Alxamía: a secret journal script for Spanish and Galician

Write modern Spanish and Galician in Arabic letters, from zero.

Aljamía is how the Moriscos wrote Spanish in Arabic script in the 15th to 17th centuries. Alxamía, its Galician spelling, is the name of this course's version: a private journaling system for modern speech, built on the historical spelling wherever the sources allow. "Aljamía" below means the historical practice; "Alxamía" means your system.

How secret is it?

Enough for a journal. Almost no one around you reads Arabic script. Arabic readers who don't speak Spanish or Galician see nonsense.

Not real encryption. Someone who reads Arabic and speaks Spanish or Galician can work it out. The rules are fixed and all written down here.

How trustworthy is it?

This course started from a spreadsheet Claude made (since removed). Checking it against real sources found errors, so the course now rests on sources, and every claim carries a label:

• [attested]: in historical Spanish aljamía, per Galmés de Fuentes's transliteration table (Lesson 21).
• [attested, Portuguese]: in the Portuguese aljamía letters edited by David Lopes in 1897.
• [modern choice]: a modern, non-historical option from the original sheet.
• [course rule]: my rule for the journal system. Non-historical.
• [PROPOSAL, non-historical]: your own invention. No manuscript uses it.
• [unverified]: from the original sheet or a secondary source; I could not confirm it.

The sources here show no historical aljamía in Galician. Everything Galician is modern, whatever its label.

What the original sheet got wrong

1. e is fatḥa + alif (ـَا), not kasra. So fatḥa + alif can't mean a stressed a.
2. x as شّ is attested, not your invention.
3. Word-initial r is رّ, like rr.
4. ç as ص: ص has its own value in the standard table and turns up mostly in Arabic words.
5. Final -a as ـَهْ and the Mac keyboard tip: unverified.

The system at a glance