ء
![]() | ||||||||
|
|
ArabicEdit
EtymologyEdit
Most Arabic dialects early on lost the Proto-Semitic glottal stop, which caused compensatory lengthening of a preceding short vowel. At the beginning of the Islamic period only some of the most conservative lects preserved the consonant. Therefore it was not reflected in the spelling: One generally wrote and pronounced ذِيب (ḏīb, “wolf”), for example. The grammarians, however, favoured the conservative pronunciation and indicated the glottal stop with various diacritic marks, which ultimately led to the contemporary ذِئْب (ḏiʾb).
PronunciationEdit
LetterEdit
- Hamza (ء) is a sign in the Arabic script that represents the glottal stop /ʔ/. It can be considered a diacritic or a letter, but it is not counted among the 28 letters of the alphabet. The exact spelling of the glottal stop depends on the combination of vowels that follow and precede it. It may be written with آ /ʔaː/, أ /ʔa/, /aʔ/, /ʔu/, إ /ʔi/, ئ /ʔi/, /iʔ/, ؤ /ʔu/, /uʔ/, or, usually after a long vowel, ء.
Usage notesEdit
- The curious vowel-dependant spelling of ء means that the triptotic noun declension, which is normally not reflected in the spelling, may become visible before a pronominal suffix. Compare: أَصْدِقاؤُنَا (ʾaṣdiqāʾunā, “our friends”, nominative), أَصْدِقائِنَا (ʾaṣdiqāʾinā, genitive), أَصْدِقاءَنَا (ʾaṣdiqāʾanā, accusative).
See alsoEdit
MalayEdit
PronunciationEdit
LetterEdit
ء
- The thirty-third letter of the Malay alphabet, written in the Arabic script.
See alsoEdit
- (Arabic script letters) حروف; ا, ب, ت, ث, ج, چ, ح, خ, د, ذ, ر, ز, س, ش, ص, ض, ط, ظ, ع, غ, ڠ, ف, ڤ, ق, ک, ݢ, ل, م, ن, و, ۏ, ه, ء, ي, ى, ڽ [edit]
PersianEdit
PronunciationEdit
- (Classical Persian): IPA(key): /ʔ/
LetterEdit
ء • (hamzeh)
- Hamzeh. Its name is همزه.
See alsoEdit
UrduEdit
PronunciationEdit
- (letter name): (Standard Urdu) IPA(key): /ɦəm.zɑː/
- (phoneme): (Standard Urdu) IPA(key): /ʔ/ or silent
LetterEdit
ء • (hamzā)
- The thirty-fifth letter of the Urdu alphabet.
FormsEdit
Isolated form |
---|
ء |