Arwi ( ʾArwīyyu) or Arabu-Tamil (, عَرَبُ تَّمِۻْ Araputtamiḻ ) is an Arabic-influenced dialect of the Tamil language written with an extension of the Arabic alphabet, with extensive lexical and phonetic influences from the Arabic language. Arwi has been used extensively by the Muslims of the Tamil Nadu state of India and Sri Lanka.

History

Arwi was an outcome of the cultural synthesis between seafaring Arabs and Tamil-speaking Muslims of Tamil Nadu. This language was enriched, promoted and developed in Kayalpattinam. It had a rich body of work in jurisprudence, Sufism, law, medicine and sexology, of which little has been preserved. It was used as a bridge language for Tamil Muslims to learn Arabic. The patrons of Arwi seem to have been the Nawab of the Carnatic, they were Islamic and were part of the Mughal Empire. Many hadith manuscripts have been found. Most of the fiqh books, particularly those of Imaam Abu Hanifa and Imaam Shaafi, have been found in Arwi. There was also a translation of the Bible into Arwi in 1926. Arwi still has a place among the more Arwi Muslim and Sri Lankan Moor families.

Script

The Arwi alphabet is the Arabic alphabet, with thirteen additional letters used to represent the Tamil vowels e and o and several Tamil consonants that could not be mapped to Arabic sounds.

Vowels

Consonants

Sample Texts

Below are several sample texts in Arwi orthography, in standard Tamil Script, and transliterated into Latin as per ISO 15919.