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Ḏāl (ذ, also be transcribed as dhāl) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ṯāʾ, ḫāʾ, ḍād, ẓāʾ, ġayn). In Modern Standard Arabic it represents / ð/. In name and shape, it is a variant of dāl (د). Its numerical value is 700 (see abjad numerals). The Arabic letter ذ is named ذَالْ ḏāl. It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:

The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ḏ, .

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

This sound is found in English, as in the words "those" or "then". In English the sound is sometimes rendered " dh" when transliterated from foreign languages, but when it occurs in English words it is one of the pronunciations occurring for the letters " th".

Pronunciations

Between and within contemporary varieties of Arabic, pronunciation of cognates with the letter ḏāl differs:

• The Gulf, Iraqi, Tunisian dialects use the Classical and Modern Standard sound of [ ð].
• In Maghrebi Arabic, it is consistently pronounced as the voiced dental plosive [ d̪].
• In Hejazi Arabic, it merges with / d/ or / z/ depending on the word. Furthermore it keeps its classical value / ð/ in some Classical Arabic words.
• In the Mashriq (in the broad sense, including Egyptian, Sudanese and Levantine dialects), it becomes a sibilant voiced alveolar fricative [ z]. Furthermore, in words fully assimilated into a Mashriq dialect, the sound has merged with / d/ ( د).

Regardless of these regional differences, the pattern of the speaker's variety of Arabic frequently intrudes into otherwise Modern Standard speech; this is widely accepted, and is the norm when speaking the mesolect known alternately as lugha wusṭā ("middling/compromise language") or ʿAmmiyyat/Dārijat al-Muṯaqqafīn ("Educated/Cultured Colloquial") used in the informal speech of educated Arabs of different countries. (cf. Arabic dialect#Formal and vernacular differences)

See also

• Arabic phonology