# diphthong



## Arabus

Hi,

I don't undrstand why everybody says Arabic has only two diphthongs: /au/ & /ai/.

What about /ua/ in huwa هو ? Why is this not a diphthong? They are two vowels in one syllable. Same thing is for /ia/ in hiya هي , why is this not a diphthong?


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## Hulalessar

I think the answer depends on whether the analysis is phonetic i.e. concentrating on the manner of articulation, or phonological i.e. concentrating on how sounds function. The sounds /w/ and /j/ (often referred to as semi-vowels) are articulated in the same manner as /u/ and /i/ respectively except that they are shorter. However, /w/ and /j/ function as consonants. Whether a sound is analysed as a semi-vowel or a (short) vowel is often a matter of opinion and to an extent I think can depend on the way a language is written - the way a language is written implying that an analysis has already been made.

Ignoring the differences in fully vowelled texts, Arabic (like Latin, at least as originally written) makes no distinction between /u/ and /w/ or between /i/ and /j/. This suggests that when the scripts were developed it was not felt necessary to make a distinction. Simplifying and ignoring the fact that <w> and <y> may represent elements of a diphthong and, in the case of <y> a vowel/diphthong, the writing of English, however, has developed with different symbols for /u/ and /w/ and for /i/ and /j/. French, in contrast, has not found it necessary to have separate symbols for /w/ and /j/ even though, at least on some phonetic analyses, those sounds may be found to exist in the language. In this respect it may be noted that  وادي‎  tends to be written as <wadi> in countries formerly under British influence and as <ouadi> in countries formerly under French influence.

In the end I think it comes down to a matter of "feel". The final syllable of _huwa_ is simply felt to be /wa/ rather than /ua/ - the latter implying two syllables rather than one. The same goes for the final syllable of_ hiya_.


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## Arabus

This is actually a bad answer. How am I supposed to know what you people "feel"?

As a native Arabic-speaker, I clearly feel that there is no such thing as "diphthongs" at all and that this is just a myth that originated from poor understanding of the Phoenician alphabet by Europeans.

Thanks,


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## Hulalessar

Sorry you think I gave a bad answer. The problem is that "feel" very much comes into it when considering the sounds of language.

The way the sounds of a language are perceived, especially by a native speaker, may be heavily influenced by the way the language is written. Also, the way a person perceives the sounds of a language that is not his own may be influenced by the phonology of his own language. We only have to take the word "Arab". In Arabic this word begins with the consonant 'ain, but this is not represented in any Romanisation (other than in texts using strict transliteration) and this is because speakers of languages which do not have a voiced pharyngeal fricative barely perceive the sound, and if they do perceive it they perceive it as being more like a vowel than a consonant.

This brings us to the distinction between vowels and consonants. To a non-linguist there is a clear distinction between the two. However, if you define a vowel as a sound made without any obstruction of the vocal tract and a consonant as a sound made involving an obstruction you run into difficulties. Whilst /a/ is clearly a vowel and /k/ clearly a consonant, there are many sounds that are intermediate, often classified as "approximants". Linguists disagree on what should be included in the class of approximants as there is a continuum with sounds that may be slightly fricated at one end and semi-vowels at the other.

When two vowels or vowel-like sounds follow each other there are essentially three possibilities:

1. The two sounds are in hiatus and constitute two syllables

2. The two sounds form a diphthong and constitute one syllable

3. The two sounds are a combination of a semi-vowel and a vowel.

But there is a continuum and sometimes it is difficult to decide whether it is an instance of 2 or 3. Even in the case of 1 the same speaker may articulate the sounds sometimes as two syllables (if he is speaking carefully) and sometimes as one (if he is speaking casually). In written Spanish, for example, when the "strong" vowels <a> <e> and <o> come next to each other they are always considered to  be in hiatus and to constitute two syllables, but I doubt there are many native Spanish speakers who do not pronounce the word _bacalao_ as three rather than four syllables.

