Re: questions about Arabic

<<No it doesn't! It just happens that in some dialects, /a/ and /a:/ have
different pronunciations than in Standard Arabic. But you cannot say that
alifstands for the vowel /ae/ because it never does! It has two uses: carrier
and
mark of length, and those uses are purely graphic. That's all! After that,
saying that alif always appears when the vowel /ae/ is pronounced simply
meansthat /a:/ is pronounced /ae/ in that dialect.>>

Oh yeah? Then why do children who don't know how to write fully voweled Arabic
think that alif stands for a long /a/ or /ae/? (I was taught /ae/.) Why have
all the diacritics been dropped in most modern Arabic texts in favor of just
waw yaa and alif? Even if alif didn't originally represent a vowel, I think it
can now.

-Jenesis

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