2011/8/21 Arno Schmitt <[email protected]>: > Philippe, > Philippe> The rule relative to the shadda is so strong that this is even one > of > Philippe> the very first thing you're taught in some didactic tutorials on how > Philippe> to read Arabic. > > the rule is not valid for most orthographies of the Koran
OK, but are these Koranic variants semantically different ? May be the placement rule was not so strong in the history. For modern Arabic, the two placements will be perceived as equivalent with a strong preference for the raised vowel in presence of the consonnantal shadda modifier. In fact, those two placements should probably have been unified in a single codepoint, with only a variation selector for maintaining the vowel at the lower position. (But it's not the time now to discuss about this disunification, even if I don't know any contrasting example where the different placements implies distinct semantics or readings of the long vowel, such as some dialectal diphtong). Another thing that I know is that the preferred repetition of the vowel between the previous consonnant where it is added as a diacritic, and the long vowel after it (using a matres lectionis letter) is not universal: the diacritic vowel can frequently be omitted, as it is implicit (and many texts that are supposed to be consistant in displaying this repeitition everywhere, contain frequent cases where this repetition is omitted ; notably when the long vowel is an unmodified Alef "matres lectionis"). I can find many examples of this even in modern didactic courses (I'm not sure that the omission was made on purpose, it's probably because the diacritic vowel adds no value, and is not mandatory anyway, when instead the presence of the matres lectionis is absolutely required by orthographic rules in all writing styles, including unpointed texts). The cases where the diacritic vowel is less frequently is frequently when this explicitly marks a vowel mutation for a declination, feminine or plural, or to help interpret the liaison that may occur with a nearby word. But in the middle of radicals (not altered by vowel mutations by gammar), such repetition is frequently omitted, ony the matres letionis long vowel letter remains. The split between modern Arabic and Koranic texts is not so strict. I also see similar omissions in old Koranic texts even though they are pointed with great details (for correct reading): this superfluous implicit vowel mark does not change the reading, and it may be more valuable to place other diacritics than this vowel, or to use larger and more visible glyphs for the base letter.
