Talk:Hamza

message: Wow... good comments up to this point.  My question is on the sole citation of William Wright up to this point, in the beginning where the origin of hamza is implicitly or briefly discussed.  Due to essentially an overflow from a debate on the discussion page of Middle Bronze Age alphabets, this has kind of become relevant.  I am not suggesting that a templated 'origins' page be added to each letter, as this would create significant controversy in determining single creation myths for each letter.
I am wondering two things (if people strongly disagree please revert this) a) is William Wright the best source - particularly since better sources are available - his work is more than a hundred years old and there has been some scholarship in the meantime (which is at the bottom of the article, granted); b) the reference is misleading.  On page 15, in the orthography of hamza, Wright () describes in Rem B that sometimes the hamza in conjunction with alif produces a sound like an 3yin, particularly in African dialects.  Frankly I cannot follow a lot of his archaic abbreviations in English (or I'm stupid).  But my take is that one particular case sounds like an 3yin and was written as an 3yin in some dialects.  That has no bearing on the actual evolution of hamza - only on the interaction of pronunciation and writing in certain dialects (mind you not in Classical Arabic it would seem according to Wright).
According to Islamic Awareness (http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Scribal/haleem.html), which I have found to have very good historical Arabic information available, including very good collections of photo of Arabic inscriptions, these three men (Abū-l-Aswad al-Du'alī (d. 69 / 688), Nasr Ibn `Asim (d. 89 / 707) and Yahyā Ibn Ya`mur (d.129 /746)) introduced yellow dots for hamza and red dots for diacritic marks.  The implication is that the hamza may not have existed as a distinct character in Arabic, but rather only as part of a split pronunciation of alif (as either modern hamza or modern alif).  This idea is echoed in a few other sources of Arabic linguistics.  For the time being, I am going to remove this claim, particularly since it is not relevant to Classical Arabic even in Wright's book.  Michael Sheflin (talk) 06:02, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hamza's Shape? 

message: Unicode has separate glyphs for plain hamza and "wavy" hamza, eg. U+0625 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA BELOW and U+0673 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH WAVY HAMZA BELOW.  Could somebody explain the difference and add it to the article? Jpatokal (talk) 04:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The wavy hamza is used in Kashmiri for long /ɨː~əː/.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:42, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hamza vs wavy hamza 

message: The yaa harf should not have two dots under, when it is in the beginning or in the middle?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.244.145.70 (talk) 12:30, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: When the hamza bearer is a yaa, it should always be written without any dots regardless of its position in the word. When a yaa does not bear a hamza it MUST have two dots under it in its initial and medial shapes; whether the dots are also to be written under the isolated and final shapes varies according to style: AFAIK in that case the dots are usually written in the Maghreb and not written in the Mashreq, hence the Unicode name of "Farsi yaa" for a yaa which has dots in initial and medial shapes but not in isolated and final shapes. — Tonymec (talk) 13:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shape  

message: I suggest you to look through the book Mu'ajjam tasreef al-af'aal al'arabiyya by as-Safeer Antoine al-Dahdaah, there are examples of every type of hamzated verbs including hamzated and doubled, hamzated and middle-weak (with madda) etc. When I used to study the hamza-rules it helped me very much.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mezei nelli (talk • contribs) 12:02, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  suggestion 

message: I've heard still another description; I think it was in "Teach yourself Arabic":
In the Prophet's time and place of birth, the hamza had ceased to be pronounced, so the first Qur`ān texts came to be written with no hamzahs, except as word-initial alephs. Later, grammarians reestablished the hamzah but they wouldn't alter the holy text. So: first write the text as you would if no hamzahs were to be pronounced, then add the hamzahs while removing any dots under hamza-bearing yaa letters. — Tonymec (talk) 13:14, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It is thus. Hamza has been elided in the dialects of the tribes of Quraysh and Tamim and in Hijaz generally at a very early stage (pre-Islamic). Under the influence of the nearest i or u hamza became y and w respectively, hence its current orthography with ya and waw. Later it was reintroduced from (supposedly) Bedouin dialects. When it was lost altogether (usualy word-fanally or after consonants or long vowels) the independent on the line hamza was required and hence was invented. To sum up, if one knows this little pre-history the spelling rules for hamza become not so difficult.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:25, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

text: Some sources which explain:  . I suppose it might be added somewhere.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:34, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Detailed description 

message: Can we stick with one spelling, either hamza or hamzah, throughout this article? - dcljr (talk) 05:32, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Done ("hamza", in accordance with the Unicode name of the character). -- Karl432 (talk) 12:44, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consistency 

message: what do the different colors in the tables mean?
Backinstadiums (talk) 15:36, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added an explanation.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 10:08, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  what do the different colors in the tables mean? 

