Ḏāl

File:Pronunciación de ذ.png

The main pronunciations of written Template:Angbr in Arabic dialects.

(, also transcribed as ) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪙‎‎‎, and South Arabian .

In Modern Standard Arabic it represents Template:IPAslink. In name and shape, it is a variant of (). Its numerical value is 700 (see abjad numerals). The Arabic letter is named . It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ذ‎	ـذ‎	ـذ‎	ذ‎

The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for , File:Himjar dhal.PNG.

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

This sound is found in English, as in the words "those" or "then". In English the sound is sometimes rendered "dh" when transliterated from foreign languages, but when it occurs in English words it is one of the pronunciations occurring for the digraph "th". Azerbaijan is the only country name in Arabic that uses this letter.

In early forms of the New Persian language and a in practice followed by its writers, who used the letter dhal () in lieu of dal (), in the middle of a word when the dal is preceded and followed by a vowel, or when dal was in the final position and preceded by a vowel, the letter was referred to as a dotted dhal or dal-i mu'ajjam (.

Pronunciations

Between and within contemporary varieties of Arabic, pronunciation of cognates with the letter differs:

• The Gulf, Iraqi, Tunisian dialects use the Classical and Modern Standard sound of Template:IPAblink.
• In Maghrebi Arabic, it is consistently pronounced as the voiced dental plosive Template:IPAblink.
• In Hejazi Arabic, it merges with Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink depending on the word or it is pronounced as Template:IPAslink.
• In the Mashriq (in the broad sense, including Egyptian, Sudanese and Levantine dialects), it becomes a sibilant voiced alveolar fricative Template:IPAblink. Furthermore, in words fully assimilated into a Mashriq dialect, the sound has merged with Template:IPAslink ().

Regardless of these regional differences, the pattern of the speaker's variety of Arabic frequently intrudes into otherwise Modern Standard speech; this is widely accepted, and is the norm when speaking the mesolect known alternately as lugha wusṭā ("middling/compromise language") or ʿAmmiyyat/Dārijat al-Muṯaqqafīn ("Educated/Cultured Colloquial") used in the informal speech of educated Arabs of different countries. (cf. Arabic dialect#Formal and vernacular differences)

Voiced Sibilant Semitic consonants
Proto-Semitic		Old South Arabian	Old North Arabian	Modern South Arabian 1	Standard Arabic		Aramaic		Modern Hebrew		Ge'ez		Phoenician		Akkadian
z		Template:Script/Old South Arabian	𐪘		ز‎		ז‎	z	ז‎		Template:Script/Ethiopic	z	𐤆‎	z	z
ḏ		Template:Script/Old South Arabian	𐪙		ذ‎		ז‎, later ד‎	*ḏ, z, later d
Notes ṯ , ḏ and ṯ̣ merge with , , and in Soqotri

See also

• Arabic phonology

Further reading

• Fritz Meier: Aussprachefragen des älteren neupersisch. In: Oriens, Band 27, Nummer 70, Basel 1981. doi:10.2307/1580565, S. 103 ff.