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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), o ... [...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 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" (pharyngealized) consonants and non-emphatic ones. Some of these phonemes have coalesced in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through borrowing or phonemic splits. A "phonemic quality of length" applies to consonants as well as vowels. Vowels Modern Standard Arabic has six vowel phonemes forming three pairs of corresponding short and long vowels ( ... [...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] |
ḏāl
' (, also be transcribed as ') is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). In Modern Standard Arabic it represents . In name and shape, it is a variant of (). Its numerical value is 700 (see abjad numerals). The Arabic letter is named '. It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word: The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for , . When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as . This sound is found in English, as in the words "those" or "then". In English the sound is normally rendered " dh" when transliterated from foreign languages, but when it occurs in English words it is one of the pronunciations occurring for the letters " th". Pronunciations Between and within contemporary varieties of Arabic, pronunciation of the letter ' differs: * The Gulf, Iraqi, Tunisian dialects use the Classical and Modern Sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ḍād
(), is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). In name and shape, it is a variant of . Its numerical value is 800 (see Abjad numerals). In Modern Standard Arabic and many dialects, it represents an " emphatic" , and it might be pronounced as a pharyngealized voiced alveolar stop , pharyngealized voiced dental stop or velarized voiced dental stop . The sound it represented at the time of the introduction of the Arabic alphabet is somewhat uncertain, likely a pharyngealized voiced alveolar lateral fricative or a similar affricated sound or . One of the important aspects in some Tihama dialects is the preservation of the emphatic lateral fricative sound , this sound is likely to be very similar to the original realization of ḍād, but this sound () and are used as two allophones for the two sounds ḍād and ḏạ̄ʾ . Origin Based on ancient descriptions of this sound, it is cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ẓāʾ
, or (), is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). In name and shape, it is a variant of . Its numerical value is 900 (see Abjad numerals). ' does not change its shape depending on its position in the word: Pronunciation In Classical Arabic, it represents a velarized voiced dental fricative , and in Modern Standard Arabic, it can also be a pharyngealized 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 fricatives , are merged with the dental stops , , ''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". [...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 w ... [...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 fro ... [...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 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 and Cyrillic alphabets. Origins The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean, or (less widely believed) directly from the 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 Petra, Jordan. These people (now named Nabataeans fro ... [...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 ... [...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 cal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sibilant
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ''genre''. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively, . Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their paralinguistic use in getting one's attention (e.g. calling someone using "psst!" or quieting someone using "shhhh!"). In the hissing sibilants and , the back of the tongue forms a narrow channel (is '' grooved'') to focus the stream of air more intensely, resulting in a high pitch. With the hushing sibilants (occasionally termed ''shibilants''), such as English , , , and , the tongue is flatter, and the resulting pitch lower. A broader category is stridents, which include more fricatives than sibilants such as uvulars. Because a ... [...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] |
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