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Ẓāʾ

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Ẓāʾ
Arabic
ظ
Phonemic representationðˤ~zˤ, (dˤ)
Position in alphabet27
Numerical value900
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Ẓāʾ ظاء /ðˤɑːʔ/
ظ
Usage
Writing systemArabic script
TypeAbjad
Language of originArabic language
Sound values
Alphabetical position17
History
Development
  • 𐤈
    • 𐡈‎
      • 𐢋‎
        • ط
Other
Writing directionRight-to-left

Ẓāʾ, or ḏ̣āʾ (ظ), is the seventeenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, one of the six letters not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ṯāʾ, ḫāʾ, ḏāl, ḍād, ġayn) collectively called al-Rawādif (Arabic: الروادف).[1] In name and shape, it is a variant of ṭāʾ. Its numerical value is 900 (see Abjad numerals). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪜‎‎, and South Arabian 𐩼.

Ẓāʾ ظاء does not change its shape depending on its position in the word:

Position in word: Isolated Final Medial Initial
Glyph form:
(Help)		 ظ ـظ ـظـ ظـ

Frequency

Ẓāʾ is the rarest phoneme of the Arabic language. Out of 2,967 triliteral roots listed by Hans Wehr in his 1952 dictionary, only 42 (1.4%) contain ظ.[2] Ẓāʾ is the least mentioned letter in the Quran, only being mentioned 853 times in the Quran.

In relation to other Semitic languages

In some reconstructions of Proto-Semitic phonology, there is an emphatic interdental fricative, ṯ̣/ḏ̣ ([θˤ] or [ðˤ]), featuring as the direct ancestor of Arabic ẓāʾ, while it merged with ṣ in most other Semitic languages, although the South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ẓ.

Pronunciation

The main pronunciations of written ⟨ظ⟩ in Arabic dialects.

In Classical Arabic, it represents a velarized voiced dental fricative [ðˠ], and in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents an pharyngealized voiced dental [ðˤ] but can also be a alveolar [zˤ] fricative for some speakers.

In most Arabic vernaculars ظ ẓāʾ and ض ḍād merged quite early.[3] The outcome depends on the dialect. In those varieties (such as Egyptian and Levantine), where the dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ are merged with the dental stops /t/ and /d/, ẓāʾ is pronounced /dˤ/ or /zˤ/ depending on the word; e.g. ظِل is pronounced /dˤɪl/ but ظاهِر is pronounced /zˤaːhɪr/, In loanwords from Classical Arabic ẓāʾ is often /zˤ/, e.g. Egyptian ʿaẓīm (< Classical عظيم ʿaḏ̣īm) "great".[3][4][5]

In the varieties (such as Bedouin, Tunisian, and Iraqi), where the dental fricatives are preserved, both ḍād and ẓāʾ are pronounced /ðˤ/.[3][4][6][7] However, there are dialects in South Arabia and in Mauritania where both the letters are kept different but not consistently.[3]

A "de-emphaticized" pronunciation of both letters in the form of the plain /z/ entered into other non-Arabic languages such as Persian, Urdu, Turkish.[3] However, there do exist Arabic borrowings into Ibero-Romance languages as well as Hausa and Malay, where ḍād and ẓāʾ are differentiated.[3]

In English, the sound is sometimes represented by the digraph zh.

Languages / Countries Pronunciation of the letters
ض ظ
Modern South Arabian languages (Mehri, Shehri, Harsusi) /ɬʼ/ /θʼ ~ ðʼ/
Standard Arabic (full distinction) /dˤ/ /ðˤ/ or /zˤ/
Most of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Tunisia. Partial in: Libya, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine /ðˤ/
Most of Algeria, and Morocco. Partial in: Libya, Tunisia and Yemen /dˤ/
Most of Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Partial in: Jordan, and Saudi Arabia /dˤ/ /dˤ/, /zˤ/*
Mauritania, Partial in: Morocco /ðˤ/, /dˤ/* /ðˤ/

Notes:

