Shaddah

Form

In shape, it is a small letter س s(h)īn, standing for shaddah. It was devised for poetry by Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad in the eighth century, replacing an earlier dot.

Combination with other diacritics

When a ar is used on a consonant which also takes a ar , the ar is written above the ar. If the consonant takes a ar , it is written between the consonant and the ar 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.

For example, see the location of the diacritics on the letter ـهـ ar in the following words:

When writing Arabic by hand, it is customary first to write the ar and then the vowel diacritic.

In Unicode representation, the ar can appear either before or after the vowel diacritic, and most modern fonts can handle both options. However, in the canonical Unicode ordering the ar 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: دَرَسَ ar means "he studied", while دَرَّسَ ar means "he taught"; بَكَىٰ صَبِيّ ar means "a youth cried" while بَكَّىٰ ٱلصَّبِيّ ar 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 ar above, or by assimilation of consonants, for example the ar of the Arabic definite article al- assimilates to all dental consonants, e.g. (الصَّبِيّ) ar instead of ar, or through metathesis, the switching of sounds, for example أَقَلّ ar 'less, fewer' (instead of *أَقْلَل ar), as compared to أَكْبَر ar '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 أَقَلّ ar (or, with ʾiʿrāb, ar) as opposed to أَكْبَر ar, مَحَبَّة ar "love, agape" as opposed to مَعْرِفَة ar '(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: أَلَا تَمْدَحَنَّ ar 'Will you not indeed praise...?' is scanned as ar: short, long, long, short, long, short.

References

References

1. Versteegh, 1997. ''The Arabic language''. p 56.