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Swahili Ajami
The Swahili Ajami script refers to the alphabet derived from the Arabic script that is used for the writing of the Swahili language. ''Ajami'' is a name commonly given to alphabets derived from Arabic script for the use of various African languages, from Swahili to Hausa, Fula, and Wolof. In the 2010s, there has been work on creating new Unicode characters, on keyboard mapping, and on coding script conversion programs, so that typing in Swahili Ajami Script can become as accessible as typing in Latin Script, so that texts from either script can easily and accurately be converted to the other, and to have a tool digitize and upload historic texts and manuscripts in Swahili for the sake of their preservation. Dr. Kevin Donnelly of SOAS has worked on that and on digitizing historic Swahili manuscripts. History Up until the latter half of the 19th century, there was no specific "Swahili script". It was Arabic script with no modification that was used. Adapting the Arabic scr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abjad
An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introduced in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels. Other terms for the same concept include partial phonemic script, segmentally linear defective phonographic script, consonantary, consonant writing, and consonantal alphabet. Impure abjads represent vowels with either optional diacritics, a limited number of distinct vowel glyphs, or both. Etymology The name ''abjad'' is based on the Arabic alphabet's first (in its Arabic alphabet#Alphabetical order, original order) four corresponding to ''a'', ''b'', ''j'', and to replace the more common terms "consonantary" and "consonantal alphabet" in describing the family of scripts classified as "West Semitic languages, West Semitic". It is similar to other Semitic languages such as Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dental Consonant
A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , . In some languages, dentals are distinguished from other groups, such as alveolar consonants, in which the tongue contacts the gum ridge. Dental consonants share acoustic similarity and in the Latin script are generally written with consistent symbols (e.g. ''t'', ''d'', ''n''). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for dental consonant is . When there is no room under the letter, it may be placed above, using the character , such as in / p͆/. Cross-linguistically Languages, such as Albanian, Irish and Russian, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants. Thus, velarized consonants, such as Albanian , tend to be dental or denti-alveolar, and non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position. Sanskrit, Hindustani and all other Indo-Aryan languages have an entire set of dental stops that occu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nūn
Nun is the fourteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''nūn'' 𐤍, Hebrew ''nūn'' , Aramaic ''nūn'' 𐡍, Syriac ''nūn'' ܢ, and Arabic ''nūn'' (in abjadi order). Its numerical value is 50. It is the third letter in Thaana (), pronounced as "noonu". In all languages, it represents the alveolar nasal /n/. It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪌, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek nu (Ν), Etruscan , Latin N, and Cyrillic Н. Origins Nun is believed to descend from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake, ''nachash'' begins with Nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of fish in water as its origin (In Aramaic and Akkadian ''nun'' means fish, and in Arabic, ' means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was also named "fish", but this name has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite word "snake", based on the letter name in Ethio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mīm
Mem (also spelled Meem, Meme, or Mim) is the thirteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew ''mēm'' , Aramaic ''mem'' 𐡌, Syriac ''mīm'' ܡ, Arabic ''mīm'' , and Phoenician ''mēm'' 𐤌. Its sound value is . It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪃, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek mu (Μ), Etruscan , Latin M, and Cyrillic М. Origins Mem is believed to derive from the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for water, N35 which had been simplified by the Phoenicians and named after their word for "water", '' mem'' (), ultimately coming from Proto-Semitic ''*may-''. Arabic mīm The letter is named ', and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: Some examples on its uses in Modern Standard Arabic: ''Mīm'' is used in the creation of ''ism'' words (i.e. nouns and adjectives; they are treated fundamentally the same in Arabic grammar). Specifically, ' is used in the creation of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prenasalized Consonant
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather than clusters as in English ''finger'' or ''member'', lies in their behaviour; however, there may also be phonetic correlates which distinguish prenasalized consonants from clusters. Because of the additional difficulty in both articulation and timing, prenasalized fricatives and sonorants are not as common as prenasalized stops or affricates, and the presence of the former implies the latter. Only three languages ( Sinhala, Fula, Selayarese) have been reported to have a contrast between prenasalized consonants (C) and their corresponding clusters (NC). In most languages, when a prenasalized consonant is described as "voiceless", it is only the oral portion that is voiceless, and the nasal portion is modally voiced. Thus, a language may hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hāʾ
