronounced "Alingi yu!" There was no letter for this "ng" sound in the Arabic alphabet, since it wasn't indigenous to either the Persian or Arabic language. The new letter became known as "saghir-nun" (little nun, "nun" being the original Arabic letter representing the "n" sound). Strangely, this sound was represented by adding three dots above the letter "kaf" -- "k", not above "nun". There were three forms of the Arabic script spread throughout the region of Azerbaijan -- Arabic, Persian and Turkic. Along with "saghir-nun" and the non-traditional use of "ha", the Azeri variant of Arabic included letters that had been invented by medieval Persians. These included the letters called "gafe-farse", "Zhe" (the first sound in the name "Jala", not "j" itself), "pe" and "chim". As a result the pure Arabic script contained 28 letters, Persian had 32, and Azerbaijani had 33 (all the Persian letters plus "saghir-nun").