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Screenshot from a book that confuses me. Why fatha is between ta and alif?

Thank you!

screenshot from a book that confuses me

Anton Ziganshin
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3 Answers3

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Convention, really.

You're right that a medial alif with no diacritics unambiguously means ā. However, some books like to use harakat "fully"—that is, putting a vowel marker or sukun on every single consonant—and in this tradition, the long vowels ā ī ū are written fathah-alif, kasrah-ya', dammah-waw.

Is it strictly necessary? Not at all; you could get rid of all sukun and all harakat before long vowels without introducing any ambiguity. But if you ask most Arabic-speakers, harakat in general aren't strictly necessary, and people get by just fine without them. They're mostly used in religious texts and texts for language-learners, and in those contexts, the additional clarity is considered to be worth the extra ink.

Community
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Draconis
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  • Awesome answer, thank you! – Anton Ziganshin Nov 25 '19 at 17:50
  • I'm actually confused by the use of vowel diacritics in Arabic. I also thought they were not normally used, but then an Egyptian fellow I know says they are used in virtually every modern thing, including digital communication if I understood him correctly. May also vary depending on the country, I guess... – LjL Nov 25 '19 at 18:47
  • Much the same thing (mutatis mutandis) can be said about Masoretic vowel points in Hebrew. Modern Hebrew writers rarely use them, but they're always available. – jlawler Nov 25 '19 at 23:44
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Traditional Arabic grammar analyses the phoneme /a:/ as the ḥarika “fatḥ” followed by ʼalif sākina. This is fully reflected by the vocalised spelling.

fdb
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If you omit sukun and harakat, you cannot correctly read رأس or تأشيرة. Of course, native speakers don't need that help.

user6726
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  • There are no native speakers of al-ʽarabiyya al-fuṣḥā. It is learnt in school. – fdb Nov 26 '19 at 10:27