Arabic diacritics
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Arabic script |
In the Arabic script, ḥarakāt (حركات — the singular is ḥaraka حركة) are the diacritic marks used to represent vowel sounds. The literal meaning of ḥarakāt is "movements", e.g. in the context of moving air waves that we produce while pronouncing vowels.
The Arabic script is an Impure abjad rather than an alphabet, meaning that all the consonant sounds are represented by letters but short vowel sounds are often not represented in writing. The ḥarakāt are optional symbols that can be used to represent all the vowels that are not indicated in the ordinary spelling.
List of harakat
- The fatḥa is a small diagonal line placed above a letter, and represents a short /a/. The word fatḥa itself (<فتحة>) means opening, and refers to the opening of the mouth when producing an /a/. Example with dāl (henceforth, the base consonant in the following examples): <دَ> /da/.
- A fatḥa plus a following letter <ا> (alif), the indicate a long /aː/. Example: <دَا> [dā].
- A similar diagonal line below a letter is called a kasra and designates a short /i/. Example: <دِ> /di/.
- A kasra plus a following letter <ﻱ> (yāʼ) indicate a long /iː/ (as in the English word "bead"). Example: <دِي> /diː/.
- The ḍamma is a small curl-like diacritic placed above a letter to represent a short /u/. Example: <دُ> /du/.
- And the ḍamma with a following letter <و> (wāw) designates a long /uː/ (as in the English word "soon"). Example: <دُو> /duː/.
- If one of the three vowel diacritics is doubled, which can only appear at the end of a word, it indicates that vowel sound plus the consonant /n/, known as tanwin, or nunation. Thus the signs ـً ـٍ ـٌ indicate, from left to right, /un, in, an/.
- The sukūn is a circle-shaped diacritic placed above a letter. It indicates that the consonant to which it is attached is not followed by a vowel; this is a necessary symbol for writing CVC syllables, which are very common in Arabic. Example: <دَدْ> /dad/.
- The shadda is a diacritic shaped like a small written English "w". It is used to indicate gemination (consonant doubling or extra length), which is phonemic in Arabic. It is written above the consonant which is to be doubled. It is the only haraka that is sometimes used in ordinary spelling to avoid disambiguity. Example: <دّ> /dd/; مدرسة /madrasa/ school vs. مدرّسة /mudarrisa/ teacher (f.)
- The hamza diacritic (which is not itself part of the system of ḥarakāt but interacts with it) indicates a glottal stop. It may appear by itself or over an alif, wāw, or yāʼ.
- Which letter is to be used to support the hamza depends on the quality of the adjacent vowels. If the syllable occurs at the beginning of the word, the glottal stop is always indicated by hamza on an alif. But if the syllable occurs in the middle of the word, alif is used only if it is not preceded or followed by /i/ or /u/. If /i(ː)/ is before or after the glottal stop, a yāʼ with a hamza is used (the two dots which are usually beneath the yāʼ disappear in this case - <ئ>). If [u(ː)] is there, a wāw sukūn with a hamza is used. Consider the following words: <أَخ> (/ʔax/, brother), <ِإِسْرَائِيل> (/ʔisraːʔiːl/, Israel), <أُمْ> (/ʔumm/, mother). All three of above words "begin" with a vowel opening the syllable, and in each case, alif is used to designate the initial glottal stop (the actual beginning). But if we consider middle syllables "beginning" with a vowel: <نَشْأة> (/našʔa/, 'origin'), <ِإِسْرَائِيل> (/ʔisraːʔiːl/, 'Israel' - notice the /ʔiːl/ syllable), <ِرَؤُوف> (/raʔuːf/ 'lenient'), the situation is different, as noted above. See the comprehensive article on hamza for more details.
- The madda is a tilde-like diacritic which can appear only on top of an alif and indicates a glottal stop followed by long /aː/. The sequence /ʔaː/ should logically be spelled with a hamza on an alif (representing the /ʔ/) followed by another alif (representing the /aː/) but two consecutive alifs, including the combination *<أَا>, is never written. The sequence /ʔaː/ must always be written with an alif madda. Example: <ﺁ>.
- In some African languages such as Hausa, a large dot below a letter represents the vowel /e/.
Use
The bulk of Arabic script is written without harakat. However, they are commonly used in some religious texts that demand strict adherence to pronunciation rules such as Qur'an. It is not uncommon to add harakat to Hadith as well. Another use, is in children's literature. Harakat are also used, in ordinary texts, when an ambiguity of pronunciation might arise.
History
According to tradition, the first to commission a system of harakat was Muawiyah I of the Ummayad dynasty, when he ordered Ziad Ibn Abih his wāli in Basra (governed 664-673) to find someone to who would devise a method to transcribe correct reading. Ziad Ibn Abih, in turn, appointed Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali for the task. Abu al-Aswad devised a system of dots to signal the three short vowels (along with their respective allophones) of Arabic. This system of dots predates the dots of i'jam (Dots used to distinguish between different letters).
Abu al-Aswad's system
Abu al-Aswad's system of Harakat was different from the system we know today. The system used red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel. A dot above a letter indicated the vowel "a", a dot below indicated the vowel "i", a dot on the side of a letter stood for the vowel "u", and two dots stood for the tanwin. However, the early manuscripts of the Qur'an did not use the vowel signs for every letter requiring them, but only for letters where they were necessary for a correct reading.
Al Farāhídi's system
This is the precursor to the system we know today. Al Farāhídi found that the task of writing using two different colours was tedious and impractical. Another complication was that dots of i'jam had been introduced by then, which means that the Arabic script was being written using two concurrent systems that use dots. Accordingly he changed the harakat into shapes resembling the letters used to transcribe the corresponding long vowels. His system evolved to the system we know today.
See also
- Arabic alphabet
- I`rab
- The Hebrew equivalent Niqqud