Re: VMs: Arabic

[Bruce Grant <bgrant@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

CanBooks wrote:

> 2. "Before some consonants, Arabic mutates; the L turns into the following
> consonant. So we have "al-Kitab" ('the book'), but "ad-Din" ('the faith', ie
> Islam), "ar-Rahman" ('the Merciful'), "an-Nur" ('the light'), and so on. In
> all, there are 13 such consonants in the Arabic alphabet. .
I'm pretty sure that this process (I believe it's called "assimilation") 
occurs only in speech - such words are still written with an L  in 
Arabic script - in other words, written "al-Nur" but pronounced "an-Nur".

In other places where a doubled letter occurs, the script apparently 
uses a symbol called "shadda" which is written above a single copy of 
the letter, and is apparently often ommitted..

(At least, that's how they explain it in my copy of "Teach Yourself 
Arabic".)

Regards,

Bruce


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