ARABIC DESKTOP KEYBOARD FREE DOWNLOAD

Language:Arabic
Type: Virtual Onscreen Keyboard
Platform:
WindowsXP
Windows 7
Windows 8 (coming soon)
Windows 10 (coming soon)

Frontype is easy to use multilingual user-friendly virtual onscreen keyboard that turns any keyboard to your language layout. Just add needed language as input and start to type!

How to Use the Arabic Keyboard Layout in Windows 7, Vista and XP

After you setup the Arabic keyboard in Windows, you can easily switch between Arabic and the

system language (i.e., the language of Windows in your computer). You switch languages using

the keyboard selector located in the Task Bar at the bottom of the computer screen.

1. When you setup the Arabic keyboard, you will see a language indicator on the Task Bar to

the right near the System Tray. For example, the English language indicator is "EN." (See the

red arrow in the picture) When you

switch to Arabic, the language

keyboard indicator is "AR."

2. Open the application in which you wish to type.

3. Click inside the application. For example, if you wish to type in Microsoft Word, open the

Word and click inside the text edit area.

4. Left click on the language selector box to open the keyboard menu.

5. Click on the desired keyboard layout in the keyboard menu.

6. You can now start typing in the selected keyboard language.

7. If you wish to return to the system language, click on the language selector box and select the

desired keyboard.

How to Type Arabic Characters

There are no special instructions for typing in Arabic in Windows. When you switch to the

Arabic language in a word processor, all typing should be in right-to-left entry. If the text entry is

not correct, you should contact your software manufacturer tech support.

One consideration in typing Arabic is the placement of certain paired characters including: ( ) [ ]

{ } < >.

The placement of these characters on the keyboard is different for Microsoft Office than for many other applications. The Smart Keyboard Solutions Arabic 101 label set includes optional labels so that you can configure your Arabic layout to match your software. For example, the set includes a 9 key label with the left parentheses and an optional label with the right parentheses. You should install the 9 key label with the parentheses that matches your software.

The Arabic keyboard (Arabic: لوحة المفاتيح العربية‎‎) is the keyboard layout used for the Arabic language. All computer Arabic keyboards contain both Arabic and Latin, as Latin characters are necessary for URLs and Email addresses. Since Arabic is written from right to left, when typing using an Arabic keyboard, the letters will start appearing from the right side of the screen.

المحتوى هنا ينقصه الاستشهاد بمصادر. يرجى إيراد مصادر موثوق بها. أي معلومات غير موثقة يمكن التشكيك بها وإزالتها. (مارس 2016) هذه المقالة تحتاج للمزيد من الوصلات للمقالات الأخرى للمساعدة في ترابط مقالات الموسوعة. فضلًا ساعد في تحسين هذه المقالة بإضافة وصلات إلى المقالات المتعلقة بها الموجودة في النص الحالي. (مارس 2016)

Arabic

Frontype is easy to use multilingual user-friendly virtual onscreen keyboard that turns any keyboard to your language layout. Just add needed language as input and start to type! How to Use the Arabic Keyboard Layout in Windows 7, Vista and XP After you setup the Arabic keyboard in Windows, you can easily switch between Arabic and thesystem language (i.e., the language of Windows in your computer). You switch languages usingthe keyboard selector lo..

Arabic (al-‘arabiyyah, العربية) is a macrolanguage. As the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language familyit includes all descendants of Classical Arabic spoken primarily across the Middle East and North Africa. Its closest living relatives are Hebrew and Aramaic. The term Arabic has several meanings. It can be used as a generic term that covers all varieties of Arabic. It can also refer to Classical Arabic, to Modern Standard Arabic, and to the numerous regional varieties of the language. Regional varieties are usually referred to as spoken, or colloquial, Arabic. Arabic has been a written language since the 6th century AD.

Arabic influenced many languages with which it came in contact. These include Indo-Iranian languages (Persian, Kurdish, Pashto), Indo-Aryan languages(Hindi, Urdu, Bengali), Turkic languages (Turkish), African languages (Swahili, Hausa), to name just a few. These languages adopted the Arabic script and borrowed a large number of Arabic vocabulary. Words of Arabic origin can be found today in languages all over the world.

