Arabic: An Essential Grammar

26

Chapter 7

Hamzah (hamzatu l-qat

̇



i)

and the maddah sign

7.1 Hamzah or hamzatu l-qat

̇



i, َه ْم َز ُة  ْل َق ْط ِع , means the cutting

or disjunctive hamzah. Hamzah is considered to represent the first letter

of the alphabet and it has a full consonantal value like other consonants.

(Arabic grammarians refer to

alif as the

alif hamzah.)

The sign of hamzah was added to the Arabic script at a rather late stage.

Therefore hamzah does not have a real independent form comparable to

the other consonant letters. Hamzah is written with the special sign ء,

which is transliterated as /

/.

7.2 The sound of hamzah exists in European languages in speech but

is not represented in writing. In Arabic it is both heard and written.

Phonetically it is a glottal stop, pronounced as a catch in the throat by

holding one’s breath and suddenly releasing it. This sound occurs as

follows in some other languages:

In Cockney English ‘little bottle’ is pronounced as /li

l bo

l/, i.e. with two

glottal stops.

In German, beobachten ‘to consider’, is pronounced as /be

obachten/.

Vereisen, ‘to freeze, be frozen’, is pronounced as /fer

aizen/, but the word

verreisen, meaning ‘to travel away’ has no glottal stop. Iss auch ein Ei!

‘Eat also an egg!’, is pronounced as /

iss

auch

ain

Ai!/.

Note: Hamzah (^) ء /


/ should not be confused with the completely different letter

ayn ع /

/ in either pronunciation or transliteration.