Ẓāʾ

The main pronunciations of written ⟨ظ⟩ in Arabic dialects.

In Classical Arabic, it represents a velarized voiced dental fricative [ðˠ], and in Modern Standard Arabic, it can also be a pharyngealized voiced dental [ðˤ] or alveolar [zˤ] fricative.

In most Arabic vernaculars ظ ẓāʾ and ض ḍād have been merged quite early.[1] The outcome depends on the dialect. In those varieties (such as Egyptian, Levantine and Hejazi), where the dental fricatives /θ/, /ð/ are merged with the dental stops /t/, /d/, ẓāʾ is pronounced /dˤ/ or /zˤ/ depending on the word; e.g. ظِل is pronounced /dˤilː/ but ظاهِر is pronounced /zˤaːhir/, In loanwords from Classical Arabic ẓāʾ is often /zˤ/, e.g. Egyptian ʿaẓīm (< Classical عظيم ʿaḏ̣īm) "great".[1][2][3]

In the varieties (such as Bedouin and Iraqi), where the dental fricatives are preserved, both ḍād and ẓāʾ are pronounced /ðˤ/.[1][2][4][5] However, there are dialects in South Arabia and in Mauritania where both the letters are kept different but not consistently.[1]

A "de-emphaticized" pronunciation of both letters in the form of the plain /z/ entered into other non-Arabic languages such as Persian, Urdu, Turkish.[1] However, there do exist Arabic borrowings into Ibero-Romance languages as well as Hausa and Malay, where ḍād and ẓāʾ are differentiated.[1]

Ẓāʾ is the rarest phoneme of the Arabic language. Out of 2,967 triliteral roots listed by Hans Wehr in his 1952 dictionary, only 42 (1.4%) contain ظ.[6]

In some reconstructions of Proto-Semitic phonology, there is an emphatic interdental fricative, ṱ ([θˤ] or [ðˤ]), featuring as the direct ancestor of Arabic ẓāʾ, while it merged with ṣ in most other Semitic languages, although the South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ẓ.

When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ט׳‎.

• Arabic phonology
• Ẓ
• Ḍād