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Ṯāʾ
() is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). In Modern Standard Arabic it represents the voiceless dental fricative , also found in English as the " th" in words such as "thank" and "thin". In Persian, Urdu, and Kurdish it is pronounced as s as in "sister" in English. In name and shape, it is a variant of (). Its numerical value is 500 (see Abjad numerals). The Arabic letter is named ''ṯāʾ''. It is written is several ways depending in its position in the word: In contemporary spoken Arabic, pronunciation of ṯāʾ as is found in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraqi, and Tunisian and other dialects and in highly educated pronunciations of Modern Standard and Classical Arabic. Pronunciation of the letter varies between and within the various varieties of Arabic: while it is consistently pronounced as the voiceless dental plosive in Maghrebi Arabic (except Tunisian and eastern Libyan), on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hejazi Arabic
Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic (HA) ( ar, حجازي, ḥijāzī), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken in the Hejaz region, one by the urban population, originally spoken mainly in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and partially in Ta'if and another dialect by the urbanized rural and bedouin populations. However, the term most often applies to the urban variety which is discussed in this article. In antiquity, the Hejaz was home to the Old Hejazi dialect of Arabic recorded in the consonantal text of the Qur'an. Old Hejazi is distinct from modern Hejazi Arabic, and represents an older linguistic layer wiped out by centuries of migration, but which happens to share the imperative prefix vowel /a-/ with the modern dialect. Classification Also referred to as the sedentary Hejazi dialect, this is the form most commonly associated with the term "Hejazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tāʾ
Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Tāw , Hebrew Tav , Aramaic Taw , Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ (22nd in abjadi order, 3rd in modern order). In Arabic, it is also gives rise to the derived letter Ṯāʼ. Its original sound value is . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek ''tau'' (Τ), Latin T, and Cyrillic Т. Origins of taw Taw is believed to be derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph representing a tally mark (viz. a decussate cross) Z9 Arabic tāʼ The letter is named '. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: Final ('' fatha'', then with a sukun on it, pronounced , though diacritics are normally omitted) is used to mark feminine gender for third-person perfective/past tense verbs, while final (, ) is used to mark past-tense second-person singular masculine verbs, final (, ) to mark past-tense second-person singular feminine verbs, and final (, ) to m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Semitic Language
Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic ''Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant (most likely), the Sahara, or the Horn of Africa, and the view that it arose in the Arabian Peninsula has also been common historically. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages. Dating The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to around the 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad) and the Eblaite language, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts from the first half of the third millennium BC. One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur (c. 2485–2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abjad Numerals
The Abjad numerals, also called Hisab al-Jummal ( ar, حِسَاب ٱلْجُمَّل, ), are a decimal alphabetic numeral system/alphanumeric code, in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values. They have been used in the Arabic-speaking world since before the eighth century when positional Arabic numerals were adopted. In modern Arabic, the word ' () means ' ' in general. In the Abjad system, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, ʾalif, is used to represent 1; the second letter, bāʾ, 2, up to 9. Letters then represent the first nine intervals of 10s and those of the 100s: yāʾ for 10, kāf for 20, qāf for 100, ending with 1000. The word '' ʾabjad'' () itself derives from the first four letters (A-B-J-D) of the Semitic alphabet, including the Aramaic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, and other scripts for Semitic languages. These older alphabets contained only 22 letters, stopping at taw, numerically equivalent to 400. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabic Phonology
While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in phonology, the contemporary spoken Arabic language is more properly described as a varieties of Arabic, continuum of varieties. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions. MSA is used in writing in formal print media and orally in newscasts, speeches and formal declarations of numerous types. Modern Standard Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes or 8 or 10 vowels in most modern dialects. All phonemes contrast between "emphatic consonant, emphatic" (pharyngealized) consonants and non-emphatic ones. Some of these phonemes have Phonetic merger, coalesced in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through Loanword, borrowing or phonemic splits. A "phonemic quality of length" applies to Gemination, consonants as well as Vowel length, vowels. Vowels Modern Standard A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician alphabet is also called the Early Linear script (in a Semitic languages, Semitic context, not connected to Minoan writing systems), because it is an early development of the Proto-Sinaitic script, Proto- or Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic Writing system, script, into a Writing system#Graphic classification, linear, purely alphabetic script, also marking the transfer from a multi-directional writing system, where a variety of writing directions occurred, to a regulated horizontal, right-to-left script. Its immediate predecessor, the Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script, used in the final stages of the Late Bronze Age, first in either Egypt or Canaan and then in the Syro-Hittite states, Syro-Hittite kingdoms, is the oldest fully ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ġayn