The difficulty in deciding how two successive sounds should be analysed, including whether the segment of a syllable should be analysed as a semi-vowel or as a vowel forming part of a diphthong, is not restricted to Arabic. I have to doubt therefore whether Europeans' analysis of the phonology of Arabic is influenced by Phoenician.

The question you ask is not easily answered since neither phonetic nor phonological analysis is an exact science.


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## sokol

Arabus said:


> Hi,
> 
> I don't undrstand why everybody says Arabic has only two diphthongs: /au/ & /ai/.
> 
> What about /ua/ in huwa هو ? Why is this not a diphthong? They are two vowels in one syllable. Same thing is for /ia/ in hiya هي , why is this not a diphthong?





Arabus said:


> This is actually a bad answer. How am I supposed to know what you people "feel"?
> 
> As a native Arabic-speaker, I clearly feel that there is no such thing as "diphthongs" at all and that this is just a myth that originated from poor understanding of the Phoenician alphabet by Europeans.
> 
> Thanks,


Sorry but I don't get it: in your first post you ask why (supposedly) there are only two vowels, and in the second one you say that you think Arabic has no diphtongs at all and that claiming Arabic had diphtongs would be a European misconception.

I will answer this post anyway from a phonetic and phonological point of view:

*Phonetics:*
A diphtong is a combination of two vowels where one is not syllabic and the other one is. Stress may be on the first or on the second vowel, thus both /wa/ and /aw/ could be diphtongs.
A vowel, further, is a sound where the airstream is not restricted above the glottis as is the case with fricatives (where restriction lets through little air and causes a typical fricative sound) or plosives (where air flow is restricted completely for a short period of time).
If Arabic /w/  were to be produced with a fricative sound it couldn't be considered as a non-syllabic part of a diphtong.
 But according to Wikipedia Arabic /w/ is an approximant which means: phonetically, a non-syllabic vowel. Thus, phonetically, both /aw/ and /wa/ are to be considered diphtongs.

*Phonology:*
In phonology it is possible to analyse a phonetic diphtong either as a diphtong or as a combination of 'semi-consonant' (= the non-syllabic vowel) and vowel.
Whichever is correct depends on the general phonological analysis of said language, and many times phonologists offer both solutions for the same language, that is it may be that they cannot agree what would be the correct or the best solution.

Arabic script represents Arabic in a way like a phonologist would do who is of the opinion that Arabic has no diphtongs but rather combined 'semi-consonants' plus vowels.
This however does not mean that phonologists necessarily agree on this analysis: most writing systems (Arabic included) were not invented by phonologists, therefore the writing system in itself is not an argument in favour or against analysing a phonetical diphtong as a phonological one too.

 Anyway, it seems to me, that your first post is about asking how phonologists interprete Arabic vowels, and that your second posts is about your opinion which seems to go against common phonologists' opinions.
So is it phonological analysis of Arabic you want to discuss here?
Or do you want to argue about the phonetic concept of a diphtong?


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## Frank06

Hi,

To add to the questions raised above:


Arabus said:


> As a native Arabic-speaker, I clearly feel that there is no such thing as "diphthongs" at all and that this is just a myth that originated from poor understanding of the *Phoenician alphabet *by Europeans.



Ja, okay, but with all due respect: what you feel is not really our concern (at least not mine). Do you happen to have _*arguments*_?

But maybe you can first decide whether you think there are diphthongs or not (see post #1 versus #3, as pointed out above). 
Then maybe you might want to tell us what _you_ understand by 'diphthong'. 
And finally, you can explain us what a script (any script or in this particular case the Phoenecian 'alphabeth') has to do with a language having (or not having) diphthongs? 

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Arabus

What I meant when I reffered to the Phoenecian alphabet is that the Greeks messed up the alphabet when they added mere vowels to it and then started writing vowels next to each other and this went on all over Europe ... actually it doesn't make sense to write two vowels next to each other, like "ia" or "oa" ... the original Semitic writing systems all realized that this doesn't make sense since there is no way that one pronounces a syllable of two vowels without a third transitional, consonant sound in between ...

