Ẓāʾ

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 name and shape, it is a variant of ṭāʾ. Its numerical value is 900 (see Abjad numerals).

Pronunciation

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]

"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.^[5]

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 Arabic alphabet

Ẓāʾ is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:

Writing in the Hebrew alphabet

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

Character encodings

See also

• Arabic phonology
• Ẓ
• Ḍād

References

1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Versteegh, Kees (1999). "Loanwords from Arabic and the merfer 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. ↑ Wehr, Hans (1952). Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart.