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the waaw hamzah

Sometimes the letter و has a hamzah sign above:

The combination is pronounced as a hamzah sound. The letter wow itself is as useless as the S of ISLAND.

Examples: da#uwd دؤود, ru#yah رؤية.

More often than not, Arabs write the unpronounced waaw but forget about writing the pronounced hamzah. This is incorrect. But it is often convenient if your pronunciation is a bit off standard Arabic and you say **dawuwd دوود and **ruwyah روية.

The waaw hamza is only used to spell the hamzah sound when:

  1. there is no i/iy sound right after the hamza sound (use yaa hamza if there is one)
  2. AND there is no i/iiy/ay right before the hamza sound, (use yaa hamza if there is one)
  3. AND the waaw hamza would not be the first letter of the word (use alif hamza then) or the last (use a floating hamzah then),
  4. AND ( there is u/uw after the hamzah, OR u/uw/aw before it) (otherwise, the hamza sound must be spelled as alif hamza or floating hamza or alif madda).


Copyright (c) 2001-2009 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/waawhamzah.en.html
Last revised: 2008-04-12

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