if you're put off by how long it takes to learn this alphabet compared to the Cyrillic one, you should probably think very, very hard on ever even considering to start Chinese.

There are a handful of points that the Perso-Arabic alphabet has in common with the Phoenician and through it Greek and Latin alphabets, though I'm not sure focusing on those will make the acquisition any quicker (I rather expect not, but it's fascinating all the same). For instance, the sequence "K L M N" is exactly the same in all the alphabets I mentioned (plus Hebrew, obviously), and the alif/aleph of Arabic and Hebrew is the same as the Greek alpha, except of course that the Greek alpha became a real vowel somewhere down the line instead of merely a vowel carrier.

Regarding the order of the Arabic alphabet, it should be noted that there are in fact two orders; the modern one doesn't really seem familiar in any way other than the KLMN sequence, but the old one is remarkably similar to the orders of Hebrew and Greek (alif ba jim da / aleph bet gimel dalet / alpha beta gamma delta). Shame that they switched... presumably your Persian dictionary follows the new alif ba ta tha jim etc. sequence?

Can you tell that I'm having way too much fun talking about this?

Fair enough, just a funny phrasing then.


Yes, well, if you're going to compare with Cyrillic...