  1. In Mauritania (Hassaniya Arabic), ض is mostly pronounced /ðˤ/ as in /ðˤħak/ ('to laugh'), from */dˤaħika/ ضحك, but /dˤ/ generally appears in the lexemes borrowed from Standard Arabic as in /dˤʕiːf/ ('weak'), from */dˤaʕiːf/ ضعيف.[8]
  2. In Egypt, Lebanon, etc, ظ is mostly pronounced /dˤ/ in inherited words as in /dˤalma/ ('darkness'), from */ðˤulma/ ظلمة; /ʕadˤm/ ('bone'), from عظم /ʕaðˤm/, but pronounced /zˤ/ in borrowings from Literary Arabic as in /zˤulm/ ('injustice'); from */ðˤulm/ ظلم.
  3. In some accents in Egypt, the emphatic /dˤ/ is pronounced as a plain /d/.
Semitic emphatic sibilant consonants[9]
Proto-Semitic Old South
Arabian		 Old North
Arabian		 Modern South
Arabian 1		 Standard
Arabic		 Aramaic Modern
Hebrew		 Ge'ez Phoenician Akkadian
ṣ [sʼ] / [tsʼ] 𐩮 𐪎 /sʼ/, rarely /ʃʼ/ ص /sˤ/ צ ṣ צ/t͡s/ ጸṣ 𐤑‎ṣ ṣ
ṯ̣ [θʼ] 𐩼 𐪜 /θʼ ~ ðˤ/ ظ /ðˤ/ צ, later ט *ṱ, ṣ,
later ṭ
ṣ́ [ɬʼ] / [tɬʼ] 𐩳 𐪓 /ɬʼ/ ض /dˤ/ ק, later ע *ṣ́, q/ḳ,
later ʿ		 ፀṣ́
Notes
  1. ṯ [θ], ḏ [ð] and ṯ̣ [θʼ] merge with [t], [d], and [tʼ] in Soqotri

Romanization

Main article: Romanization of Arabic

Standards for the romanization of Arabic differ on how to represent the letter. Ẓāʾ classically represents /ðˤ/, the velarized or pharyngealized /ˤ/ version of the sound represented by ذ ḏāl, the voiced dental fricative /ð/.[4][5] In the Latin script the voiced dental fricative, when it is not an allophone of the voiceless dental fricative, is commonly represented by some variation on the letter D, such as Albanian “Dh”, Icelandic “Д and Welsh “Dd”. ذ ḏāl is distinguished from د dāl by a point, the two letters being siblings via Phoenician of D[10][11][12][13] (د dāl representing its same voiced alveolar plosive /d/); ذ ḏāl is accordingly romanized per the ISO 233, UNGEGN,[14] and Wikipedia's own standards as “Ḏ”, “Dh” and “Ḏ” respectively. Correspondingly the UNGEGN and Encyclopedia of Arabic Languages and Linguistics[15] standards romanize ظ ẓāʾ as “D͟h” and “Ḏ̣”.

However, the letter ض ḍād represents a pharyngealized version /dˤ/ of د dāl's /d/. Ḍād is accordingly romanized as "Ḍ" per most standards. ظ ẓāʾ, ض ḍād and ذ ḏāl are all three distinguished from a preceding letter (ط, ‎ص‎,‎ د) by a point above, but their respective sound values /ðˤ, dˤ, ð/ cannot all three be represented by the addition of a dot to D without ambiguity. The Latin alphabet lost what would have been its own Phoenician-derived letters corresponding to ط ṭāʾ and ص ṣād, ϴ and Ϻ, early in its adaptation from the prior Old Italic, Etruscan and Greek alphabets.[10][11][12][13] Owing to these difficulties, standards such as ISO 223 and Wikipedia base their romanization of ẓāʾ on the letter Z, on the basis of ẓāʾ's common modern allophone, /zˤ/.

BGN/PCGN UNGEGN ALA EI ISO BS EALL IPA English
Voiced د Dāl Plos. d d Dense
ذ Ḏāl Fric. dh d͟h ḏ ð Thence
Voiceless ط Ṭāʾ Plos. Phar. ţ ṭ tˤ Tense, pharyngealized
Voiced ظ Ẓāʾ Fric. z̧ d͟h ẓ ḏ̣ ðˤ Thence, pharyngealized
Voiceless ص Ṣād Sib. Phar. ş ṣ sˤ Sense, pharyngealized
Voiced ض Ḍād Plos. ḑ ḍ dˤ Dense, pharyngealized

In romanization of Urdu, where the letter is called z̤oʾē and pronounced as an un‑pharyngealized voiced alveolar sibilant [z][16] homophonous with ز zāy (Urdu: zē) after Persian,[17] romanization as “Ẓ” can be confused by the common[18] use of a diacritic dot below to represent retroflexion in romanization of Indic languages, as with “Ṭ” for ٹ ṭē.

