Talk:Arabic definite article

message: I have heard that the 'Al-' prefix has some kind of significance if put in a person's name. A while ago Private Eye criticised Mohammed Al-Fayed for using 'Al-' and I was wondering on what idea this was based. I heard it is considered by some to be an Arabic construct which means importance or respect - similar to 'san' in Japanese but used as part of a name - but I have also heard that it doesn't carry any specific meaning when affixed to an Arabic name, could this be explained in the article, or just to me if it is thought inappropriate for encyclopaedic entry. Obi-w00t 18:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A lot of times the "Al-" is simply omitted when transcribing Arabic names into English -- al-Qaððafi becomes Gaddafi, etc.  I'm not sure the prefix really has a consistent meaning in all proper-name contexts, since it's just the definite article.  When prefixed to a nisba geographic adjective form, it basically means "the one from" -- i.e. al-Tabari == "the one from Tabaristan". AnonMoos 19:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the clarification, it looks like the article on Mohammed Fayed has since been updated to clarify the point that Private Eye were criticising the "Al-" part because using the definitive article seems a little arrogant (well, I think it does anyway). Still, thanks for clearing up my understanding on this subject. Obi-w00t 13:48, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is little misunderstanding here, Mohammed al-Fayed's name is correctly with the article, which does not indicate any high position or anything, it just indicates that he is "of" the Fayeds and it is normal in many Arab family names names; examples: Raafat el-Haggan, Nadje Sadig Al-Ali and Gad Elmaleh. What he tried (and failed) to do is ad another article, which indicates "the House Of" (as in the House Of Windsor); it is writted as آل and is not a prefex but a seperate part not connected to the name; it is also pronounced with a long a (aal, as opposed to the usual al). Example of families with aal: House of Saud, Al Buainain and Al Maktoum. --Maha Odeh (talk) 09:50, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

text: I had an American friend who spent time in an Arabic country teaching English and he added 'Al-' to his non-Arabic last name.  Is this common for foreigners?  It would seem to make sense, since no one would recognize a foreign name to be a name and adding 'Al-' would indicate it to be a name in the same way as adding 'Al' to an Arabic name that is also a noun distinguishes it as a name and not a noun.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.70.5.241 (talk) 10:06, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  In names? 

message: Is the way the intro is currently written, with the usage examples incorporated into the prose, acceptably encyclopedic? Or does it sound too much like an attempt to teach the language? Any thoughts would be great. -Fsotrain09 22:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose that it could be perceived as paedagogical. There were examples in the prose before I overhauled it, but I did expand on them. I imagine that this article is being read by someone who has little or no knowledge of Arabic, and I feel that issues about placement of the article, prefixing it to attributive adjectives and its gemination of sun letters are difficult to comprehend without examples. I suppose the examples could be removed from the prose and added below the relevant paragraph as a list of examples with minimal explanation. — Gareth Hughes 22:15, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Article Tone

message: An article about an Arabic prefix is not the place for porn. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lolilikepigslol (talk • contribs) 22:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please explain what you are referring to. -Fsotrain09 23:41, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Will someone get the porn off the page?

message: Since al- is an article, is it correct to alphabetically sort by the noun, ignoring "al-"?  In Arabic and in English? —Michael Z. 2007-07-29 20:58 Z
:Yes, probably in most cases (especially when it's hyphenated).  However, don't confuse it with أهل ahl (a very different word which also occurs as a prefix in Arabic names, and which is sometimes also transcribed into the Latin alphabet as "Al-"). AnonMoos 17:05, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alphabetic sorting 

message: Can al- come before plural nouns, as the can in English?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fishal (talk • contribs) 23:11, August 28, 2007 (UTC) 
:Yes -- it's invariable, and not "declined" for number, gender, or case... AnonMoos 16:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Plur-al?

message: It's nigh impossible to find any information on this, but I believe that Arabic dynasty names use a more emphasized version of this, which implies "House of __", and which does not combine with the following noun: for example, the House of Saud (آل سعود transliteration: Āl Suʿūd).  --Xyzzyva (talk) 22:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you thinking of "ahl", which means "people" but can, I think, mean dynasty? Adam Bishop (talk) 01:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so, see House of Saud.  It's pretty clearly lam-alif, but I really wonder if this is related to al-.  There are also some dynasties that seem to begin their names with a connected آل, like آلبوسعيد, but this could also be something else.  --Xyzzyva (talk) 02:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, I don't know...there is a discussion about this on Talk:House of Saud, maybe it would be better to ask there. Adam Bishop (talk) 06:51, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Al' in dynasty names 

message: What I am concerned about in the section is the following:
The part about Levantine Arabic sounds a lot like folk-linguistics blather we hear on daily basis in the Arab world. I think the editor is writing his own musings about proto-semitic. Especially that the same contraction (hal) exists in Libya as well. -- 19:59, 28 March 2008 User:Hakeem.gadi
:The hal- bit (insofar as it was a hypothesis about early Semitic etymology) was in fact based on an interpretation of ancient Dadanitic (North Arabian) inscriptions; however, it seems to have fallen out of favor in recent scholarship.  See the article "Ancient North Arabian" by M.C.A. MacDonald in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (2004) . AnonMoos (talk) 20:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the quick reply. I am ok with the proto-semetic *hal-. It is the explanation and the rejoinder to the explanation that sound like improvizations to me. Anyway I tagged them with  and . Hakeem.gadi (talk) 04:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Semitic etymology section

