| |
In the modern spelling of Arabic, whenever the letter #alif stands for the consonantic sound hamzah همزة, a special hamzah همزة sign should be written above or below it:
This sign was not used anciently, and in modern times most people just omit it when writing informally.
A few word-initial #alif ألفs must never carry that sign
even though they may represent a hamzah همزة sound. Themost comon instance of this is the initial #a sound of the article #al. This is sometimes pronounced as #a and sometimes noto pronounced at all, but, regardless of whether it is pronunced or not, it must always be spelled as an alif with no hamza sign t all. See hamzatu lwaSl همزة الوصل for more details.
Copyright (c) 2001-2009
Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/alifhamzah.en.html
Last revised: 2008-06-03
| baa# باء |
| the #alif |
|
writing_arabic -> alphabet -> #alif hamzah