13 Facts About Xiao'erjing

Xiao'erjing is written from right to left, as with other writing systems using the Perso-Arabic script.

The Xiao'erjing writing system is unusual among Arabic script-based writing systems in that all vowels, long and short, are explicitly marked at all times with Arabic diacritics; this means that Xiao'erjing is technically an alphabet, in contrast to the abjad classification of most Perso-Arabic script varieties.

Currently, the oldest known artifact showing signs of Xiao'erjing is a stone stele in the courtyard of Daxue Xixiang Mosque in Xi'an in the province of Shaanxi.

Some old Xiao'erjing manuscripts are preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, Russia.

Xiao'erjing can be divided into two sets, the "Mosque system" and the "Daily system".

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Xiao'erjing was used to annotate in Chinese, foreign language Islamic documents in languages like Persian.

Xiao'erjing was used mostly by Muslims who could not read Chinese characters.

Xiao'erjing was much simpler than Chinese characters for representing Chinese.

In recent years, the usage of Xiao'erjing is nearing extinction due to the growing economy of the People's Republic of China and the improvement of the education of Chinese characters in rural areas of China.

Xiao'erjing is used to explain certain terms when used as annotations.

Xiao'erjing has 36 letters, 4 of which are used to represent vowel sounds.

Xiao'erjing is similar to Hanyu Pinyin in the respect that words are written as one, while a space is inserted between words.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Xiao'erjing, simplified and traditional Chinese characters, Hanyu Pinyin and English:.