In literary Arabic and Maltese, the consonants are divided into two groups, called the sun letters (or solar letters) and moon letters (or lunar letters) (Arabic: حروف شمسية ḥurūf šamsiyyah and حروف قمرية ḥurūf qamariyyah, accordingly), based on whether or not they assimilate the ﻝ (l)[1] of a preceding article. This naming scheme stems from the circumstance that the word for "the sun", aš-šams, assimilates the article, while the word for "the moon", al-qamar, does not.
When followed by a sun letter, the l of the Arabic definite article al- assimilates to the initial consonant of the following noun, resulting in a doubled consonant. For example, for "the Nile", one does not say al-Nīl, but an-Nīl. When the definite article is followed by a moon letter, no assimilation takes place.
Sun letters represented coronal consonants in the classical language. Since the article, al-, ends in a coronal consonant, it lends itself to assimilation with these sounds. The letter ج ǧ has three standard pronunciations: [ɡ], [ʒ] or [d͡ʒ] in accents of Modern Standard Arabic as well as varieties of Arabic today. However, it represented a palatalized voiced velar plosive, /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/, in the Koranic Arabic. As a result, its sound does not assimilate the article and it is classified as a moon letter.
The 14 sun letters are ﻥ ﻝ ﻅ ﻁ ﺽ ﺹ ﺵ ﺱ ﺯ ﺭ ﺫ ﺩ ﺙ ﺕ; transliterated from left to right t, ṯ, d, ḏ, r, z, s, š, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ, l, n.
The 14 moon letters are ه ﻱ ﻭ ﻡ ﻙ ﻕ ﻑ ﻍ ﻉ ﺥ ﺡ ﺝ ﺏ ء; transliterated from left to right ʾ, b, ǧ, ḥ, ḫ, ʿ, ġ, f, q, k, m, w, y, h.
In the written language, the ال al- is retained regardless of how it is pronounced[1] , though gemination may be expressed by putting an optional šaddah on the following letter.
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