Hebrew alphabet . The Arabic letters generally (as six of the primary letters can have only two variants) have four forms, according to their place in the word. The same goes with the Mandaic ones, except for three of the 22 letters, which have only one form. In forms of Hebrew older than Modern Hebrew, כ״ף, בי״ת and פ״א can only be read "b", "k" and "p", respectively, at the beginning of a word, while they will have the sole value of "v", "kh" and "f" in a "sofit" (final) position, with few exceptions. In medial positions, both pronunciations are possible. In
History of the Arabic alphabet the same. After all this, there were only 17 letters that were different in shape. One letter-shape represented 5 phonemes ("b t th n" and sometimes "y"), one represented 3 phonemes ("j ħ kh"), and 5 each represented 2 phonemes. Compare the Hebrew alphabet, as in the table at . A similar ambiguity occurs in the German Fraktur font, in which the Roman alphabet uppercase letters I and J look the same but are officially different letters. The Arabic alphabet is first attested in its classical form in the 7th century. See PERF 558 for the first surviving Islamic Arabic