Jawi

Jawi is a writing system based on the Arabic script, adapted to write the Malay language and several other languages in Southeast Asia. It developed with the arrival of Islam in the region, becoming widely used from the 13th century onward in trade, literature, and religious texts.

The Jawi writing system is an abjad, meaning it primarily represents consonants, with vowels optionally indicated using diacritic marks. Over time, Jawi was expanded to better represent Malay phonology by introducing additional letters derived from Arabic characters.

The modern Jawi system does not have a fixed alphabet size in the same way as Latin scripts, but it commonly uses 36+ adapted characters, including modified Arabic letters such as ڤ, چ, ڠ, and ݢ to represent sounds not found in Arabic.

Jawi is written from right to left and has historically been used in administration, royal correspondence, religious literature, and classical Malay manuscripts. Today, it remains in use in religious education, cultural contexts, and in some regions such as Malaysia, Brunei, and southern Thailand.

One of the most distinctive features of Jawi is its adaptation layer over Arabic script. While it preserves Arabic letterforms, it extends the system to accurately represent Malay phonetics, especially consonants absent in Arabic.

Visually, Jawi combines flowing Arabic calligraphic forms with additional modified letters, creating a script that is both elegant and functionally expanded. Its connected cursive structure gives written text a continuous flowing appearance.

In summary, Jawi is an Arabic-derived abjad adapted for the Malay language, combining classical Islamic script tradition with localized phonetic expansion to form a culturally and linguistically significant writing system in Southeast Asia.