Arabic diacritics


The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include consonant pointing known as ʾiʿǧām, and supplementary diacritics known as taškīl. The latter include the vowel marks termed ḥarakāt.
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where all letters are consonants, leaving it up to the reader to fill in the vowel sounds. Short consonants and long vowels are represented by letters, but short vowels and consonant length are not generally indicated in writing. Taškīl is optional to represent missing vowels and consonant length. Modern Arabic is always written with the ʾiʿǧām—consonant pointing—but only religious texts, children's books and works for learners are written with the full taškīl—vowel guides and consonant length. It is, however, not uncommon for authors to add diacritics to a word or letter when the grammatical case or the meaning is deemed otherwise ambiguous. In addition, classical works and historical documents rendered to the general public are often rendered with the full taškīl, to compensate for the gap in understanding resulting from stylistic changes over the centuries.
Moreover, taškīl can change the meaning of the entire word, for example, the words:, meaning, and, meaning. Even though they have the same letters, their meanings are different because of the taškīl. In sentences without taškīl, readers understand the meaning of the word by simply using context.

''Taškīl''

The literal meaning of تَشْكِيل ' is 'formation'. As the normal Arabic text does not provide enough information about the correct pronunciation, the main purpose of ' is to provide a phonetic guide or a phonetic aid; i.e. show the correct pronunciation for children who are learning to read or foreign learners.
The bulk of Arabic script is written without '. However, they are commonly used in texts that demand strict adherence to exact pronunciation. This is true, primarily, of the Qur'an and poetry. It is also quite common to add ' to hadiths and the Bible. Another use is in children's literature. Moreover, ' are used in ordinary texts in individual words when an ambiguity of pronunciation cannot easily be resolved from context alone. Arabic dictionaries with vowel marks provide information about the correct pronunciation to both native and foreign Arabic speakers. In art and calligraphy, ' might be used simply because their writing is considered aesthetically pleasing.
An example of a fully vocalised Arabic from the Bismillah:
Some Arabic textbooks for foreigners now use ' as a phonetic guide to make learning reading Arabic easier. The other method used in textbooks is phonetic romanisation of unvocalised texts. Fully vocalised Arabic texts are sought after by learners of Arabic. Some online bilingual dictionaries also provide ' as a phonetic guide similarly to English dictionaries providing transcription.

Ḥarakāt (short vowel marks)

The ' حَرَكَات, which literally means 'motions', are the short vowel marks. There is some ambiguity as to which ' are also '; the ', for example, are markers for both vowels and consonants.

Fatḥah

The is a small diagonal line placed above a letter, and represents a short . The word ' itself means opening and refers to the opening of the mouth when producing an. For example, with Dalet| : .
When a is placed before a plain letter , it represents a long . For example: . The ' is not usually written in such cases. When a fathah is placed before the letter ⟨ﻱ⟩, it creates an ; and when placed before the letter ⟨و⟩, it creates an .
Although paired with a plain letter creates an open front vowel, often realized as near-open, the standard also allows for variations, especially under certain surrounding conditions. Usually, in order to have the back pronunciation, the word features a nearby back consonant, such as the emphatics, as well as qāf, or rā’. A similar "back" quality is undergone by other vowels as well in the presence of such consonants, however not as drastically realized as in the case of.
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Kasrah

A similar diagonal line below a letter is called a and designates a short and its allophones . For example: .
When a ' is placed before a plain letter , it represents a long . For example: . The ' is usually not written in such cases, but if ي| is pronounced as a diphthong, ' should be written on the preceding letter to avoid mispronunciation. The word ' means 'breaking'.
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Ḍammah

The ' is a small curl-like diacritic placed above a letter to represent a short /u/ and its allophones . For example: .
When a ' is placed before a plain letter , it represents a long . For example: . The ' is usually not written in such cases, but if ' is pronounced as a diphthong, ' should be written on the preceding consonant to avoid mispronunciation.
The word ḍammah in this context means rounding, since it is the only rounded vowel in the vowel inventory of Arabic and because its sound is made by rounding the lips in an O shape.
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Alif Khanjarīyah

The dagger , is written as short vertical stroke on top of a letter. It indicates a long sound for which Aleph#Arabic| is normally not written. For example: or .
The dagger ' occurs in only a few words, but they include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts. Most keyboards do not have dagger . The word Allah is usually produced automatically by entering . The word consists of ' + ligature of doubled ' with a ' and a dagger ' above ', followed by ha'.