Character encodings

Character information
Previewظ
Unicode name ARABIC LETTER ZAD
Encodingsdecimalhex
Unicode1592U+0638
UTF-8216 184D8 B8
Numeric character reference&#1592;&#x638;

See also

References

  1. ↑ al-Nadim, Ibn (998) [998 CE]. The Kitāb al-Fihrist [The Book Catalogue]. Translated by Dodgpe, Bayard (The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, A Tenth-century survey of Muslim culture ed.). p. 1. Retrieved October 8, 2026.
  2. ↑ Wehr, Hans (1952). Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Versteegh, Kees (1999). "Loanwords from Arabic and the merger of ḍ/ḏ̣". In Arazi, Albert; Sadan, Joseph; Wasserstein, David J. (eds.). Compilation and Creation in Adab and Luġa: Studies in Memory of Naphtali Kinberg (1948–1997). pp. 273–286. ISBN 9781575060453.
  4. 1 2 3 Versteegh, Kees (2000). "Treatise on the pronunciation of the ḍād". In Kinberg, Leah; Versteegh, Kees (eds.). Studies in the Linguistic Structure of Classical Arabic. Brill. pp. 197–199. ISBN 9004117652.
  5. 1 2 Retsö, Jan (2012). "Classical Arabic". In Weninger, Stefan (ed.). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 785–786. ISBN 978-3-11-025158-6.
  6. ↑ Ferguson, Charles (1959). "The Arabic koine". Language. 35 (4): 630. doi:10.2307/410601. JSTOR 410601.
  7. ↑ Ferguson, Charles Albert (1997) [1959]. "The Arabic koine". In Belnap, R. Kirk; Haeri, Niloofar (eds.). Structuralist studies in Arabic linguistics: Charles A. Ferguson's papers, 1954–1994. Brill. pp. 67–68. ISBN 9004105115.
  8. ↑ Catherine Taine-Cheikh. 2020. Ḥassāniyya Arabic. In Christopher Lucas & Stefano Manfredi (eds.), Arabic and contact-induced change, 245–263. Berlin: Language Sci- ence Press.
  9. ↑ Schneider, Roey (2024). "The Semitic Sibilants". The Semitic Sibilants: 31, 33, 36.
  10. 1 2 Sass, Benjamin (1991). Studia alphabetica. On the origin and early history of the Northwest Semitic, South Semitic and Greek alphabets. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Vol. 102. Fribourg/Göttingen. p. 99.
  11. 1 2 Abulhab, Saad D. (2007). Roots of Modern Arabic Script: From Musnad to Jazm. Baruch College. p. 3.
  12. 1 2 Duran, Ümit (2021-01-01). "Karşılaştırmalı Mısır Hiyeroglifi Kökenli Alfabeler Tablosu [A Comparative Chart of Egyptian Hieroglyphs Based Alphabets]". Karşılaştırmalı Mısır Hiyeroglifi Kökenli Alfabeler Tablosu: 4.
  13. 1 2 Libertini, Giacinto (2022). "Cuma and the origin of the Latin alphabet". ResearchGate. Retrieved October 13, 2026.
  14. ↑ UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems (June 2018). "Report on the Current Status of United Nations Romanization Systems for Geographical Names" (PDF). UN.org. Retrieved October 13, 2026.
  15. ↑ Versteegh, Kees (September 1, 2009). Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Brill. p. ⅷ. ISBN 9789004177024.
  16. ↑ Ranjan, Rajiv (2022). Basic Urdu. Michigan State University. p. 29. ISBN 9781626101197.
  17. ↑ Shiran, Nahid; Ranjan, Rajiv (2023). Basic Persian. Michigan State University. p. 12. ISBN 9781626101234.
  18. ↑ "ALA-LC Romanization Tables" (PDF). Library of Congress Catalog. p. 226. Retrieved October 13, 2026.