I think European languages just make the transitional sound so unnoticeable that they ignored it ... 

Anyway, I don't really say there is no dipthongs at all ... I take that back ... I just say that Arabic probably doesn't have diphthongs, and if it does, my initial question was why /wa/ and /ya/ are not considered diphthongs ...



> So is it phonological analysis of Arabic you want to discuss here?
> Or do you want to argue about the phonetic concept of a diphtong?


 
My question was about the first point ...


To Hulalessar,

Why are the Arabic /aw/ and /ay/ diphthongs? They shouldn't be called so ...


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## Hulalessar

I have to say that the idea that the Greeks messed up the Phoenician alphabet is misconceived. The changes made by the Greeks were motivated by necessity rather than caprice. In Phoenician, as indeed in all Semitic languages, there is, on the whole, sufficent lexical information contained in the consonants and a speaker of the language readily supplies them where they are missing in the script. (It is the case with Arabic that whilst one can with reasonable ease master the script, one cannot actually read Arabic without knowing the grammar.) Greek had a quite different phonological structure to Phoenician and _all_ vowels needed to be represented consistently if writing was going to be practical and not involve a lot of ambiguity and guesswork.

Interestingly, you refer to "mere" vowels and that is not surprising for someone who first learned to write writing Arabic in the Arabic script. You naturally consider vowels to be peripheral because not all vowels are shown in writing. The Arabic script is perfectly adequate for writing Arabic, but a system of writing without indicating all the vowels is not appropriate for all languages.

I am truly puzzled by your assertion that it does not "make sense to write two vowels next to each other". The simple fact is that many languages do have two vowels next to each other - how are they supposed to indicate them? You seem to want to impose the typical phonological structure of a Semitic language on all languages.

Finally, you say that different standards apply to different languages. Are you suggesting that value judgements are beings made?


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## sokol

Hi Arabus,

your understanding of writing clearly has been formed by Arabic script which of course is only natural.

But let me assure you that, as already pointed out by Hulalessar, the Phoenician alphabet was not at all adequate to represent Greek (or many other) languages; it was invented for Semitic languages - and for the needs of those it works good enough.

Secondly, please note that there is no need to discuss wether in Arabic there were diphtongs concerning the *phonetical *analysis of Arabic: there simply are, that much is an established fact.

Wether *phonological *analysis of Arabic should represent those phonetic diphtongs as diphtongs or as a combination of semi-consonant plus consonant of course is another question which might be answered both ways.
Arabic script represents those as semi-consonant (= /w j/) plus vowel, but a phonological analysis of them as diphtongs is possible and feasible.

To decide wether, in Arabic, those should be analysed as diphtongs or as semi-consonant + vowel is a question I wouldn't involve in - this should be discussed by specialists in the field which (for Arabic) I am not.
But to doubt that phonetic diphtongs exist in Arabic, and to claim that in European languages there wouldn't exist diphtongs, is a different matter altogether. I cannot agree on that.


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## Hulalessar

Arabus said:


> To Hulalessar,
> 
> Why are the Arabic /aw/ and /ay/ diphthongs? They shouldn't be called so ...


 
The short answer is that it is because each sound is a single syllable made up of two elements one of which is perceived to be a vowel and the other to be a vowel or a vowel-like sound not functioning phonologically as a consonant.

I think the problem is that you are equating the signs of the script with the sounds of the language. The letters _'alif_, _waw_ and _ya_ all have dual functions.


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## clevermizo

I don't really see the problem here. Suppose one party wishes to call it vowel+consonant and the other party wishes to call it diphthong. At the end of the day it's just nomenclature. It is not European linguistics trying to dominate Semitic linguistics (besides, there are other, more proper examples of this). The word diphthong nicely describes the situation of [aw] and [ay] and has analogs all over the world, not just Europe or the Middle East/North Africa. 