Maddah

The is a tilde-shaped diacritic, which can only appear on top of an alif and indicates a glottal stop followed by a long.
In theory, the same sequence could also be represented by two 's, as in *, where a hamza above the first ' represents the while the second ' represents the. However, consecutive 's are never used in the Arabic orthography. Instead, this sequence must always be written as a single ' with a ' above it, the combination known as an . For example: .
In Quranic writings, a maddah is placed on any other letter to denote the name of the letter, though some letters may take on a dagger alif. For example: or ''

Alif waṣlah

The ', ' or looks like the head of a small Tsade#Arabic Ṣād| on top of an ' . It means that the ' is not pronounced when its word does not begin a sentence. For example: , but . This is because in Arabic, the first consonant in a word must always be followed by a vowel sound: If the second letter from the has a kasrah, the alif-waslah makes the sound /i/. However, when the second letter from it has a dammah, it makes the sound /u/.
It occurs only in the beginning of words, but it can occur after prepositions and the definite article. It is commonly found in imperative verbs, the perfective aspect of verb stems VII to X and their verbal nouns. The alif of the definite article is considered a .
It occurs in phrases and sentences :
  • To replace the elided hamza whose alif-seat has assimilated to the previous vowel. For example: فِي ٱلْيَمَن or في اليمن 'in Yemen'.
  • In hamza-initial imperative forms following a vowel, especially following the conjunction 'and'. For example: َقُمْ وَٱشْرَبِ ٱلْمَاءَ 'rise and drink the water'.
Like the superscript alif, it is not written in fully vocalized scripts, except for sacred texts, like the Quran and Arabized Bible.

Sukūn

The ' is a circle-shaped diacritic placed above a letter. It indicates that the letter to which it is attached is not followed by a vowel, i.e., zero-vowel.
It is a necessary symbol for writing consonant-vowel-consonant syllables, which are very common in Arabic. For example: .
The ' may also be used to help represent a diphthong. A ' followed by the letter with a over it indicates the diphthong '. A ', followed by the letter with a ', indicates.
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The ' may have also an alternative form of the small high head of '', particularly in some Qurans. Other shapes may exist as well.

Tanwīn

The three vowel diacritics may be doubled at the end of a word to indicate that the vowel is followed by the consonant n. They may or may not be considered and are known as , or nunation. The signs indicate, from left to right,.
These endings are used as non-pausal grammatical indefinite case endings in Literary Arabic or classical Arabic. In a vocalised text, they may be written even if they are not pronounced. See ʾIʿrab| for more details. In many spoken Arabic dialects, the endings are absent. Many Arabic textbooks introduce standard Arabic without these endings. The grammatical endings may not be written in some vocalized Arabic texts, as knowledge of ʾIʿrab| varies from country to country, and there is a trend towards simplifying Arabic grammar.
The sign is most commonly written in combination with aleph|, Ta' marbuta|, ', or stand-alone '. ' should always be written even if ' is not. Grammatical cases and ' endings in indefinite triptote forms:
The shadda or shaddah , or tashdid , is a diacritic shaped like a small written Latin "w".
It is used to indicate gemination, which is phonemic in Arabic. It is written above the consonant which is to be doubled. It is the only ' that is commonly used in ordinary spelling to avoid ambiguity. For example: ; ' vs. ' . Note that when the doubled letter bears a vowel, it is the shaddah that the vowel is attached to, not the letter itself: , .
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