Status
It is estimated that there are 223 miillion speakers of the 30 varieties of Arabic listed by Ethnologue. A significant proportion of them can also speak and understand Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in addition to the spoken variety learned as a first language.MSA is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of Arabic taught at all levels of education.

Arabic is the official or co-official language of 25 countries that include, among others, Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Mauritania, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In addition to the Arab countries, in which Arabic speakers are concentrated, large numbers of Arabic speakers can be found all over the world.

Dialects

The use of language throughout the Arab world is characterized by diglossia, i.e., proficiency in a colloquial variety and in Modern Standard Arabic, the latter to a greater or lesser extent. Modern Standard Arabic(MSA) and colloquial varieties have specialized functions. The complementary roles of MSA and colloquial Arabic vary somewhat from country to country. Below is a brief and simplified characterization of an extremely complex linguistic situation in the Arab-speaking world.

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), al-fuSHaa , الفصحى
MSA is the universal language of the Arab world. It is a direct descendant of Classical Arabic. MSA is used in formal speaking situations, such as sermons, lectures, news broadcasts, and speeches, and in all formal writing such as official correspondence, literature and newspapers. There are no native speakers of MSA. Most educated Arabs learn it through formal schooling, although many Arabs without formal schooling in MSA can understand it to a greater or lesser degree. MSA is quite uniform throughout the Arab world and serves as a lingua franca for speakers of various colloquial dialects, many of whom might otherwise be unable to communicate with each other.

Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic is not a spoken language. The term refers to the written Arabic of the Qur’an and of the literature of the early period. Classical Arabic became the language of scholarship and religion with the spread of Islam. Its relation to the modern spoken varieties is similar to that of Latin to the modern Romance languages. It is used as the language of religious practice throughout the Islamic world. It is learned formally in school and has changed very little in its grammar since the 7th century AD.
Colloquial (spoken) Arabic, العامية (al-)`āmmiyya (East) or الدارجة (ad-)dārija (West)
This term refers to the regional varieties used in everyday communication and popular culture. They are used in films, plays, and even in some literature. All colloquial varieties are acquired by children as their first language. There are numerous spoken dialects that vary along geographical, socio-economic, and religious lines. Arabs from one region can usually understand dialects from other regions, depending on their geographical proximity and knowledge of MSA. Factors that differentiate colloquial varieties include the influence of languages that were spoken in the area prior to the arrival of the Arabs, the impact of neighboring languages, and the prestigious role of languages of the colonial powers.

Arabic varieties with 100,000 or more speakers are listed below. The numbers are based on data from Ethnologue.

Modern Standard
Modern Standard Arabic	223 million second-language speakers	Throughout the Arab world
Spoken (colloquial)
Egyptian	54.0 million	Egypt
Algerian	28.0 million	Algeria
Moroccan	21.0 million	Morocco
Sa’idi	19.0 million	Egypt
Mesopotamian	15.1 million	Iraq
Sudanese	15.0 million	Sudan
North Levantine	14.4 million	Syria
Najdi	9.7 million	Saudi Arabia
Tunisian	9.4 million	Tunisia
Sanaani	7.6 million	Yemen
Ta’izzi-Adeni	7.0 million	Yemen
North Mesopotamian	6.3 million	Iraq
South Levantine	6.2 million	Jordan, Syria
Hijazi	6.0 million	Saudi Arabia
Libyan	4.2 million	Libya, Egypt
Gulf Spoken Arabic	3.6 million	Iraq, Oman
Hassaniyya	3.3 million	Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Algeria, Morocco
Gulf	2.3 million	Iraq, Qatar
Eastern Egyptian Bedawi	1.7 million	Egypt
Chadian	1.1 million	Chad
Omani	853,000	Oman
Maltese	429,000	Malta
Hadrami	410,000	Yemen
Baharna	310,000	Bahrain, Oman
Judeo-Moroccan	259,000	Israel
Baharna	300,000	Bahrain
Algerian Saharan	100,000	Algeria
Judeo-Iraqi	100,000	Israel

Writing

All varieties of Arabic are written with the Arabic script which is based on the Nabataean alphabet used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic. Nabateans added 6 symbols to the Aramaic alphabet to represent sounds that did not occur in Aramaic. The Nabataean alphabet contained only symbols for consonants. The Arabs added diacritics in the form of dots above and below the consonant to represent vowels.

