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Arabic
Etymology
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 (ḏiʔb).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ʔ/
Letter
ء or هَمْزَة • (ʔ or hamza)
- 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 notes
- The curious vowel-dependent 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 (ʔaṣdiqāʔunā, “our friends”, nominative), أَصْدِقائِنَا (ʔaṣdiqāʔinā, genitive), أَصْدِقاءَنَا (ʔaṣdiqāʔanā, accusative).
Burushaski
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ʔ/, [ʔ]
Letter
ء (’)
- The fourty-seventh letter of the Burushaski alphabet, written in the Perso-Arabic script
Malay
Pronunciation
- (Name of letter) IPA(key): [hamzah]
- (Phoneme) IPA(key): [(ʔ)], [ʔ]
Persian
Pronunciation
- (Classical Persian) IPA(key): /ʔ/
- (Dari Persian) IPA(key): /ʔ/
- (Iranian Persian) IPA(key): /ʔ/
- (Tajik) IPA(key): /ʔ/
Urdu
Pronunciation
- (letter name): (Standard Urdu) IPA(key): /ɦəm.zɑː/
- (Deccani) IPA(key): /ɦəm.zɑː/
- (phoneme): (Standard Urdu) IPA(key): /ʔ/
- (Deccani) IPA(key): /ʔ/ or silent
Forms
| Isolated form |
|---|
| ء |
See also
- Template:list:Arabic script letters/ur
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