Ḍād

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Letter of the Arabic alphabet

title: "Ḍād" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["arabic-letters", "urdu-letters", "ge'ez-language"] description: "Letter of the Arabic alphabet" topic_path: "general/arabic-letters" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ḍād" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Letter of the Arabic alphabet ::

ˤ (dialectal) | alphanumber = 15 | direction = Right-to-left | fam2 = 𐤑 | fam3 = 𐡑 | fam4 = 𐢙 | fam5 = ص | fam6 = ض

ar (ﺽ) is the fifteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, one of the six letters not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ar, ar, ar, ar, ar). In name and shape, it is a variant of ar. Its numerical value is 800 (see Abjad numerals). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪓‎‎‎, South Arabian 𐩳.

The letter symbol itself is a derivation, by addition of a diacritic dot, from ص ṣād (representing /sˤ/).

Origin

Based on ancient descriptions of this sound, it is clear that in Qur'anic Arabic ḍ was some sort of unusual lateral sound. Sibawayh, author of the first book on Arabic grammar, explained the letter as being articulated from "between the first part of the side of the tongue and the adjoining molars". It is reconstructed by modern linguists as having been either a pharyngealized voiced alveolar lateral fricative or a similar affricated sound or . The affricated form is suggested by loans of ḍ into Akkadian as ld or lṭ. However, not all linguists agree on this; the French orientalist André Roman supposes that the letter was actually a voiced emphatic alveolo-palatal sibilant , similar to the Polish ź. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic phonology includes an emphatic voiceless alveolar lateral fricative or affricate for sem. This sound is considered to be the direct ancestor of Arabic ar, while merging with sem in most other Semitic languages.

The emphatic lateral nature of this sound is possibly inherited from Proto-Semitic, and is compared to a phoneme in Modern South Arabian languages such as Soqotri, but also in Mehri where it is usually an ejective lateral fricative. In Harsusi the counterpart to ض is mostly pronounced as lateral (and its allophone ), for example Harsusi vs. Arabic يضحك "he laughs", and Harsusi vs. Arabic عريض "wide" but it also sometimes corresponds to Arabic ظ as in Harsusi vs. Arabic ظهر "back". In Shehri (Jibbali) it also corresponds to Arabic ض vs. مرض "he fell ill", vs. عضد "(upper) arm" and vs. أرض "land", but also corresponds to Arabic ظ as in vs. Arabic اظهر "show, reveal".

This is an extremely unusual sound, and led the early Arabic grammarians to describe Arabic as the لغة الضاد lughat aḍ-ḍād "the language of the ḍād", since the sound was thought to be unique to Arabic. While other Arabic grammarians like al-Dani have described the letter ẓāʾ ظ as "being unique to Arabs among other nations".

The corresponding letter in the Ancient South Arabian alphabet is [[File:himjar za2.PNG|class=skin-invert-image|14px|ḍ]] sem, and in the Geʽez script sem ፀ), although in Geʽez it merged early on with sem Sappa. ::data[format=table] | Emphatic consonants | Proto-Semitic | Old South Arabian | Old North Arabian | Modern South Arabian 1 | Standard Arabic | Aramaic | Modern Hebrew | Ge'ez | Phoenician | Akkadian | ṣ | ṯ̣ | ṣ́ | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | | 𐪎 | , rarely | | | | ṣ | | | | ṣ | | ṣ | ṣ | | | 𐪜 | | | | , later | *ṱ, ṣ, later ṭ | | | | | | | | | | 𐪓 | | | | , later | *ṣ́, q/ḳ, later ʿ | | ṣ́ | | | | | | | Notes | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ::

Pronunciation

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Pronunciación_de_ض.png" caption="ض}}}} in Arabic dialects."] ::

The standard pronunciation of this letter in Modern Standard Arabic is the "emphatic" : pharyngealized voiced alveolar stop , pharyngealized voiced dental stop or velarized voiced dental stop .

In most Arabic vernaculars ض ḍād and ظ ẓāʾ merged quite early; However, there are dialects in South Arabia and in Mauritania and the Sahrawi where both the letters are kept different but not in all contexts. In other vernaculars such as Egyptian ض ḍād and ظ ẓāʾ contrast; but Classical Arabic ẓāʾ becomes , e.g. ʿaẓīm (

One of the important aspects in some Tihama dialects is the preservation of the emphatic lateral fricative sound , this sound is likely to be very similar to the original realization of ḍād, but this sound () and are used as two allophones for the two letters ḍād ض and ẓāʾ ظ. A study regarding the dialect of Rijal Almaa in southern Saudi Arabia has shown that the de-lateralization is apparent for the majority of speakers and more apparent among the younger speakers, and is the most prevalent pronunciation for both ḍād ض and ẓāʾ ظ.

