, or (), is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the

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 a ...

(the others being , , , , ). In name and shape, it is a variant of . Its numerical value is 900 (see

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 ...

). ' does not change its shape depending on its position in the word:

Pronunciation

In Classical Arabic, it represents a

velarized Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of four di ...

voiced dental fricative , and in

Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; occasionally, it also re ...

, it can also be a

pharyngealized Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicat ...

voiced dental or alveolar fricative. In most Arabic vernaculars ''ẓāʾ'' and '' ḍād'' have been merged quite early. The outcome depends on the dialect. In those varieties (such as Egyptian, Levantine and Hejazi), where the

dental fricative The dental fricative or interdental fricative is a fricative consonant pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the teeth. There are several types (those used in English being written as ''th''): *Voiced dental fricative - as in the Englis ...

s , are merged with the

dental stop In phonetics and phonology, a dental stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the tongue in contact with the upper teeth (hence dental), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop consonant). Dental and alveolar stops are ...

s , , ''ẓāʾ'' is pronounced or depending on the word; e.g. is pronounced but is pronounced , In loanwords from Classical Arabic ''ẓāʾ'' is often , e.g. Egyptian ''ʿaẓīm'' (< Classical ''ʿaḏ̣īm'') "great". In the varieties (such as Bedouin and Iraqi), where the dental fricatives are preserved, both ''ḍād'' and ''ẓāʾ'' are pronounced . However, there are dialects in South Arabia and in Mauritania where both the letters are kept different but not consistently. A "de-emphaticized" pronunciation of both letters in the form of the plain entered into other non-Arabic languages such as Persian, Urdu, Turkish. However, there do exist Arabic borrowings into

Ibero-Romance languages The Iberian Romance, Ibero-Romance or sometimes Iberian languages Iberian languages is also used as a more inclusive term for all languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, which in antiquity included the non-Indo-European Iberian language. are ...

as well as

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also ...

and Malay, where ''ḍād'' and ''ẓāʾ'' are differentiated.

Statistics

is the rarest phoneme of the Arabic language. Out of 2,967 triliteral roots listed by Hans Wehr in his 1952 dictionary, only 42 (1.4%) contain .

In other Semitic languages

In some reconstructions of

Proto-Semitic 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 (m ...

phonology, there is an emphatic interdental fricative, ( or ), featuring as the direct ancestor of Arabic , while it merged with in most other

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...

, although the

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 Sout ...

retained a symbol for .

Writing in the Hebrew alphabet

When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as .

Character encodings

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Za Arabic letters