message: I am starting to learn arabic, so I do not come up easily with examples. I know using regular expressions, regex, and a corpora or dictionary it could be done. Yet, I do not master regex either, let alone in arabic script, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Backinstadiums (talk) 21:14, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  one real example (if there is any) for each cell of the tables  

message: I understand that there're different traditions regarding the spelling rules of hamza. If possible, please specify which one this page shows, as well as the alternatives ones to add them. Lastly, a grammatical/academic reference should be mentioned. Thanks in advance. Backinstadiums (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  graphic representations according to the spelling rules 

message: A link to the page of the rules wikipedia/wiktionary follow should be added. I cannot find it anywhere. Thanks in advance. Backinstadiums (talk) 21:42, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know of any Wikipedia policy but wiktionary uses attested spellings rather than trying to standardize on any rules, and includes all attested spellings with redirects etc. — Radixcc 📞 02:24, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  wikipedia rules for hamza 

message: The current rules don't match up with with some spellings I'm finding such as شؤون. I'm wondering if it's ok to change the page to reflect the rules in A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic by Karen C Ryding because I have a reference for them and they seem to match spellings I find. Differences:
# Initial Hamza is the same.
# Medial Hamza seat is determined by vowels on both sides whether long or short with the usual i u a priority. Diphthongs y w are treated like i u.
# Medial lone Hamza on the line happens only for ā'a ā'ā or any case after ū.
# Final Hamza is lone on the line after a long vowel or consonant ending and has a corresponding seat after a short vowel ending.
Radixcc 📞 02:24, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm OK with anything, as my only contribution to the article was the overview table. I do not remember what sources I used, they must be several, but my baseline source must have been Faruk Abu-Chakra's Essential Grammar (chapters 7 and 20). I do not know why or where Abu-Chakra and Ryding may disagree, of course, if they disagree. I was concerned about this matter a couple of years ago and I haven't studied it since then, so I must forget something and I may not remember/know every of its intricacies. I'm not sure why I thought that uʾū is  and not .--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:00, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe I followed the rule: "avoid two consecutive wāws"?..--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:10, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

text: I used the Quran as my text for testing, and it writes  for . Archaic spelling?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:35, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: See also Caspari & Wright for this particular case.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:10, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

text:  Ok, I got the Abu-Chakra book and his rules seem significantly more complex. Ryding's book was sponsored by an Arab government so might represent a modern state-sponsored simplification effort even though it was published two years before Abu-Chakra. I think I'll just include Ryding's simplified rules and note the cases where Abu-Chakra differs. Regarding the Quran, I don't think it can be used as a good example of modern spelling since some words like كتاب are spelled much different like كتٰب so hamza could be equally or more unusual compared to the modern. Though it's the most common example of fully vocalized Arabic so is tempting to use as a source of examples, it has quite a few differences with modern language use. — Radixcc 📞 23:08, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  1) I doubt that Abu-Chakra's rules are more "complex", they seem to be just the same, only worded differently and in a more formal and obscure way. Rydings rules are more simply and straightforwardly formulated. There is also other similarly simply formulated rules from some other old grammar. Yet they all fail to mention more complex cases with two wāws like  vs. . 2) Yes, there are Arabic corpora in the web, but few as well-made and easy-to-use as the BNC, so the Quran looks like the most accessible ad hoc corpus for a quick check.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:09, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  standardizing 

message: I think the page should indicate ways that Quranic orthography is different in representing hamza, largely because the rasm of the Quran was standardized without the representations of hamza, which were later added as diacritics and could not be added on top of a seat that was not already written. The differences are mostly:
*آ (alif madda) is not used to represent /ʔaː/; instead ءَا is used. This is because madda is instead used over ا, ي, و to mark extra-long vowels that occur in some environments in Quranic recitation; the madda was not used for /ʔaː/ until later, I believe. For example, Quran 54:41 has ءَالَ for modern آل.
*ئ is written like ىٕ (I used alif maqsura with combining hamza below) when it is followed by a kasra. For example, Quran 2:5 starts with أُو۟لـٰۤىِٕكَ for modern أولئك.
*ؤ, ئ, ىٕ are not used if they would lead to two waws or two ya's in a row. Instead, ء is used. For example, Quran 18:31 has مُتَّكِـِٔينَ for modern متكئين
*If the letter before a hamza that would normally be on the line on the line would connect to the letter after the hamza, hamza is written above the connection instead of on the line, like ـٔ. You can see this too in مُتَّكِـِٔينَ
I'm not really sure I can add this myself. I'm not sure where to find a reliable source, but by googling I can find religious websites that provide rules like this, for example here  in the section called III. The Hamza.
Dijekjapen (talk) 05:20, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Different Hamza Orthography in the Quran