"De-emphaticized" pronunciation of both letters in the form of the plain entered into other non-Semitic languages such as Persian, Urdu, and Turkish. However, there do exist Arabic borrowings into Ibero-Romance languages as well as Hausa and Malay, where ḍād and ẓāʾ are differentiated.

::data[format=table title=""]

Languages / Countries	Pronunciation of the letters	ض
Modern South Arabian languages (Mehri, Shehri, Harsusi)
Standard Arabic (full distinction)
Most of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Tunisia. Partial in: Libya, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine
Most of Algeria, and Morocco. Partial in: Libya, Tunisia and Yemen
Most of Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Partial in: Jordan, and Saudi Arabia		, *
Mauritania, Partial in: Morocco	, *
::

Notes:

In Mauritania (Hassaniya Arabic), ض is mostly pronounced as in ('to laugh'), from ضحك, but generally appears in the lexemes borrowed from Standard Arabic as in ('weak'), from * ضعيف.
In Egypt, Lebanon, etc, ظ is mostly pronounced in inherited words as in ('darkness'), from ظلمة; ('bone'), from عظم, but pronounced in borrowings from Literary Arabic as in ('injustice'); from ظلم.
In some accents in Egypt, the emphatic is pronounced as a plain .

Pronunciation across other languages

::data[format=table title="Pronunciation of {{angbr|{{lang|ar|[[ض]]}}}} in other languages"]

Language	Alphabet name	Pronunciation (IPA)	Malay	Jawi	Javanese	Pegon	Swahili	Ajami	Hausa	Ajami	Azeri	Arabic script	Brahui	Hindko	Kashmiri	Pashto	Persian	Punjabi	Shahmukhi	Saraiki	Sindhi	Arabic script	Urdu	Uzbek	Arabic script
*

*

::

Note: in Pegon and Jawi scripts ض ḍād is while ظ ẓāʾ is , and in Hausa ض ḍād is while ظ ẓāʾ is , but in other languages they merge.

Transliteration

ض is transliterated as ḍ (D with underdot) in romanization. The combination ⟨dh⟩ is also sometimes used colloquially. In varieties where the Ḍād has merged with the Ẓāʾ, the symbol for the latter might be used for both (eg. ⟨ظل⟩ 'to stay' and ⟨ضل⟩ 'to be lost' may both be transcribed as ar in Gulf Arabic).

When transliterating Arabic in the Hebrew alphabet, it is either written as (the letter for ) or as (tsadi with geresh), which is also used to represent the /tʃ/ sound. The Arabic letters ar ص and ar ض share the same Semitic origin with the Hebrew tsadi.

In Judeo-Arabic orthography, it has been written as (tsade with holam), emulating Arabic orthography, where the letter is created by adding a dot to ar ص.

Unicode

|0636|name1=Arabic Letter Dad

References

Al Balushi, Hammal. (2019). "The Phonology of Modern South Arabian Harsusi of Oman". The Phonology of Modern South Arabian Harsusi of Oman.
Rubin, Aaron D.. (2014). "The Jibbali (Shaḥri) language of Oman".
al-Dānī, Abū ʿAmr. (1989). "الفرق بين الضاد والظاء في كتاب الله عز وجل وفي المشهور من الكلام".
(2018-01-26). "اللغة العربية ليست لغة الضاد بل لغة حرف آخر.. ما هو؟".
Schneider, Roey. (2024). "The Semitic Sibilants". The Semitic Sibilants.
al Nassir, Abdulmunʿim Abdulamir. (1985). "Sibawayh the Phonologist". University of New York.
Alqahtani, Khairiah. (June 2015). "A sociolinguistic study of the Tihami Qahtani dialect in Asir, Southern Arabia". University of Essex.
(2011). "Lateral fricatives and lateral emphatics in southern Saudi Arabia and Mehri". Papers from the Forty-fourth Meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies Held at the British Museum, London.
Al-Azraqi, Munira. (2019). "Delateralisation in Arabic and Mehri".
Catherine Taine-Cheikh. 2020. Ḥassāniyya Arabic. In Christopher Lucas & Stefano Manfredi (eds.), Arabic and contact-induced change, 245–263. Berlin: Language Sci- ence Press.
(1959). "The Arabic koine". Language.
(1997). "Structuralist studies in Arabic linguistics: Charles A. Ferguson's papers, 1954–1994". Brill.
(1983). "Étude de la phonologie et de la morphologie de la koiné arabe". Université de Provence.
(2003). "The Arabic language". Edinburgh University Press.
(1999). "Compilation and Creation in Adab and Luġa: Studies in Memory of Naphtali Kinberg (1948–1997)". Eisenbrauns.
(2000). "Studies in the Linguistic Structure of Classical Arabic". Brill.
Retsö, Jan. (2012). "The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook". Walter de Gruyter.

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