' (, also transcribed as ') is one of the six letters the

Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...

added to the twenty-two inherited from the

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...

(the others being , , , , ). It is related to the

Ancient North Arabian Languages and scripts in the 1st Century Arabia Ancient North Arabian (ANA) is a collection of scripts and a language or family of languages under the North Arabian languages branch along with Old Arabic that were used in north and central Ara ...

𐪙‎‎‎, and South Arabian . In

Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA) is the variety of Standard language, standardized, Literary language, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in some usages al ...

it represents . In name and shape, it is a variant of (). Its numerical value is 700 (see

abjad numerals The Abjad numerals, also called Hisab al-Jummal (, ), 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 Arab world, Arabic-speaking ...

). The Arabic letter is named '. It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word: The

South Arabian alphabet The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian: ; modern ) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE, and remained in use through the late sixth century CE. It is an abjad, a writing system where only con ...

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 sometimes rendered " dh" when transliterated from foreign languages, but when it occurs in English words it is one of the pronunciations occurring for the digraph " th".

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

is the only country name in Arabic that uses this letter. In early forms of the

New Persian New Persian (), also known as Modern Persian () is the current stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian (8th ...

language and a in practice followed by its writers, who used the letter dhal () in lieu of

dal Dal is a term in the Indian subcontinent for dried, split pulses. Dal or DAL may also refer to: Places Cambodia *Dal, Ke Chong Finland * Laakso, a neighbourhood of Helsinki India * Dal Lake, in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India * Dal ...

(), in the middle of a word when the dal is preceded and followed by a vowel, or when dal was in the final position and preceded by a vowel, the letter was referred to as a dotted dhal or ''dal-i mu'ajjam'' (.

Pronunciations

Between and within contemporary

varieties of Arabic Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernaculars) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic languages, Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian P ...

, pronunciation of cognates with the letter ' differs: * The

Gulf A gulf is a large inlet from an ocean or their seas into a landmass, larger and typically (though not always) with a narrower opening than a bay (geography), bay. The term was used traditionally for large, highly indented navigable bodies of s ...

, Iraqi, Tunisian dialects use the Classical and Modern Standard sound of . * In

Maghrebi Arabic Maghrebi Arabic, often known as ''ad-Dārija'' to differentiate it from Literary Arabic, is a vernacular Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb. It includes the Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, Hassaniya and Saharan Arabic di ...

, it is consistently pronounced as the

voiced dental plosive The voiced alveolar, dental and postalveolar plosives (or stops) are types of consonantal sounds used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic s ...

. * In

Hejazi Arabic Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic (HA) (, Hejazi Arabic: , ), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a Varieties of Arabic, variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken i ...

, it merges with or depending on the word or it is pronounced as . * In the

Mashriq The Mashriq (; ), also known as the Arab Mashriq (), sometimes spelled Mashreq or Mashrek, is a term used by Arabs to refer to the eastern part of the Arab world, as opposed to the Maghreb (western) region, and located in West Asia and easter ...

(in the broad sense, including Egyptian, Sudanese and Levantine dialects), it becomes a

sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate 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 w ...

voiced alveolar fricative The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described. * The symbol for the alveolar sibilant ...

. Furthermore, in words fully assimilated into a Mashriq dialect, the sound has merged with (). Regardless of these regional differences, the pattern of the speaker's variety of Arabic frequently intrudes into otherwise Modern Standard speech; this is widely accepted, and is the norm when speaking the mesolect known alternately as ''lugha wusṭā'' ("middling/compromise language") or ''ʿAmmiyyat/Dārijat al-Muṯaqqafīn'' ("Educated/Cultured Colloquial") used in the informal speech of educated Arabs of different countries. (cf. Arabic dialect#Formal and vernacular differences)

Pronunciations

Unicode

See also

References

Further reading