He is the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''hē'' 𐤄, Hebrew ''hē'' , Aramaic ''hē'' 𐡄, Syriac ''hē'' ܗ, and Arabic ''hāʾ'' . It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪀, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . Its sound value is the voiceless glottal fricative (). The proto-Canaanite letter gave rise to the Greek Epsilon Ε ε, Etruscan 𐌄, Latin E, Ë and Ɛ, and Cyrillic Е, Ё, Є, Э, and Ҩ. ''He'', like all Phoenician letters, represented a consonant, but the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic equivalents have all come to represent vowel sounds. Origins In Proto-Northwest Semitic there were still three voiceless fricatives: uvular , glottal , and pharyngeal . In the Wadi el-Hol script, these appear to be expressed by derivatives of the following Egyptian hieroglyphs V28' " thread", A28 ' " jubilation", compare South Arabian , , , Ge'ez , , , and O6 ' "court". In the Phoenician alphabet, ' and ' are merged i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspirated Consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is a strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive. Transcription In the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ... (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols for voiceless consonants followed by the aspiration modifier letter , a superscript form of the symbol for the voiceless glottal fricative . For instance, represents the voiceless bilabial stop, and represents the aspirat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persian Alphabet
The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', 'ch', and 'p', respectively), in addition to the obsolete that was used for the sound . This letter is no longer used in Persian, as the -sound changed to , e.g. archaic > 'language'. It was the basis of many Arabic-based scripts used in Central and South Asia. It is used for both Iranian and Dari: standard varieties of Persian; and is one of two official writing systems for the Persian language, alongside the Cyrillic-based Tajik alphabet. The script is mostly but not exclusively right-to-left; mathematical expressions, numeric dates and numbers bearing units are embedded from left to right. The script is cursive, meaning most letters in a word connect to each other; when they are typed, contemporary word processors automatically join adjacent letter f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fāʼ
Pe is the seventeenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic ''fāʾ'' , Aramaic ''pē'' 𐡐, Hebrew ''pē'' , Phoenician ''pē'' 𐤐, and Syriac ''pē'' ܦ. (in abjadi order). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪐, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The original sound value is a voiceless bilabial plosive and it retains this value in most Semitic languages, except for Arabic, where the sound changed into the voiceless labiodental fricative , carrying with it the pronunciation of the letter. However, the sound in Arabic is used in loanwords with the letter '' pe'' as an alternative. Under the Persian influence, many Arabic dialects in the Persian Gulf, as well as in Egypt and in some of the Maghreb under the Ottoman influence uses the letter ''pe'' to represent the sound which is missing in Modern Standard Arabic. Not to be confused with the Turned g. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Pi (Π), Latin P, Glagolitic Ⱂ, and Cyrillic П. Orig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bāʼ
Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet is the second letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''bēt'' 𐤁 , Hebrew ''bēt'' , Aramaic ''bēṯ'' 𐡁, Syriac ''bēṯ'' ܒ and Arabic ''bāʾ'' . It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪈, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . Its sound value is the voiced bilabial stop ⟨b⟩ or the voiced labiodental fricative ⟨v⟩. The letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Arabic '' bayt'', Akkadian '' bītu, bētu'', Hebrew: '' bayīṯ'', Phoenician '' bēt'' etc.; ultimately all from Proto-Semitic '' *bayt-''), and appears to derive from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a house by acrophony. O1 The Phoenician letter gave rise to, among others, the Greek beta ( Β, β), Latin B (B, b) and Cyrillic Be ( Б, б) and Ve ( В, в), and also the Armenian letter Ben (Բ, բ). Origin The name ''bet'' is derived from the West Semitic word for "house" (as in ), and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ṭāʾ
Teth, also written as or Tet, is the ninth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''ṭēt'' 𐤈, Hebrew, Aramaic ''ṭēṯ'' 𐡈, and Syriac ''ṭēṯ'' ܛ, and Arabic ''ṭāʾ'' . It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪗, South Arabian , and Geʽez . The Phoenician letter also gave rise to the Greek theta (), originally an aspirated voiceless dental stop but now used for the voiceless dental fricative. The Arabic letter (ط) is sometimes transliterated as ''Tah'' in English, for example in Arabic script in Unicode. The sound value of Teth is , one of the Semitic emphatic consonants. Origins The Phoenician letter name may mean " spinning wheel" pictured as (compare Hebrew root (''ṭ-w-y'') meaning 'spinning' (a thread) which begins with Teth). According to another hypothesis (Brian Colless), the letter possibly continues a Middle Bronze Age glyph named 'good', Aramaic 'tav', Hebrew 'tov', Syriac ܛܒܐ 'tava', modern A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retroflex Consonant
A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants—especially in Indology. The Latin-derived word ''retroflex'' means "bent back"; some retroflex consonants are pronounced with the tongue fully curled back so that articulation involves the underside of the tongue tip ( subapical). These sounds are sometimes described as "true" retroflex consonants. However, retroflexes are commonly taken to include other consonants having a similar place of articulation without such extreme curling of the tongue; these may be articulated with the tongue tip ( apical) or the tongue blade ( laminal). When apical, they have been called apico-domal consonants. Types Retroflex consonants, like other coronal consonants, come in several varieties, depending on the shape of the tongue. The tongue may be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
