Hi,

We had a discussion on <heh+hamza>, and it somehow changed to one on <hamza>. I wonder 
if someone is still interested in this subject, but I am sure it is not out of 
interest.

<hamza> is a consonant, both in Arabic and Farsi alphabet. The main difference between 
<hamza> and <alef> in Arabic alphabet is that <hamza> accepts vowels (so, it is a 
consonant), but <alef> doesn't (so, it is a vowel). <hamza> is a consonant with 
different shapes in Arabic.

In Farsi, we even don't differ <hamza> and <ein> in pronounciation. The pair of words 
"mo'allem" and "mo'akkad", "fA'el" and "qA'el", "maf'ul" and "mas'ul" are treated the 
same in Farsi. In Farsi it is preffered to write <hamza> on a base <dandaneh>, when it 
is possible. It is widely, although not totally, accepted in literature and even in 
school books they write "mas'ul" with <dandaneh>.

However, I don't say how to write <hamza>, but don't forget that it is a consonant, 
and in Farsi we have a shape for it: <dandaneh>. This is why we write foreign words 
like "pangu'an" with <dandaneh>. The only exceptions are some Arabic words which we 
accept with their own shape, but it doesn't mean anything more than a multi-shape 
consonant letter.

Best
-khanban-

________________________________________________________________

|| ||||  Ali Asghar Khanban
|| ||    Research Associate in Department of Computing
|||||||  Imperial College of Sci, Tech & Med, London SW7 2BZ, UK
||       Tel +44 (20) 7594 8241           Fax: +1 (509) 694 0599
|||||||  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~khanban
________________________________________________________________



_______________________________________________
PersianComputing mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing

Reply via email to