Shaddah ( , , also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ) is one of the

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

used with the

Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...

, indicating a

geminated In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

consonant. It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthographies of languages like

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, Swedish, and

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

, and is rendered as such in

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

in most schemes of

Arabic transliteration The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of Modern Standard Arabic, written and varieties of Arabic, spoken Arabic language, Arabic in the Latin script. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of na ...

, e.g. = .

Form

In shape, it is a small letter '' s(h)in'', standing for ''shaddah''. It was devised for poetry by al-Khalil ibn Ahmad in the eighth century, replacing an earlier dot.Versteegh, 1997. ''The Arabic language''. p 56.

Combination with other diacritics

When a is used on a consonant which also takes a , the is written above the . If the consonant takes a , it is written between the consonant and the instead of its usual place below the consonant, however this last case is an exclusively Arabic language practice, not in other languages that use the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

. For example, see the location of the diacritics on the letter in the following words: When writing Arabic by hand, it is customary first to write the and then the vowel diacritic. In Unicode representation, the can appear either before or after the vowel diacritic, and most modern fonts can handle both options. However, in the canonical Unicode ordering the appears following the vowel diacritic, even though phonetically it should follow directly the consonantal letter.

Significance of marking consonant length

Consonant length in Arabic is contrastive: ' means "he studied", while ' means "he taught"; ' means "a youth cried" while ' means "the youth was made to cry". A consonant may be long because of the form of the noun or verb; e.g., the causative form of the verb requires the second consonant of the root to be long, as in ' above, or by assimilation of consonants, for example the ' of the

Arabic definite article (, also Romanization of Arabic, romanized as ''el-'', ''il-'', and ''l-'' as pronounced in some varieties of Arabic), is the definite article in the Arabic language: a grammatical particle, particle (''ḥarf'') whose function is to render the ...

''al-'' assimilates to all dental consonants, e.g. () ' instead of ', or through metathesis, the switching of sounds, for example ' 'less, fewer' (instead of * '), as compared to ' 'greater'. A syllable closed by a long consonant is made a long syllable. This affects both stress and prosody. Stress falls on the first long syllable from the end of the word, hence ' (or, with iʻrāb, ') as opposed to ', "love,

agape (; ) is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for uman beingsand of uman beingsfor God". This is in contrast to , brotherly love, or , self-love, as it embraces a profound sacrificial love that transcends and persists rega ...

" as opposed to ' '(experiential) knowledge'. In Arabic verse, when scanning the meter, a syllable closed by a long consonant is counted as long, just like any other syllable closed by a consonant or a syllable ending in a long vowel: ' 'Will you not indeed praise...?' is scanned as ': short, long, long, short, long, short.

References

{{reflist Arabic diacritics

Form

Combination with other diacritics

Significance of marking consonant length

See also

References