Ẓāʾ

Ẓāʾ
Phonemic representation ðˤ (zˤ, dˤ)
Position in alphabet 27
Numerical value 900
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Ẓāʾ
ظ
Usage
Writing system Arabic script
Type Abjad
Language of origin Arabic language
Phonetic usage [ðˠ]
History
Development
  • ظ
Other

Ẓāʾ, or ḏ̣āʾ (ظ), is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ṯāʾ, ḫāʾ, ḏāl, ḍād, ġayn). In Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic it represents a pharyngealized or velarized voiced dental fricative [ðˤ] or [ðˠ]. In name and shape, it is a variant of ṭāʾ. Its numerical value is 900 (see Abjad numerals).

Ẓāʾ does not change its shape depending on its position in the word:

Position in word: Isolated Final Medial Initial
Glyph form: ظ‬ ـظ‬ ـظـ‬ ظـ‬

Pronunciation

The main pronunciations of written ⟨ظ⟩ in Arabic dialects.

In Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic it represents a pharyngealized or velarized voiced dental fricative [ðˤ] or [ðˠ]. It is acceptable to pronounce it as a pharyngealized or velarized voiced alveolar fricative [zˤ] or [zˠ].

In most Arabic vernaculars ظ ẓāʾ and ض ḍād have been merged quite early.[1] The outcome depends on the dialect. In those varieties (such as Egyptian and Levantine), where the dental fricatives /θ/, /ð/ are merged with the dental stops /t/, /d/, both ḍād and ẓāʾ are pronounced /dˤ/; in the varieties (such as Bedouin and Iraqi), where the dental fricatives are preserved, both the letters are pronounced /ðˤ/.[1][2][3][4] However, there are dialects in South Arabia and in Mauritania where both the letters are kept different.[1] In loanwords from Classical Arabic ẓāʾ is often /zˤ/, e.g. Egyptian ʿaẓīm (< Classical عظيم ʿaḏ̣īm) "great".[1][2][5]

"De-emphaticized" pronunciation of the both letters in the form of the plain /z/ entered into other non-Arabic languages such as Persian, Urdu, Turkish.[1] However, there do exist Arabic borrowings into Ibero-Romance languages as well as Hausa and Malay, where ḍād and ẓāʾ are differentiated.[1]

Statistics

Ẓāʾ is the rarest phoneme of the Arabic language. Out of 2,967 triliteral roots listed by Hans Wehr in his 1952 dictionary, only 42 (1.4%) contain ظ.[6]

In other Semitic languages

In some reconstructions of Proto-Semitic phonology, there is an emphatic interdental fricative, ṱ ([θˤ] or [ðˤ]), featuring as the direct ancestor of Arabic ẓāʾ, while it merged with ṣ in most other Semitic languages, although the South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ẓ.

Writing in the Hebrew alphabet

When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ט׳.

Character encodings

Characterظ
Unicode nameARABIC LETTER ZAH
Encodingsdecimalhex
Unicode1592U+0638
UTF-8216 184D8 B8
Numeric character reference&#1592;&#x638;

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Versteegh, Kees (1999). "Loanwords from Arabic and the merger of ḍ/ḏ̣". In Arazi, Albert; Sadan, Joseph; Wasserstein, David J. Compilation and Creation in Adab and Luġa: Studies in Memory of Naphtali Kinberg (1948–1997). pp. 273–286.
  2. 1 2 Versteegh, Kees (2000). "Treatise on the pronunciation of the ḍād". In Kinberg, Leah; Versteegh, Kees. Studies in the Linguistic Structure of Classical Arabic. Brill. pp. 197–199. ISBN 9004117652.
  3. ↑ Ferguson, Charles (1959). "The Arabic koine". Language. 35 (4): 630. doi:10.2307/410601.
  4. ↑ Ferguson, Charles Albert (1997) [1959]. "The Arabic koine". In Belnap, R. Kirk; Haeri, Niloofar. Structuralist studies in Arabic linguistics: Charles A. Ferguson's papers, 1954–1994. Brill. pp. 67–68. ISBN 9004105115.
  5. ↑ Retsö, Jan (2012). "Classical Arabic". In Weninger, Stefan. The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 785–786. ISBN 978-3-11-025158-6.
  6. ↑ Wehr, Hans (1952). Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart.
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