# ـى  - alif maqSuura الألف المقصورة



## linguist786

السلام السكم

I'd like some comments on how the alif maqsura is pronounced. 

Before I even started learning Arabic, I always thought it was pronounced "aa" (e.g. فى = faa). I now recall a thread in the OL forum where the name "Jesus" was asked to be translated into different languages, and a member of this forum said "3iisa - عيسى" for the Arabic. 

I then said it would, strictly speaking, be pronounced "3iisaa" and the user then said I was wrong. 

When I read the Qur'aan, I always pronounced it "aa". For example: قال موسى - qaala muusaa.

And now just recently, I saw a post wherein the _same_ user transcribed an alif maqsuura as "aa".
(talk about making your mind up! )

What I "deduce" from all this, is that the alif maqsuura is strictly pronounced "aa" (classical Arabic), but most natives (and the "modern pronounciation" is "a") - would this be right?
Also, how should we then transcribe it in the forum?

Comments appreciated


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## elroy

I think I'm that horrible self-contradictory user you're referring to. 

I pronounce almost _all_ alif's (broken or not ) a little shorter than usual at the end of a word - so yes, I do think that "a" is a more representative transliteration as far as the pronunciation goes.  However, some learners complain that such a transliteration might lead them to falsely assume that the word is spelled with a fat7a - so the reason I recently transliterated it with an "aa" was to make the spelling clear.  In fact, I hesitated before I tacked on that extra "a."

The rules for Qur'anic recitation may be different.


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## Heba

و عليكم السلام و رحمة الله و بركاتة​
I have always thought that the process of transcribing Arabic words into English was an arbitrary process, and that people usually did it the way they thought would best hep the readers. So, the process might differ from one person to another. I do not know though. Perhaps there is a fixed way for transcribing Arabic sounds that I am not aware of. 

I do not know if there are any rules for transcribing ''el alef el maqsura'' in English, but I have usually observed that the ''aa'' are only used to represent the sound at the end of a word in which the letter ''alif'' is followed by a ''hamza'' like وفاء ''wafa'a'', علاء ''Ala'a'', سماء ''sama'a'', etc. A single ''a'' is usually used to represent the ''alef'', the ''fatha'' or the ''alef maqsora'' . That is only my personal observation. Perhaps there are other rules .​


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## Anatoli

In the sources I used both alif's (including alif maqsuura) are transliterated as double aa or a with a macron (ā) in the middle or the end of a word but there is a note that the final long aa is shortened. IMHO, it is better to show it anyway, just to reflect the spelling, although it's not followed, especially in "ana" (I) - the final alif is shortened, so it renders correct pronunciation but not the spelling. The hamza is shown as ' (apostrophe) e.g. haa', no matter, which vowel it's used with.

Short a is used for fatha and taa' marbuuta.


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## cherine

I don't know, but to me the (aa) reflects a long alef مد بالألف , and as the yaa2 maqsuura is not a long alef, I think I would transcribe it with one (a) only.
Why would that be misleading ?!


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## Abu Bishr

cherine said:


> I don't know, but to me the (aa) reflects a long alef مد بالألف , and as the yaa2 maqsuura is not a long alef, I think I would transcribe it with one (a) only.
> Why would that be misleading ?!


 
I think it might be misleading in transcribing the following two verbs:

عَدَّا ('adda)

عَدَّى ('addaa)

or these two verbs:

أَنْسَى (ansaa)

لَمْ أَنْسَ (lam ansa)

What do you think?


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## Ali.h

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
What is the linguistic meaning of "maqsura"? And why is the alif maqsura called by this name?


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## clevermizo

قصر means to shorten (جعل الشيء قصيرا), so ألف مقصورة means "shortened alif".

It is distinguished from final ـا called ألف ممدودة, or "lengthened alif."

I'm not sure about the origin of the names. For one, I think they are technically both supposed to be pronounced as long [aa], although in practice they are often shortened (except if there is another consonant like ء at the end of the word, then it should definitely be pronounced long).

For lots of nouns that end in ــى in the indefinite, the tanwiin is pronounced -an, like معنىً. So in this case, it is in fact short [a] (and it's not pronounced [ma3naan] but rather [ma3nan]). Maybe because this [a] can be shortened in alif maqSuura is the reason for its name?