Also, the Greeks most certainly did not mess up the Phoenician alphabet. They changed it to suit the purposes of a different language.


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## ayed

There is a broad difference between *huwa* and *diphthong*.
*huwa* is a *pronoun* as *diphthong* is two sounds ligatured .


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## clevermizo

ayed said:


> There is a broad difference between *huwa* and *diphthong*.
> *huwa* is a *pronoun* as *diphthong* is two sounds ligatured .



I agree completely. But you would agree that the [aw] in خوف is a diphthong, yes?


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## Mahaodeh

clevermizo said:


> I agree completely. But you would agree that the [aw] in





clevermizo said:


> خوف is a diphthong, yes?


I think it's a matter of the way one perceives it; which is (in my humble opinion) the reason why there is a misunderstanding between Arabus and those that replied to him.

The way it's perceived by Arabs is that each constant is attached to a vowel except in the case of a sukuun. The fat7a on the khaa' is not confused with the waaw because, to start with, the waaw is not perceived as a vowel to start with, it perceived as an incomplete/unhealthy or as someone mentioned above a semi-constant. Which is why Arabus stated hastily that there can not be any diphthongs at all as in Arabic it is not possible no matter what to have 2 vowels (7arakaat) on any constant (which includes waaw, yaa' and alif), you just can't pronounce it!

So to answer your question, I, personally, do not perceive خَوْف as a diphthong because I pronounce it kha - wo - f: i.e., it is CvCC; not CvvC.  It could very well be خَوَف, in which case it would be CvCvC (where C = constant, v=vowel).  That does not apply only to linguists (actually I don't even know how Arab linguists perceive it); this is merely how a native speaker (myself) perceives it.


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## Arabus

Hulalessar said:


> Finally, you say that different standards apply to different languages. Are you suggesting that value judgements are beings made?


 
I didn't say that. I said the standards are applied unequally to different languages.Anyway, I get now the phonitics vs. phonology distinction.


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## Hulalessar

Have a look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong

You will see that even for English linguists do not agree on what a diphthong is.


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## Arabus

> Note also that semivowels and approximants are not equivalent in all treatments, and in the English and Italian languages, among others, many phoneticians do not consider rising combinations to be diphthongs, but rather sequences of approximant and vowel.


 
This is what I was saying. So clearly you phonology people have got a probelm that needs to be worked out. My suggestion: you should agree not to call a "rising diphthong" a diphthong because it is obviously not one.

Have a nice day,


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## sokol

Could you please give the source of that quote, Arabus?*) (...)
*) Found it: Wiki - well, as far as Wiki is concerned: a great resource, I use it all the time. But as I do so I also know that many of those articles aren't exactly scientific. This one on diphtongs is rather good and gives good insights but nevertheless contains some simplifications (to be recommended nevertheless).

But in more detail, to the arguments brought forth:

*Phonetics - vowel:
*A vowel is a vowel, as explained above: there is no restriction of breath when speaking _above _glottis. A vowel which isn't the peak of a syllable is an approximant or an unsyllabic vowel, simple as that.
Any combination of approximants with vowels can be considered a diphtong (even triphtong), phonetically. Thus, /waw/ is a combination of approximant + vowel + approximant: technically this doesn't contain a single consonant with restriction of pulmonic flow of air = breath above glottis and should be considered a triphtong.
Some phoneticians prefer to refer to approximants as consonants rather than vowels - but this does not change the phonetic value of an approximant which is still that of a vowel (an unsyllabic one).
And in my opinion it is mixing up of phonolgoy with phonetics to do so, but it is anyway pointless to argue about this because the phonetic properties of approximants are well-known and do not change, no matter what name you give them.

