Arabic diacritics
Diacritics are symbols applied on the alphabets which change how to pronounced the alphabet e.g. د is pronounced as /dal/ where as دَ is pronounced as /da/. Some of the main diacritics is explained here. Normally diacritics is not used in English with exceptions of: café, résumé etc. These diacritics are:
Fatḥah ـَ |
Kasrah ـِ |
Ḍammah ـُ |
Maddah ـٓ |
Dagger alif ــٰ |
Alif waslah ٱ |
Sukun ـْـ |
ـٍ ـٌ ـً تَنْوِين |
Shaddah ـّـ |
These are further explained as below.
Fatḥah ـَ
The fatḥah فَتْحَة is a small diagonal line placed above a letter, and represents a short /a/. e.g.
دَ /da/
Kasrah ـِ
A similar diagonal line below a letter is called a kasrah كَسْرَة and designates a short /i/. e.g.
دِ /di/
Ḍammah ـُ
The ḍammah ضَمَّة is a small curl-like diacritic placed above a letter to represent a short /u/. Example:
دُ /du/
Maddah ـٓ
The maddah مَدَّة is a tilde-like diacritic (~) which can appear only on top of an alif and indicates a glottal stop followed by a long /a/ e.g:
قُرْآن
Dagger alif ــٰ
The superscript (or dagger) alif أَلِف خَنْجَرِيَّة (alif khanjarīyah), is written as short vertical stroke on top of a consonant. It indicates a long /aː/ (play) sound where alif is normally not written, e.g:
هٰذَا (hādhā)
رَحْمٰن (raḥmān)
Alif waslah ٱ
Looks like a small letter ṣād on top of an alif ٱ (also indicated by an alif ا without a hamzah). It means that the alif is not pronounced, e.g.
في ٱليمن or في اليمن
Sukun ـْـ
The sukūn سُكُون is a circle-shaped diacritic placed above a letter. It indicates that the consonant to which it is attached is not followed by a vowel; this is a necessary symbol for writing consonant-vowel-consonant syllables, which are very common in Arabic. Example:
(دَدْ) dad
ـٍ ـٌ ـً تَنْوِين
The three vowel diacritics may be doubled at the end of a word to indicate that the vowel is followed by the consonant ‘n’. These may or may not be considered ḥarakāt, and are known as tanwīn.
ـً
ـٍ
ـٌ
Shaddah ـّـ
The shadda or shaddah شَدَّة, or tashdid تَشْدِيد (tashdīd), is a diacritic shaped like a small written Latin “w”. It is used to indicate gemination (consonant doubling or extra length). It is written above the consonant which is to be doubled. Example:
دّ /dd/
Comparing how to speak without shaddah and with shaddah: