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Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the
Consonant length in Arabic is contrastive: ' means "he studied", while ' means "he taught"; ' means "a youth cried" while ' means "a youth was made to cry".
A consonant may be long because of the form of the noun or verb; e.g., the causative form of the verb requires the second consonant of the root to be long, as in ' above, or by assimilation of consonants, for example the ' of the Arabic definite article ''al-'' assimilates to all dental consonants, e.g. () ' instead of ', or through metathesis, the switching of sounds, for example ' 'less, fewer' (instead of * '), as compared to ' 'greater'.
A syllable closed by a long consonant is made a long syllable. This affects both stress and prosody. Stress falls on the first long syllable from the end of the word, hence ' (or, with iʻrāb, ') as opposed to ', "love,
diacritics
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct fr ...
consonant. It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthographies of languages like Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
, Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
, Swedish, and Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
, and is thus rendered in Latin script in most schemes of Arabic transliteration
The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of written and spoken Arabic in the Latin script. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles, cataloging Arabic language works, language e ...
, e.g. = ' 'pomegranates
The pomegranate (''Punica granatum'') is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub in the family Lythraceae, subfamily Punicoideae, that grows between tall.
The pomegranate was originally described throughout the Mediterranean region. It was introduc ...
'.
Form
In shape, it is a small letter '' s(h)in'', standing for ''shaddah''. It was devised for poetry byal-Khalil ibn Ahmad
Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī ( ar, أبو عبدالرحمن الخليل بن أحمد الفراهيدي; 718 – 786 CE), known as Al-Farāhīdī, or Al-Khalīl, ...
in the eighth century, replacing an earlier dot.Versteegh, 1997. ''The Arabic language''. p 56.
Combination with other diacritics
When a is used on a consonant which also takes a , the is written above the . If the consonant takes a , it is written between the consonant and the instead of its usual place below the consonant, however this last case is an exclusively Arabic language practice, not in other languages that use theArabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...
.
For example, see the location of the diacritics on the letter in the following words:
When writing Arabic by hand, it is customary first to write the and then the vowel diacritic.
In Unicode representation, the can appear either before or after the vowel diacritic, and most modern fonts can handle both options. However, in the canonical Unicode ordering the appears following the vowel diacritic, even though phonetically it should follow directly the consonantal letter.
Significance of marking consonant length
Consonant length in Arabic is contrastive: ' means "he studied", while ' means "he taught"; ' means "a youth cried" while ' means "a youth was made to cry".
A consonant may be long because of the form of the noun or verb; e.g., the causative form of the verb requires the second consonant of the root to be long, as in ' above, or by assimilation of consonants, for example the ' of the Arabic definite article ''al-'' assimilates to all dental consonants, e.g. () ' instead of ', or through metathesis, the switching of sounds, for example ' 'less, fewer' (instead of * '), as compared to ' 'greater'.
A syllable closed by a long consonant is made a long syllable. This affects both stress and prosody. Stress falls on the first long syllable from the end of the word, hence ' (or, with iʻrāb, ') as opposed to ', "love, agape
In Christianity, agape (; ) is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God". This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or philautia, self-love, as it embraces a deep and profound sacrificial love ...
" as opposed to ' '(experiential) knowledge'. In Arabic verse, when scanning the meter, a syllable closed by a long consonant is counted as long, just like any other syllable closed by a consonant or a syllable ending in a long vowel: ' 'Will you not indeed praise...?' is scanned as ': short, long, long, short, long, short.
See also
*Arabic diacritics
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , ').
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where s ...
* Arabic alphabet
* Dagesh ḥazak, a functionally similar diacritic used to indicate gemination in Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...
References
Arabic diacritics {{arabic-script-stub