Hamza
Mark used in Arabic-based orthographies / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Hamza (Arabic: هَمْزَة hamzah) (ء) is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop [ʔ]. Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical reform of standard writing system. It is derived from the Arabic letter ʿAyn (ع[citation needed] ). In the Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets, from which the Arabic alphabet is descended, the glottal stop was expressed by alif (𐤀), continued by Alif (ا) in the Arabic alphabet. However, Alif was used to express both a glottal stop and also a long vowel /aː/. In order to indicate that a glottal stop is used, and not a mere vowel, it was added to Alif diacritically. In modern orthography, hamza may also appear on the line, under certain circumstances as though it were a full letter, independent of an Alif.
| Hamza همزة | |
|---|---|
| ء | |
 | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Arabic script |
| Type | Abjad |
| Language of origin | Arabic language |
| Phonetic usage | /ʔ/ |
| Unicode codepoint | U+0621 ARABIC LETTER HAMZA |
| History | |
| Development |
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| Other | |
| Writing direction | Right-to-left |
| This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
| Arabic alphabet |
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Arabic script |