If the Arabic script is suited to Arabic grammar, how do speakers of non-Semitic languages cope with it?

Question

The Arabic script is an Abjad writing system or consonantal alphabet. Most letters stand for a consonant, and short vowels are usually not indicated (but can exceptionally be indicated with diacritic symbols). Long vowels also have proper letters, which is why the Arabic script can be called an impure Abjad.

The Arabic script is said to be well adapted to Arabic grammar (and more generally, Abjads are well adapted to Semitic languages) because roots usually consist of three consonants. Words derived from a common root still look fairly similar in writing because much morphology consists of changes in short vowels.

For instance, according to Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, the Arabic root ذ ب ح Ḏ-B-Ḥ (to sacrifice) can be derived the forms ذَبَح ḏabaḥa (he sacrificed), ذَبَحْتَ ḏabaḥta (you (masculine singular) sacrificed), ذَبَّحَ ḏabbaḥa (he slaughtered), يُذَبِّح yuḏabbiḥ (he slaughters), and مَذْبَح maḏbaḥ (slaughterhouse). Source: Abjad

(This is marked as disputed in the Wikipedia article, but sounds sensible to me and I think I've also read it elsewhere. Still, if you can cite sources disputing this feel free to rectify it.)

Question: The Arabic script is also used for a range of non-Semitic languages, such as Farsi/Persian and Urdu. Despite a fair degree of influence from Arabic, these languages do not follow the Arabic/Semitic system where roots rely on (three) consonants.

Does this have any practical consequences? Is there any evidence that the use of the Arabic script for non-Semitic languages makes reading and writing harder? Or the use of other Abjads, such as the Hebrew script for Yiddish?

My attempt at an answer, so far:

• On the one hand - as a learner of Arabic - I find the Arabic script troublesome enough even though consonantal roots are important in Arabic and short vowels less so. After all, short vowels carry morphological load (the passive of kataba - write - is kutiba, only distinguished by short vowels). But if authors feel this creates too much ambiguity they use diacritics to mark the crucial short vowels.
• Another problem when learning Arabic (caused by the Arabic script) is that I can't pronounce words I do not already know. But this is because I'm a learner, and publications for learners (whether native or non-native) typically include diacritics for short vowels depending on previous knowledge.
• On the other hand, even in English, it's n_t th_t h_rd t_ r__d _ s_nt_nc_ w_th__t v_w_ls. (see below)
• If the Arabic script really does cause so much trouble for non-Semitic languages one would expect these language communities to try and adopt another script. I don't know of any such cases where the community did that of it's on accord (some communities in the Soviet Union were forced to) and even if there are some they seem to be exceptions. I think this is not really a counter-argument to the Arabic script not being ideal for non-Semitic languages because once a community has adopted a script the opportunity costs implied by change would be fairly high (everybody has to learn a new script). Also, many communities using the Arabic script are also Muslim. As the language and script of the Qur'an, the Arabic language and script enjoy a lot of prestige.

(The clause without vowels is supposed to read "it's no that hard to read a sentence without vowels". If you had to read this apparently it is harder than I thought.)

Answer 1

Persian had used to use a variety of alphabets throughout the time, so I think it would not make any particular difficulty to read in Persian Arabic alphabet as well. The main difficulties are

a) sounds not present in Arabic, yet noticeable in Persian (or other languages using the script), and

b) a richer stock of vowels. These two factors elicit in Persian Arabic script, respectfully,

a) four new letters with some more dots to distinguish phonemes [p]پ, [t͡ʃ] (ch)چ, [ʒ]ژ zhe and [ɡ]گ, and

b) using 'Alef for [ɒ], Vav for [v] / [uː] / [o] / [ow] / [oː] (in Dari), Yi for [ɒː] / [eː] (in Dari) and not distinguishing short vowels.

The key principle might be similar to that of using Arabic script for aljamiado texts in Medieval Spain, or to write (Turkic) Tatar language in Belorussia with the Arabic script.

The Abjad is still vastly used for most of non-Semitic languages spoken throughout former Tocharian areas and Sogdia.

What is truly interesing, from my point of view, is how the Arabic script was used by Chinese muslims (A.K.A. Huizu) to write Chinese words, and there are still examples of reversed order of two-syllable (that is, two-character) words among some of Chinese Hui people.

Answer 2

There are many non-Semitic languages written in Arabic-based script.

• Persian or Farsi, presently used in Iran is an Indo-European language and use a variant of the Arabic script.
• Mozarabic language was a language used by Spanish Christians back when Arabic was the main language of learning and literature. It is primarily written in the Arabic script. It is a Romance language, and its vocabulary was derived from Latin
• During the sultanates era, Malay (which is an Austronesian language) used to be written in an Arabic script, see Jawi. Today people use the Latin alphabet, but Jawi is still used in several context. In fact, I have first-hand experience with Jawi writing, so I am going to elaborate.

In Riau, an Indonesian province which is the Indonesian centre of Malay culture, Jawi (or as we call it, Arab Melayu) is taught in school all the way to high school. It is also widely used in road signs, signs of buildings, and even a few books. To handle the difficulties you highlighted, there are several rules/changes.

• Non-original arabic letters are introduced to represent sounds that doesn't exist in arabic. Some are borrowed from the Persian script, and it introduced several new ones to represent sounds that doesn't exist in Arabic or Persian.
• Many vowels are represented by their closest consonant, e.g. waw (normally representing w) also represents u and o sounds. This isn't that far from the original Arabic usage because waw is also used in Arabic to represent long u sound.
• The schwa vowel does not appear in the written form
• The a sound can be represented in several ways, there is a slightly complicated rule regarding this.
• Arabic loanwords are written in the original Arabic form, so the above rules are ignored.

There are several other rules, but it's not that complicated. I remember reading the rules which fits merely 2 or 3 book pages including examples, and after this I never have any problem with this subject in school. After certain level, this subject involves studying Malay literature, culture and history in full Jawi text.