The earliest Arabic inscription dates to 512 AD. Since then, the script has undergone several modifications. Its present form (Naskh) first appeared in the 11th century AD, and has been used ever since, especially for print.

Several other unrelated languages use the Arabic script including Persian, Pashto, and Urdu who use an adapted version of the Arabic script, calledPerso-Arabic. Turkish, Swahili, Hausa, and Uzbek are among languages that used the Arabic script, before they adopted the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets.

The Arabic alphabet is a fairly accurate representation of the sound system of the language. It contains 28 symbols with additional letters for loanwords that contain sounds which do not occur in Arabic, e.g., /p/ and /g/.

Words are written in horizontal lines from right to left.
Each letter in the Arabic alphabet can have four different forms depending on its position in a word. There are independent, initial, medial and final forms.
The shape of some letters allows them to be joined, while the shape of others does not. Letters that can be joined are always joined in both hand-written and printed Arabic.
The letters are simplified in handwritten form.
All but six letters can be attached to the preceding ones.
There are no capital letters.

The Arabic script is a type of writing system in which each symbol stands for a consonant. The consonant symbols are given below.

Arabic consonants

Arabic long vowels are represented by the first three letters below. Short vowels or absence of a vowel are represented by diacritics as represented by the following four letters. Diacritics are used only in the Qur’an, religious texts, classical poetry, children’s books, and textbooks for learners of Arabic.

Arabic vowels

Watch » Animation of the Arabic alphabet

Did You Know?

Arabic words in English
There are many words of Arabic origin in English, spread over a variety of fields. Most of them have entered English through other languages, notably French and Spanish. Below is a small sampling of Arabic loanwords. One can easily find English words starting with al– (the definite article in Arabic) in everyday English, e.g.,algebra, alcohol, alcove.

English word	from Arabic
adobe	al-tob, ‘the brick’
albacore	al bakara, ‘the young camels’
alcove	al-qobbah, ‘the vaulted chamber’
alfalfa	al-fisfisa, ‘the fresh fodder’
algebra	al jebr, ‘reunion of broken parts’ (as in computation)
arsenal	dar as-sina’ah, ‘house of manufacture, workshop’
artichoke	al-kharshof, ‘the artichoke’
ayatollah	ayatu-llah, ‘miraculous sign of God’
carob	kharrub, ‘locust bean pod’
coffee	qahwah, ‘coffee’
cipher	sifr, ‘zero, empty, nothing
cotton	qutn, ‘cotton
emir	amir, ‘commander’
fedayeen	plural of fedai, ‘devotee, zealot, one who risks life for a cause’
ghoul	ghul, ‘evil spirit that robs graves and feeds on corpses’
harem	haram, ‘women’s quarters’
hashish	hashish, ‘powdered hemp,’ literally ‘dry herb’
imam	imam, ‘leader, one who precedes’
Islam	islam, ‘submission’ (to the will of God)
jihad	jahada, ‘he waged war’
kismet	qismah, qismat, ‘portion, lot, fate’
Koran (Qur’an)	qur’a, ‘a reading, recitation, book’
lime	limah, ‘citrus fruit’
mask	maskhara, ‘buffoon’
mosque	masjid ‘temple, place of worship’
mullah	mawla ‘master’
mummy	mumiyah ’embalmed body’
Muslim	muslim, one who submits’ (to the faith)
safari	safar, ‘journey’
Sahara	çahra, ‘desert’
sheikh	shaykh, ‘chief,’ literally, ‘old man’
Shiite	shi’ah, ‘ followers,’ members of the Shia sect of Islam who recognize Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, as the lawful successor of the Prophet
sofa	suffah, ‘bench’
sugar	sukkar
Sunni	sunna “traditional teachings of Muhammad,” Muslims who accept the orthodox tradition as well as the Qu’ran
tariff	taarif, ‘inventory of fees to be paid’

Arabic numerals
The so-called “Arabic numerals” were actually not invented by the Arabs. They were developed in India circa 400 BC and eventually found their way into Persia where they were picked up by Arab traders. The Arabic numeral system uses several different sets of symbols that can be divided into two main groups. West Arabic (European) numerals were developed in the Maghreb, while East Arabic (Arabic-Indic) numerals were developed in what is now Iraq. The widespread Western Arabic numerals used with the Latin alphabet are descendants of the West Arabic numerals. The three sets of symbols given below were taken from Wikipedia.

