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the #alif

The letter alif may represent several Arabic sounds.
  1. When it starts a word, it is likely to stand for one of the sounds #a #i #u #aa (namely, a glottal stop plus a vowel (short #a, #i, #u or long aa ا).
  2. Elsewhere, it most likely stands for a long aa sound ("ah" like in "father").
Sometimes the alif is a silent letter, as in katabuw# كتبوا "they wrote". And sometimes it stands for a glottal stop, as in ra#s رأس "a head" or qara# قرأ "he read".

The letter alif can also represent the sound #aa (glotal stop + long aa), as in qur#aan قرآن. See alifmaddah for details.

In modern spelling conventions, an alif written as alifhamzah stands for a glottal stop sound, and most hamzaless alifs stand for long aa sounds. Ancently, this distinction was not done at all and the hamzah sign was only used in some qur#aans.

Still nowadays, most people do not bother to make the distinction on informal writing, and write all alifs as hamzaless alifs. The modern spelling conventions are mainly used in print.



Copyright (c) 2001-2009 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/alif.en.html
Last revised: 2008-06-03

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