sukuwn سكون

We tell children that a "letter" B (a letter B is a drawing of a B, as well as a sound "B") plus a letter E (which is a "drawing" and a "sound" too) make the sound BE. You don't teach that to Arab children. For Arabs, the "Arabic B" is a "letter" (more precisely, a Harf حرف), while the E sound is not a "harf" at all.

Instead, Arabs say that there are four ways to pronounce the "letter" :

Sometimes it is followed by an opening ("fatHah فتحة") of all the mouth, and you say BAH.
Sometimes the tongue moves up, "breaking" the breath, and you say BEE. In this case we say that the B is accompanied by a kasrah كسرة ("breaking").
Sometimes, after saying the B, the lips get together, and the letter is pronounced BOO. This lip-motion is called a .Dammah ضمة ("getting together", "joining").
Otherwise, there is silence ("sukuwn") after the B, as when you say SHab شب, SHib شب, SHub شب.

These four motions (opening of the mouth, raising of the tongue, closing of the lips, and stopping of the breath) are called Harakaat حركات ("motions") in Arabic. All Arabic consonants, when pronounced, are accompanied by one of these four motions.

Motions are not Huruwf حروف ("cutting edges", "letters"). You might call the motions "vowels" and the edges "consonants", but notice that for us both vowels and consonants are letters, while for Arabs only the Huruwf حروف are letters. The Harakaat حركات are at best second-class citizens, and most of the time are trifles, used when speaking, but unworthy of the dignity of being written.

If you write one motion sign over one of the consonants of a word, there's no obligation at all to do the same with the other consonants. So, if you see the letters ktb كتب with a .Dammah ضمة above the u, and no other vowel signs, this means that the k ك must be read ku ك, but there's still no way to know how should the t ت be read. Maybe it has a silence after it and the word is *kutb كتب, or maybe the t ت has a breaking after it and the word is kutiba- كتب, or a joining and it's kutubun- كتبن. If you want to be sure that your reader says nothing after the t ت, you need to write a "silence" sign above it. This sign is called sukuwn سكون "silence", looks like a zero, and means zero, nothing, nada.

You may write the sukuwn سكون either as a small zero or as a miniature haa# هاء (this haa# هاء leans a bit towards the left). Make sure that the hole is clearly visible, so it doesn't look like a dot (you don't want a with a silence-sign above to look like a ).

When a y ي or a w و has a sukuwn سكون above it, the previous letter can't carry but a fatHah فتحة. It cannot carry a kasrah كسرة because of the ortographic norm mentioned here, and cannot carry a .Dammah ضمة nor a sukuwn سكون because in Arabic the combinations uy ي and yy ي are always followed by some vowel. So the letters byt بيت with a sukuwn سكون above the y ي can only be read bayt بيت (pronounced "bate", as in "Gill Bates"), and there's no need to write the fatHah فتحة above the b ب (of course you may write it if you really really want to).

Copyright (c) 2001-2008 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/sukuwn.en.html
Last revised: 2006-06-10