alif

Alif (Arabic: ﺍ, pronounced ʾalif) is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet.

Together with Hebrew Aleph, Greek Alpha and Latin A, it is descended from Phoenician ʾāleph, from Proto-Canaanite ʾalp "ox".

Historically, the Arabic letter was used to render either a long /aː/, or a glottal stop /ʔ/. This led to orthographical confusion, and to introduction of the additional letter hamzatu l-qat` ﺀ. Hamza is not considered a full harf in Arabic orthography: in most cases it appears on a carrier, either a waw, a dotless yā', or an alif. The choice of carrier depends on complicated orthographic rules. Alif إ أ is generally the carrier where the only adjacent vowel is fatha. It is the only possible carrier where hamza is the first phoneme of a word. Where alif acts as a carrier for hamza, hamza is added above the alif, or, for initial alif kasra, below it, indicating that the letter so modified does indeed signify a glottal stop, and not a long vowel.

A second type of hamza, hamzatu l-wasl, occurs only as the initial phoneme of the definite article and in some related cases. It differs from hamzatu l-qat` in that it is elided after a preceding vowel. Again, alif is always the carrier.

The ʾalif madda is, as it were, a double alif, expressing both a glottal stop and a long vowel: ﺁ (final ﺂ) ʼā [ʔæː], for example in القرآن al-qurʼān

The ʾalif maqṣūra looks like a dotless yāʼ, ﻯ (final ﻰ). It may only appear at end of word. Although it looks different from a regular Alif, represents the same sound (long /aː/). Alif maqsura is transliterated as ā in DIN 31635 and ỳ in ISO 233.

Alif is written in one of the following ways depending on its position in the word:

See also

• Hamza
• Al-

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