The Arabic keyboard (Arabic: لوحة المفاتيح العربية‎) is the Arabic keyboard layout used for the Arabic language. All computer Arabic keyboards contain both Arabic and Latin, as Latin characters are necessary for URLs and Email addresses. Since Arabic is written from right to left, when typing using an Arabic keyboard, the letters will start appearing from the right side of the screen.

Arabic writing is the second most broadly-used script in the world, after the Latin alphabet. It descended from the Nabataean abjad, itself a descendant of the Phoenician script, and has been used since the 4th century for writing the Arabic language. Since the words of the Prophet Muhammed can only be written in Arabic, the Arabic script has traveled far and wide with the spread of Islam and came to be used for a number of languages throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Many of these are non-Semitic languages, so employ very different sound systems from spoken Arabic, and as a result the script has had to be adapted and is used slightly differently by speakers of different languages. Many African languages use an Arabic-based transcription system called Ajami, which is different from the original Arabic script. Romance languages such as Mozarabic or Ladino are also sometimes written in a modified Arabic script, called Aljamiado.

Many variations on the script have developed over time and space, but these can be broadly classified into two groups; an angular kufic style which was originally used for stone inscriptions and which commonly employs no diacritics, and the naskh style which is more commonly used, more rounded in form, and governed by a set of principles regulating the proportions between the letters. There are a number of variant styles included in this group, including those used in Arabic calligraphy.

Arabic letters are read from right to left. The script is an abjad; only the consonants are required to be written. The basic set of letters consists of twenty-eight consonants, although some languages use many more letters than this. Some letters can represent a consonant or a long vowel, depending on the context. An additional set of diacritics exists for writing short vowels, but its use is optional. Conventionally, for writing the Arabic language, long vowels are written and short vowels are omitted. Where a vowel is not written, readers of the script must use their knowledge of the language and its phonology to insert the appropriate vowel sound. Diacritics also exist for marking gemination (consonant lengthening).

Arabic is a unicameral script; there is no upper and lower case. It is also obligatorily cursive, that is, all the letters in a word must be connected wherever possible. Some letters ([a] ا, [d] ﺩ, [ð] ﺫ‎, [r] ﺭ‎, [z] ﺯ‎ and [w] ﻭ) cannot always be joined. Each letter has three contextual forms depending on whether it appears at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word, as well as a basic stand-alone shape which is used when it appears at the end of a word and is preceded by one of the letters listed above which cannot join on the left side. Many letters look broadly similar to one another, differing only in the placement of one or more dots above or below the letter. For example, the letters representing [ħ], [g] and [x] are all the same, except that [ħ] is unmarked, [g] has a dot in the loop of the letter and [x] has a dot above it. These dots are called i'jam and form an integral part of the letter.

A number of ligatures are used in handwriting, but only one [l] + [a] is compulsory ﻻ. A ligature is commonly used for writing the word Allah 'God' .ﷲ

Latin punctuation is commonly used, with a few exceptions. The Arabic comma, question mark, and percent sign are script-specific, and there is also an Arabic triple-dot mark. In addition, there are script-specific honorific marks which may be placed above a person's name in order to confer honor or a blessing upon them. There are also Koranic annotation signs, mostly to provide guidance in chanting and singing sacred text.

The Arabic script employs two sets of numbers, Standard and Eastern Arabic. Latin numbers, which derive from a medieval set of Arabic numbers, are also used, particularly in North Africa. Like Arabic letters, numbers are written from right to left, but with the highest value on the left, as with Latin numbers, so they must be read from left to right. There is also a numeral system known as abjad numerals, in which each of the 28 letters of the Arabic abjad is assigned a numeric value of units, tens or hundreds. These are combined to create larger numbers.

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