Hamza
- Not to be confused with the letter ع, which has a similar looking initial form.
Hamza (Arabic: الهَمْزة, (al-)hamzah) (ء) is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop [ʔ]. Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters, and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. In the Phoenician and Aramaic alphabets, from which the Arabic alphabet is descended, the glottal stop was expressed by aleph (), continued by alif ( ) in Arabic alphabet. However, alif was used to express both a glottal stop, and a long vowel /aː/. To indicate that a glottal stop, and not a mere vowel, was intended, hamza was added diacritically to alif. In modern orthography, under certain circumstances, hamza may also appear on the line, as if it were a full letter, independent of an alif.
Hamzat waṣl
The hamza letter on its own always represents hamzat qaṭʿ (همزة قطع, in Egypt [ˈhæmzet ˈʔɑtˤʕ]); that is, a phonemic glottal stop. Compared to this, hamzat waṣl or hamzatu l-waṣl (همزة الوصل, in Egypt [ˈhæmzet ˈwɑsˤl]) is a non-phonemic glottal stop produced automatically at the beginning of an utterance. It is written as alif carrying a waṣlah sign ٱ (only in Koranic texts) and normally indicated by a regular alif without a hamza. It occurs, for example, in the definite article al-, ism, ibn, imperative verbs and the perfective aspect of verb forms VII to X, but is not pronounced following a vowel in Modern Standard Arabic: (e.g. al-baytu l-kabīru for written البيت الكبير). It occurs only in the beginning of words (can occur after prepositions and the definite article).
Orthography
The hamza can be written alone or with a carrier, in which case it becomes a diacritic:
- Alone: ء (always isolated)
- Combined with a letter:
- أ and إ (above and under an ʾalif) (joined finally only ـأ ـإ)
- ؤ (above a wāw) (joined finally only ـؤ)
- ئ (above a dotless yāʾ, also called hamzah ʿalā nabrah / yāʾ hamzah) (joined initially, medially and finally ئـ ـئـ ـئ, though not initially in Literary Arabic, but other languages written in Arabic-based script may have it initially in words)
Hamza rules in Modern Standard Arabic:
Summary
- Initial hamza is always perched over or under an alif. Otherwise, surrounding vowels determine the seat of the hamza – but, preceding long vowels or diphthongs are ignored (as are final short vowels).
- i- over u- over a- if there are two conflicting vowels that “count”; on the line if there are none.
- As a special case, āʾa, ūʾa and awʾa require hamza on the line, instead of over an alif as you would expect from rule #1. (See III.1b below.)
- Two adjacent alifs are never allowed. If the rules call for this, replace the combination by a single alif-madda.
Detailed description
- Logically, hamza is just like any other letter, but it may be written in different ways. It has no effect on the way other letters are written. In particular, surrounding long vowels are written just as they always are, regardless of the “seat” of the hamza – even if this results in the appearance of two consecutive waws or yaas.
- Hamza can be written in four ways – on its own (“on the line”) or over an alif, waw, or yaa, called the “seat” of the hamza. When written over yaa, the dots that would normally be written underneath disappear.
- When, according to the rules below, a hamza with an alif seat would occur before an alif which represents the vowel ā, instead a single alif is written with the madda symbol over it.
- The rules for hamza depend on whether it occurs as the initial, middle, or final letter (not sound) in a word. (Thus, final short inflectional vowels do not count, but when –an is written as alif + nunation, it does count and the hamza is considered medial.)
I. If the hamza is initial:
- If the following letter is a short vowel: fatḥah (a) (as in أفراد ʾafrād) or ḍammah (u) (as in أصول ʾuṣūl), the hamza is written over a place-holding alif; kasrah (i) (as in إسلام ʾislām) the hamza is written under a place-holding alif. This is called "hamza on a wall".
- If the letter following the hamza is an alif itself: (as in آكل ʾākul) alif madda will occur.
II. If the hamza is final:
- If a short vowel precedes: the hamza is written over the letter (ʾalif, wāw, or yāʾ) corresponding to the short vowel.
- Otherwise: the hamza is written on the line (as in شيء šayʾ "thing").
III. If the hamza is medial:
- If a long vowel or diphthong precedes, the seat of the hamza is determined mostly by what follows:
-
- If i or u follows, the hamza is written over yāʾ or wāw, accordingly.
- Otherwise, the hamza wants to be written on the line. If a yāʾ precedes, however, this would conflict with the stroke joining the yāʾ to the following letter, so the hamza is written over yāʾ. (as in جئت)
- Otherwise, both preceding and following vowels have an effect on the hamza.
-
- If there is only one vowel (or two of the same kind), that vowel determines the seat (ʾalif, wāw, or yāʾ).
- If there are two conflicting vowels, i takes precedence over u, u over a, so miʾa "hundred" is written مئة, with hamza over the yāʾ.
- Alif-madda will occur if appropriate.
Not surprisingly given the complexity of these rules, there is some disagreement.
- Barron’s 201 Arabic Verbs follows these rules exactly (although the sequence ūʾū does not occur; see below).
- John Mace’s Teach Yourself Arabic Verbs and Essential Grammar presents alternative forms in almost all cases when hamza is followed by a long ū. The motivation appears to be to avoid two wāws in a row. Generally, the choice is between the form following the rules here, or an alternative form using hamza over yaa in all cases. Example forms are masʾūl, yaǧīʾūna, yašāʾūna. Exceptions:
-
- In the sequence ūʾū, e.g. yasūʾūna, the alternatives are hamza on the line, or hamza over yāʾ, when the rules here would call for hamza over wāw. Perhaps the resulting sequence of three waws would be especially repugnant?
- In the sequence yaqraʾūna, the alternative form has hamza over alif, not yāʾ.
- The forms yabṭuʾūna, yaʾūbu have no alternative form. (But note yaqraʾūna with the same sequence of vowels!)
- Haywood and Nahmad’s A new Arabic grammar does not write the paradigms out in full but in general agrees with John Mace’s book, including the alternative forms – and sometimes lists a third alternative where the entire sequence ʾū is written as a single hamza over wāw instead of as two letters.
- "Al-Kitaab fii Ta:allum ..." presents paradigms with hamza written the same way throughout, regardless of what the rules above say. Thus yabdaʾūna with hamza only over alif, yaǧīʾūna with hamza only over yāʾ, yaqraʾīna with hamza only over alif although this is not allowed in any of the previous three books. (This appears to be an over-generalization on the part of the Al-Kitaab writers.)
Encodings
In Unicode, the letter is assigned to U+0621 ء arabic letter hamza (HTML: ء ).
Latin representations
There are different ways to represent hamza in Latin transliteration:
See also