ء

Etymology

Most Arabic dialects early on lost the Proto-Semitic glottal stop, which caused compensatory lengthening of a preceding short vowel. At the beginning of the Islamic period only some of the most conservative lects preserved the consonant. Therefore it was not reflected in the spelling: One generally wrote and pronounced ذِيب (ḏīb, “wolf”), for example. The grammarians, however, favoured the conservative pronunciation and indicated the glottal stop with various diacritic marks, which ultimately led to the contemporary ذِئْب (ḏiʔb).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʔ/

Letter

ء or هَمْزَة • (ʔ or hamza)

1. Hamza (ء) is a sign in the Arabic script that represents the glottal stop /ʔ/. It can be considered a diacritic or a letter, but it is not counted among the 28 letters of the alphabet. The exact spelling of the glottal stop depends on the combination of vowels that follow and precede it. It may be written with آ /ʔaː/, أ /ʔa/, /aʔ/, /ʔu/, إ /ʔi/, ئ /ʔi/, /iʔ/, ؤ /ʔu/, /uʔ/, or, usually after a long vowel, ء.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʔ/ (or silent)

Letter

ء • (’)

1. همزه (hamza) — The twenty-forth letter of the Baluchi alphabet, written in the Perso-Arabic script.

Etymology 1

From Proto-Indo-Iranian *(H)utá, from *(H)u, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂u. Compare Persian و (o), Central Kurdish و (û), Pashto او (aw).

Etymology 2

Compare colloquial Dari ـه (-a).

Etymology 3

Perhaps compare Persian ـه (-eh).

Etymology 4

Compare Mazanderani ◌ِ (-e).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʔ/, [ʔ]

Letter

ء (’)

1. The forty-seventh letter of the Burushaski alphabet, written in the Perso-Arabic script

Pronunciation

• (Name of letter) IPA^(key): [hamzah]
• (Phoneme) IPA^(key): [(ʔ)], [ʔ]

Letter

ء

1. The thirty-third letter of the Malay alphabet, written in the Arabic script.

Pronunciation

• (lettername):
  • (Classical Persian, Dari) IPA^(key): /hamza/
  • (Iran) IPA^(key): /hamze/
• (phonemes):
  • (Formal, all dialects) IPA^(key): [ʔ] or deleted.
  • (colloquial, Dari) IPA^(key): [ɑː], [oː], [eː], [w], [j] or deleted.

Letter

ء • (hamze)

1. همزه (hamze/hamza, “Hamza”) – a character representing a glottal stop. It is considered a letter but is not counted as part of the Persian alphabet.

See also

• أ
• إ
• ؤ
• ئ

Pronunciation

• (letter name): IPA^(key): /ɦəm.zɑ(ː)/
• (phoneme):
  • (predominate, above a vowel): silent
  • (above he): IPA^(key): /jɪ/, [je], [ji]
  • (independent, rare): IPA^(key): /ʔ/ or silent
    • Unlike other languages using the Arabic script, Urdu does not commonly use Hamza as a glottal stop. Its primary usage is to act as a zero consonant to allow two adjacent vowels; گاؤں (gāõ), for example, is pronounced /ɡɑː.õ/ not /ɡɑː.ʔõ/.

Letter

ء • (' or hamza)

1. ہَمْزَہ (hamza, “Hamza”) – the thirty-fifth letter of the Urdu alphabet.