*Phonology:
*In phonology you take the sounds analysed by phonetics and construct a phonological system. A phonological system always is a *mental *construct - it isn't something that you could measure in a phonetic laboratory, you only can argue phonology by logic. Phonology isn't a natural science - it is a philosophical science.
A diphtong consists of two vowels (phonetically), on one of them lies the syllable peak while the other one is not syllabic; it doesn't matter if syllable peak lies on the first vowel /aw/ or on the second one /wa/: both may be diphtongs, phonologically.
But for phonological analysis many other factors also may be important: factors like syllable structure, stress, prosody and many more.
For example if a language had CVCVCV(C) structure (that is, no consonant clusters at all; C = consonant, V = vowel) and also some diphtongs, that is words like CawC then consonant structure would be a strong argument in favour of analysing /aw/ as a diphtong = CVVC: because if you analyse it as vowel + semi-consonant then you get CVCC and thus consonant clusters which else don't exist in this particular language.
But if you have consonant clusters, like in Arabic, this can't be an argument and the analysis still could go both ways.

*Script:
*It is only natural that native speakers of Arabic perceive approximants like /w j/ as consonants; this is how they have learnt to write.
A writing system always has at least something in common with phonology (in some cases more than in others) and it always influences people who use and learn a language.
But most writing systems are not perfect phonological representations of the respective language - this in fact is only true for very few languages.

I don't see what we could gain if we discuss the influences of your script on your perception of Arabic phonology: phonological analysis should be based on the language itself and not on the writing system.
Only in cases of dead languages where no samples of said languages exist (like with Akkadian) we are forced to do this, that is try to reconstruct a phonological analysis by script alone.

And if I understand you coorectly your question was not wether Arabic writing represents diphtongs (it clearly does not because Arabic writing 'analyses' - in other words: writes - Arabic diphtongs as combinations of consonant = approximant plus vowel).
Your question was rather wether Arabic *has* diphtongs. Right?

My answer to this is that Arabic certainly has diphtongs, phonetically, and that this is also true phonologically - that is, it is possible, feasible and that it makes sense to describe (phonetic) Arabic diphtongs also as diphtongs phonologically.
But it is also possible to analyse them like the Arabic script does, that is as combinations of approximant + vowel rather than diphtong.
Further it even would make sense to describe /wa/ as approximant + vowel while /aw/ they would describe as diphtongs.


With Arabic, in my opinion, one could argue with Semitic radicals: if /w/ and /y/ *always *would be part of the three-radicals-stem (three consonants of /ktb/ - /kataba/ and all words with the same radicals) then this would be an argument for analysing all /w/'s and /y/'s as consonants rather than vowels. Other things too would have to be considered, but it would still be a very good argument.
If however /w/ and /y/ could occur within the stems and without being a radical consonant then this would be a very strong argument to analyse them, phonologically, as parts of diphtongs.
But I only know some very basic things about Arabic; while browsing through online grammars I couldn't find an example for a three-radical-word with /w/ or /y/ within the stem without being a radical.

But anyway: phonological analysis does not change the phonetic value. To claim that Arabic had 'no diphtongs' and to claim that the same were true for 'European' languages just doesn't make sense, to give the conclusion.
There's still phonological analysis of course, but please let's not argue phonetics here.


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## Hulalessar

Arabus said:


> This is what I was saying. So clearly you phonology people have got a probelm that needs to be worked out. My suggestion: you should agree not to call a "rising diphthong" a diphthong because it is obviously not one.


 
I think you are missing the point rather.

Imagine a spectrum of colours in which at one end you have pure red and the other pure white. Somewhere between pure red and pure white there will be a range of shades that everyone will agree is pink. However, between what everyone agrees is red and what everyone agrees is pink, there will be shades that some will call pink and some red. 