message: I am a senior undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, majoring in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. I am in the process of writing an essay on the definite article, Al-. It is extremely comprehensive and I've done substantial research. I am thinking of replacing this article with one more comprehensive which cites reliable sources. Although I am very new to Wikipedia editing, I think my article will be a welcomed replacement. The first draft will be ready within the next few days as of this post. I have read the discussions on this page.
Please advise as to whether a completely new article would be welcome or not. Thanks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nickjamil (talk • contribs) 02:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: However, be aware that if you've arrived at a broad sweeping new theory, then it may not be appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia. AnonMoos (talk) 08:36, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand. So let me replace the article, and I would appreciate as many improvements and peer reviews as possible. If, however, the community finds that my article is terrible and beyond edit (as determined by the discussion on this page), then I'll revert back to the current version.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nickjamil (talk • contribs) 18:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that looks pretty good. We often get a lot of text dumps from high school essays that are impossible or not even worth the effort to clean up. It's nice to see this one already wikified. (Of course, I trust NMC students to know what they're doing - nice to see another U of T student, I'm on the other side of campus in medieval studies.) Adam Bishop (talk) 03:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-doing this article 

message: is gobbledygook.  It starts off in the middle of a seemingly arcane subject.  What are you talking about??!!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.43.48 (talk) 13:29, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The section "The 'hamza' in al-" ... 

message: In fact, this whole section is gobbledygook.  Can't someone present the basic morphophonological rule?  I.e., "al" becomes "ar" before certain sounds, "an" before certain sounds, and so on?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.43.48 (talk) 13:32, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: For that, you want the second paragraph, about the -l part, and the linked article sun and moon letters. I wouldn't say it's gobbledygook, it's just a little more complicated than you might think (for both the a- and the -l, and the al- together). Adam Bishop (talk) 15:56, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology 

message: Under Etymology, a 19th-century theory by Jacob Barth is mentioned that holds that al- comes from the Arabic negation lā. As far as I can tell, this is an oddball theory, included by Testen in his dissertation for the sake of completeness, but so marginal that we can safely omit it here.
It is also mentioned that some unspecified supporters of a proto-Semitic hal- origin view the fact that hādhā al- can be shortened to hal- as supporting evidence, while some equally unspecified grammarians balk at that idea. I have to agree with the grammarians; obviously the fact that hādhā al- can be shortened to hal- in no way provides support to the theory that al- stems from hal-. Can we leave out this unsourced amateur stuff as well?  --Lambiam 07:36, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marginal etymological theories 

message: At the beginning of place names, may be also in names of persons, there may or may not be a hyphen between "al" and the noun. Does the hyphen (or the absence of it) have a special meaning? Difference between geographic names, names of persons, and names of objects? --Wickey-nl (talk) 10:58, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "al-" versus "al" in names 

message: This whole discussion seems to be based on two not very prolific researcher, at least one of whom presents what seems like totally baseless speculations. Specifically the whole last discussion about proto-semitic and the relationship of ha, al and hadha/hadhihi makes absolutely no sense. It is, for both etymological and historical reasons MUCH more probable that the definite ha in hebrew is related to a usage of the hadha demonstrative for signaling definiteness, after a preceeding loss of an actual definite article (which is what happened at different stages to various Aramaic/Syriac languages). 
Arabic is in general by far the most archaic (i.e. the most probable to preserve original forms) of the Semitic languages still in use is well known to anyone who has studied Semitics, and has nothing at all to do with discountin Hebrew for some presumable anti-Jewish sentiments as someone tried to argue above. 
Anyway, I'll let this stand for now, for the information of whoever reads this page, and I shall try to find time to come back and fix this section at a future point. 
/Lecturer in Arabic and Semitic Languages. 
47.18.169.243 (talk) 02:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Hebrew - Arabic discussion 

message: I noticed there are many pages have"al-" in small letters, but what is certified style.--Ammar Alwaeli (talk) 08:29, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure that one style can be applied uniformly to the titles of many articles on many different topics, which have followed different linguistic paths from Arabic to English.  Leaving it uncapitalized in names assimilates it to European name particles, such as "de", "von", "van" etc., which are often uncapitalized... AnonMoos (talk) 13:45, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Small or capital letter? 

message: has nothing at all to do with the article al-. It's a common folk etymology, but it actually came in from Latin -alis being tacked onto amir on its own. (Further, it spread across Christendom in reference to the emirs of emirs in Norman Sicily and not the emirs of the sea in Fatimid Egypt.) See the OED entry on Admiral or, for the time being at least, the corrected article here on Wikipedia. — LlywelynII 19:07, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Admiral