Abstract
Currently, Pashto and Dari (Afghan Persian), the two official languages, and other Afghan languages are written in modified Arabic alphabets. Persian adopted the Arabic alphabets in the ninth century, and Pashto, in sixteenth century CE. This article looks at how the Arabic Orthography has hindered Literacy and Economic development in Afghanistan. The article covers a comprehensive analysis of Arabic Orthography adopted for writing Dari and Pashto, a study of the proposed Arabic Language reforms, and research conducted about reading and writing difficulty in Arabic script by Arab intellectuals. The study shows how adopting modified Latin alphabets for a language can improve literacy level which further plays its part in the economic development of a country. The article dives into the history of Romanization of languages in the Islamic World and its impact on Literacy and economic development in those countries. Romanization of the Afghan Official languages and its possible impact on Literacy, Economy, and Peace in Afghanistan is discussed. Proposed Latin-based Alphabets are introduced for Dari and Pashto languages and factors that may facilitate or hinder the implementation of a Latin-based script in Afghanistan are explained at the end of the article. Romanization, referred to in this article, means converting to Roman script, also called Latin-based script, the alphabets of a language currently written in orthography other than the Latin.
Highlights
The Arabic script, which is called the alphabets of the Quran, is the writing system used for Arabic language and for different languages of the world, especially languages of the Muslim speech communities
The current Persian Script, which is a modified form of Arabic orthography, added four more letters to the Arabic alphabets and created 34 letters alphabets with 9 diacritic marks for Persian used in Iran and Afghanistan
Level of Literacy Ayturk puts that in order for a language to successfully switch to Latin script; low level of Literacy will act as a favorable factor facilitating the process of Romanization as fewer people will be negatively affected by the script change
Summary
The Arabic script, which is called the alphabets of the Quran, is the writing system used for Arabic language and for different languages of the world, especially languages of the Muslim speech communities. Muslim communities under Islamic Caliphate in parts of Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Western Europe, and India, were obliged to learn and use the Arabic language and script because it was introduced as the language of the Holy Quran. As a result of the religious and political influence of Arabic, Non-Arab communities modified the Arabic alphabets to create their own writing systems replacing their previous orthographies. Apart from Persian in Iran and Afghanistan, Arabic script was used for writing Tajik and Turkic languages of Central Asia such as Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazak, Azeri, and Turkmen. [2] The Turkic communities living in Afghanistan, Iran and China; Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmens, and Kyrgyz, for example, still, use the modified Arabic scripts for writing. Apart from Africa and Asia, languages in other parts of the world like Europe, Caucasus, and the Middle East, have been using Arabic Script out of which several languages have adopted the Latin script
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