Ḍād

() is the fifteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, one of the six letters not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). In name and shape, it is a variant of . Its numerical value is 800 (see Abjad numerals). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪓‎‎‎, South Arabian .

The letter symbol itself is a derivation, by addition of a diacritic dot, from ص ṣād (representing /sˤ/).

Origin Based on ancient descriptions of this sound, it is clear that in Qur'anic as well as in the Classical Arabic ḍ was some sort of unusual lateral sound. Sibawayh, author of the first book on Arabic grammar, explained the letter as being articulated from "between the first part of the side of the tongue and the adjoining molars". It is reconstructed by modern linguists as having been either a pharyngealized voiced alveolar lateral fricative or a similar affricated sound or . The affricated form is suggested by loans of ḍ into Akkadian as ld or lṭ. However, not all linguists agree on this; the French orientalist André Roman supposes that the letter was actually a voiced emphatic alveolo-palatal sibilant , similar to the Polish ź. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic phonology includes an emphatic alveolar lateral ejective fricative or affricate for . This sound is considered to be the direct ancestor of Arabic , while merging with in most other Semitic languages.

The emphatic lateral nature of this sound is possibly inherited from Proto-Semitic, and is compared to a phoneme in Modern South Arabian languages such as Soqotri, but also in Mehri where it is usually an ejective lateral fricative. In Ḥarsusi the counterpart to is mostly pronounced as lateral (and its allophone ), for example Harsusi vs. Arabic "he laughs", and Harsusi vs. Arabic "wide" but it also sometimes corresponds to Arabic as in Harsusi vs. Arabic "back". In Shehri (Jibbali) it also corresponds to Arabic vs. "he fell ill", vs. "(upper) arm" and vs. "land", but also corresponds to Arabic as in vs. Arabic "show, reveal".

This is an extremely unusual sound, and led the early Arabic grammarians to describe Arabic as the lughat aḍ-ḍād "the language of the ḍād", since the sound was thought to be unique to Arabic. Other Arabic grammarians like al-Dani described the letter ẓāʾ as "being unique to Arabs among other nations".

The corresponding letter in the Ancient South Arabian alphabet is , and in the Geʽez script ፀ), although in Geʽez it merged early on with Sappa. Emphatic consonantsProto-SemiticOld SouthArabianOld NorthArabianModern SouthArabian 1StandardArabicAramaicModernHebrewGe'ezPhoenician Akkadianṣ 𐪎, rarely ṣ ṣ ṣ ṣṯ̣ 𐪜, later *ṱ, ṣ,later ṭṣ́ 𐪓, later *ṣ́, q/ḳ,later ʿ ṣ́Notes ṯ , ḏ and ṯ̣ merge with , , and in Soqotri

Pronunciation

The standard pronunciation of this letter in Modern Standard Arabic is the "emphatic" : pharyngealized voiced alveolar stop , pharyngealized voiced dental stop or velarized voiced dental stop .

In most Arabic vernaculars ḍād and ẓāʾ merged quite early; in the varieties where the dental fricatives are preserved such as Najdi, Tunisian and Mesopotamian Arabic dialects, both the letters are pronounced . However, there are dialects in South Arabia and in Mauritania and the Sahrawi where both the letters are kept different but not in all contexts. In other vernaculars such as Egyptian ḍād and ẓāʾ contrast; but Classical Arabic ẓāʾ becomes , e.g. ʿaẓīm (< Classical ʿaḏ̣īm ) "great".

One of the important aspects in some Tihama dialects is the preservation of the emphatic lateral fricative sound , this sound is likely to be very similar to the original realization of ḍād, but this sound () and are used as two allophones for the two letters ḍād and ẓāʾ . A study regarding the Rijal Almaa language in southern Saudi Arabia has shown that the de-lateralization is apparent for the majority of speakers and more apparent among the younger speakers, and is the most prevalent pronunciation for both ḍād and ẓāʾ .

"De-emphaticized" pronunciation of both letters in the form of the plain entered into other non-Semitic languages such as Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, and Turkish. However, there do exist Arabic borrowings into Ibero-Romance languages as well as Hausa and Malay, where ḍād and ẓāʾ are differentiated.

+Languages / Countries Pronunciation of the lettersضظModern South Arabian languages (Mehri, Shehri, Harsusi)Standard Arabic (full distinction)Most of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Tunisia. Partial in: Libya, Jordan, Syria, and PalestineMost of Algeria, and Morocco. Partial in: Libya, Tunisia and YemenMost of Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Partial in: Jordan, and Saudi Arabia , Mauritania, Partial in: Morocco,

Pronunciation across other languages +Pronunciation of in other languagesLanguageAlphabet namePronunciation (IPA)MalayJawiJavanesePegonSwahiliAjamiHausaAjamiAzeriArabic scriptBrahuiArabic scriptHindkoKashmiriArabic scriptOttoman TurkishArabic scriptPashtoPersianPunjabiShahmukhiSaraikiSindhiArabic scriptUrduUzbekArabic script

Transliteration is transliterated as ḍ (d with underdot) in romanization. The combination ⟨dh⟩ is also sometimes used colloquially. In varieties where the Ḍād has merged with the Ẓāʾ, the symbol for the latter might be used for both (eg. ⟨⟩ 'to stay' and ⟨⟩ 'to be lost' may both be transcribed as in Gulf Arabic).

When transliterating Arabic in the Hebrew alphabet, it is either written as (the letter for ) or as (tsadi with geresh), which is also used to represent the /tʃ/ sound. The Arabic letters and share the same Semitic origin with the Hebrew tsade.

In Judeo-Arabic orthography, it has been written as (tsade with holam), emulating Arabic orthography, where the letter is created by adding a dot to .

Unicode

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