Re: questions about Arabic
| From: | Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, March 20, 2001, 18:47 |
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On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 12:49:42PM -0500, David Peterson wrote:
> <<Still, sometimes the alif can mark an /i/ (in the beginning of words like
> ibn:
>
> son, written alif-baa-nûn), but that's probably splitting hair in four :) .>>
>
> That's not alif, that's hamza with a kesra. Don't let the orthographic form
> fool you.
I think you're confusing alif and hamza. IIRC, alif is simply the
vertical-stroke glyph (considered a consonant), which doesn't really stand
for anything in itself except for a place marker, and hamza is the diacritic
written with alif when you wish to indicate a glottal stop. So /ibn/ (son)
is written with alif (+ /i/ sign) baa nun, beause it doesn't have a glottal
stop, whereas /?ab/ (father) is writter alif + hamza (+ /a/ sign) baa, with
the hamza representing the glottal stop. Both of these cases use alif, but
only /?ab/ uses hamza.
--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo
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