Alif
Encyclopedia : A : AL : ALI : Alif
| The Arabic alphabet | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History · Transliteration Diacritics · hamza {{ar Numerals · Numeration | ||||||
Together with Hebrew Aleph, Greek Alpha and Latin A, it is descended from Phoenician {{Semxlit, from Proto-Canaanite ʾalp "ox".
Historically, the Arabic letter was used to render either a long [a:], or a glottal stop [ʔ]. This led to orthographical confusion, and to introduction of the additional letter hamzatu 'l-qat` ﺀ. Hamza is not considered a full harf in Arabic orthography: in most cases it appears on a carrier, either a waw, a dotless yā', or an alif. The choice of carrier depends on complicated orthographic rules. Alif إ أ is generally the carrier where the only adjacent vowel is fatha. It is the only possible carrier where hamza is the first phoneme of a word. Where alif acts as a carrier for hamza, hamza is added above the alif, or, for initial alif kasra, below it, indicating that the letter so modified does indeed signify a glottal stop, and not a long vowel.
A second type of hamza, hamzatu 'l-wasl, occurs only as the initial phoneme of the definite article and in some related cases. It differs from hamzatu 'l-qat` in that it is elided after a preceding vowel. Again, alif is always the carrier.
The ʾalif madda is, as it were, a double alif, expressing both a glottal stop and a long vowel: ﺁ (final ﺂ) ʼā [ʔæː], for example in القرآن {{ArabDIN
The ʾalif maqṣūra is actually a dotless yāʼ, ﻯ (final ﻰ) ā (ISO 233 ỳ) pronounced [ɛ̈].
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