The Arabic letter ( ar, غَيْنْ ' or ') is the nineteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, one of the six letters not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ), it represents the sound or . In name and shape, it is a variant of ʻayn (). Its numerical value is 1000 (see Abjad numerals). In the Persian language, it represents ~ and is the twenty-second letter in the new Persian alphabet. A voiced velar fricative or a voiced uvular fricative (usually reconstructed for Proto-Semitic) merged with ʻayin in most languages except for Arabic, Ugaritic, and older varieties of the Canaanite languages. Canaanite languages and Hebrew later also merged it with ʻayin, and the merger was complete in Tiberian Hebrew. The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for '','' 𐩶. Biblical Hebrew, as of the 3rd century BCE, apparently still distinguished the phonemes ġ /ʁ/ and ḫ /χ/, based on transcriptions in the Septuagint. For example, Gomorrah ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Varieties Of Arabic
The varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually unintelligible. Many aspects of the variability attested to in these modern variants can be found in the ancient Arabic dialects in the peninsula. Likewise, many of the features that characterize (or distinguish) the various modern variants can be attributed to the original settler dialects. Some organizations, such as SIL International, consider these approximately 30 different varieties to be different languages, while others, such as the Library of Congress, consider them all to be dialects of Arabic. In terms of sociolinguistics, a major distinction exists between the formal standardized language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Arabian Alphabet
The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ''ms3nd''; modern ar, الْمُسْنَد ''musnad'') branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE. It was used for writing the Old South Arabian languages Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramautic, Minaean, and Hasaitic, and the Ethiopic language Ge'ez in Dʿmt. The earliest instances of the Ancient South Arabian script are painted pottery sherds from Raybun in Hadhramaut in Yemen, which are dated to the late 2nd millennium BCE. There are no letters for vowels, which are marked by matres lectionis. Its mature form was reached around 800 BCE, and its use continued until the 6th century CE, including Ancient North Arabian inscriptions in variants of the alphabet, when it was displaced by the Arabic alphabet. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, it evolved later into the Ge'ez script, which, with added symbols throughout the centuries, has been used to write Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, as we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of The Arabic Alphabet
It is thought that the Arabic alphabet is a derivative of the Nabataean alphabet, Nabataean variation of the Aramaic alphabet, which descended from the Phoenician alphabet, which among others also gave rise to the Hebrew alphabet and the Greek alphabet, the latter one being in turn the base for the Latin alphabet, Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Origins The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean, or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac alphabet, Syriac. The table below shows changes undergone by the shapes of the letters from the Aramaic original to the Nabataean and Syriac forms. The Arabic script shown is that of post-Classical and Modern Arabic—notably different from 6th century Arabic script. (Arabic is placed in the middle for clarity and not to mark a time order of evolution.) It seems that the Nabataean alphabet became the Arabic alphabet thus: *In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, northern Arab tribes emigrated and founded a kingdom centred around P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesolect
A post-creole continuum (or simply creole continuum) is a dialect continuum of varieties of a creole language between those most and least similar to the superstrate language (that is, a closely related language whose speakers assert or asserted dominance of some sort). Due to social, political, and economic factors, a creole language can decreolize towards one of the languages from which it is descended, aligning its morphology, phonology, and syntax to the local standard of the dominant language but to different degrees depending on a speaker's status. Stratification William Stewart, in 1965, proposed the terms acrolect, the highest or most prestigious variety on the continuum, and basilect, the lowest or least prestigious variety, as sociolinguistic labels for the upper and lower boundaries, respectively, of a post-creole speech continuum. In the early 1970s Derek Bickerton popularized these terms (as well as mesolect for intermediate points in the continuum) to refer to the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Alveolar Fricative
The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences: *The voiceless alveolar sibilant has a strong hissing sound, as the ''s'' in English ''sink''. It is one of the most common sounds in the world. *The voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant (an ''ad hoc'' notation), also called apico-dental, has a weaker lisping sound like English ''th'' in ''thin''. It occurs in Spanish dialects in southern Spain (eastern Andalusia). *The voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant Voiceless_alveolar_fricative#Voiceless_alveolar_retracted_sibilant.html" ;"title="nowiki/> .html" ;"title="Voiceless alveolar fricative#Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant">">Voiceless alveolar fricative#Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant"> and the subform apico-alveolar , or call ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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