If a scientist, John, comes along and defines "pink" as being the range of shades with up to 25% red, then, _according to his definition_, any shade with up to 25% red must be pink. Another scientist, Peter, may decide to define pink as the range of shades with up to 30% red and, _according to his definition_, any shade with up to 30% red must be pink. Both John and Peter have made their definitions for the scientific purpose of describing colours and neither is concerned with what people going about their ordinary business call any particular shade. If John reads a paper written by Peter he will have read Peter's definition of pink. If he comes to a section where Peter describes a shade with 27% red as pink, he will not exclaim: "It's obviously not pink", but accept that it is pink _within Peter's definition_.

When you say: "you should agree not to call a "rising diphthong" a diphthong because it is obviously not one" you are not being like John. All you have done is to decide that your definintion of "diphthong" does not include "rising diphthongs".

So, if someone says: "Arabic has diphthongs" you must enquire what he means by "diphthong". If his definition includes sequences of sounds found in Arabic, then Arabic must have diphthongs _according to his definition_.

Phonetics aims to describe the sounds of speech. Any two or more phoneticians studying the same sequence of speech sounds will describe them identically in terms of duration, frequency and intensity. The problem comes when assigning labels to different segments of sound. First, one has to decide what the smallest segments of speech are that are useful in phonetic analysis and then give them names and after that give names to different combinations of segments. As the extract from the Wikipedia article you quote says, not all phoneticians agree on the labels - some are Johns and some are Peters. Despite what Sokol says in his excellent posts, I think that when it comes to applying labels there is some overlap between the phonetic and phonological approaches; phonological considerations cannot be entirely excluded from phonetics when it moves away from describing the sounds of speech in the language of physics.

Phonology is of course dependent on phonetics and other linguistic disciplines cannot be excluded from it. The notion of the phoneme, for example, is dependent on semantics since it relies, at least in part, on classifying sounds according to how they distinguish meaning.

All this is a long way of repeating what I said above - the question you pose is not easily answered.


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## ayed

clevermizo said:


> I agree completely. But you would agree that the [aw] in خوف is a diphthong, yes?


 Clevermizo, I am not a linguist and I don't think so.
you have three letter : consonant, vowel and consonant.The vowel is having a "skoon". 
Arabs usually *doesn't* *begin* speech with "saakin" ( a letter in state of skoon).It has to be mutaHarrik.However, some dialects , like mine"*begins* with sakin .
So, one may prologn a vowel or try to twist or may mispronounce two or more letters to get a different pronunciation.


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## Arabus

Thanks ... good posts ...


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## Talib

A diphthong is a combination of two vowels.

Arabic has two diphthongs: /ai/ and /au/, written fat7a yaa2 and fat7a waaw.

The words هي and هو don't contain diphthongs. The syllables break down into /hi.ya/ and /hu.wa/.

Some words that do have diphthongs are سوف, دين [saufa, dain].


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## Hulalessar

Talib said:


> A diphthong is a combination of two vowels.


 
I think it is a little more than that. It is a vowel sound that has the quality of two vowels with a smooth transition from one to the other.



Talib said:


> The words هي and هو don't contain diphthongs. The syllables break down into /hi.ya/ and /hu.wa/.


 
I am sure there are many who would agree with you but I do not think the issue is clear cut. /ja/ and /wa/ could equally well be analysed as /ia/ and /ua/, just as /ai/ and /au/ could be analysed as /aj/ and /aw/.


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## Elixir7

I am sure there are many who would agree with you but I do not think the issue is clear cut. /ja/ and /wa/ could equally well be analysed as /ia/ and /ua/, just as /ai/ and /au/ could be analysed as /aj/ and /aw/.[/QUOTE]

well, I can answer your question with your own words; it depends on '' feeling '' whether it is /wa/ or /ua/ and as an Arab I feel it is /wa/ rather than /ua/ in this particular word /hu.wa/ or هو.


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## إسكندراني

Talib said:


> Arabic has two diphthongs: /ai/ and /au/, written fat7a yaa2 and fat7a waaw.
> Some words that do have diphthongs are سوف, دين [saufa, dain].


I hear these as sawf and dayn - or is this analysis considered wrong because of the التقاء ساكنين rule?


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