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## Josh_

I don't think the names refer to the duration of sound. Rather, I have always thought that they refer to the shape of the symbol. The ألف ممدودة is a tall alif stretching up to the top of the line, while the ألف مقصورة is short and squatty, as it were, only hovering around the bottom line.


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## Mahaodeh

I disagree, I think it refers to the duration of the sound. While it is not as short as a fat7a but it is shorter than alf mamduuda. Writing came after speaking, so if they sounded the same, why not use the same form of letter for the end? I mean, why else would it be بَكَى وليس بكا and غفا وليس غفى?

I may be wrong, but I think it may be pronounced much closer (if not identical) nowadays, not when the writing system was first imposed.


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## WadiH

Mahaodeh said:


> why else would it be بَكَى وليس بكا and غفا وليس غفى?



Because بكى conjugates to يبكي, while غفا conjugates to يغفو.  In other words, the ى signifies that the root contains a ي.

I agree with Josh.  Like practically all Arabic orthographic terms, the terms مقصورة and ممدودة refer to the shape, not the duration of the sound (which is actually the same for both characters).


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## Josh_

You guys may be right, but I'm still not completely convinced. Looking in a grammar book there seem to be some orthographic conventions to take into consideration:

 
ألف طويلة:
ألف متطرفة تُكتَب بصورة الألف:
١ -- إذا وقعت ثالثة وأصلها واو: هجا، عصا 
٢ -- إذا وقعت بعد ياء: دُنْيا، يَحْيا. ما عدا اسم العلم: يحيى 

ألف مقصورة :
ألف متطرفة تُكتَب بصورة الياء :
١ -- إذا وقعت ثالثة وأصلها ياء: أتى، فتًى 
٢ -- إذا وقعت رابعة فصاعدًا: انتهى، مستشفى

ألف ممدودة :
ألف متطرفة زائدة تليها همزة فَتُمَدّ : سماء، صحراء.
إذا وقعت همزة مفتوحة تليها ألف ساكنة في أول الكلمة
أو في وسطها، يُستعاض عنهما بألف تحمل علامة
المد: آمين، بُطْآن
 

I also realized by reading that that we may have been confusing the alif mamduuda for the alif Tawiila. It appears, drom what I read, that the alif mamduuda is the alif that has a hamza after it, whereas the alif Tawiila is the alif at the very end of a word. But they may be used more or less interchangeably.
I'm also still not sure if the verb تُمَدّ in the sentence ألف متطرفة زائدة تليها همزة فَتُمَدّ refers to the sound or the shape.

ETA: It seems Wadi and I were wring at the same time.
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Here is a literal translation of the above for those who may like a translation:

Alif Tawiila:
An alif located at the end [of a word], written in the form of alif:
1 -- if it occurs as the third [letter of a word] and its origin[al root letter] is waaw: hajaa, 3aSan
2 -- if it occurs after a yaa2: dunya, yaHya. Exception: the proper noun Yahya.

Alif maqSuura:
An alif located at the end [of a word], written in the form of yaa2:
1 -- if it occurs as the third [letter of a word] and its origin[al root letter] is yaa2: 2ata, fatan
2 -- if it occurs as the fourth [letter of a word] or after: intaha, mustashfan.

Alif mamduuda:
An extra alif located at the end [of a word] followed by a hamza, so it is extended: samaa2, SaHraa2.
If a hamza with a fatHa on it occurs after a hamza with a sukuun on it at the beginning of a word or in the middle, both are substituted with an alif bearing the sign of al-madd: aamiin, buT2aan.


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## ryandward

Alif maqsura refers to the fact that it is small, since alif tawila means tall alif.


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## psxws

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Because بكى conjugates to يبكي, while غفا conjugates to يغفو.  In other words, the ى signifies that the root contains a ي.



I always thought it was this. Like an ى is at heart a ي which for some reason got to be pronounced as an alif in some cases. (This having been a sound change that occurred before Islam and the standardization of Arabic). But since it had been a ي it was written as a ي and remained a ي orthographically (remember there were no dots back then). It was just pronounced as an alif in those circumstances. Except when time came to add the dots, the same letter (the dotless ي) was separated into the ي and the ى since they were obviously pronounced differently.

This is obviously strictly conjecture, I claim no evidence nor authority! But this has just been my understanding of it at least. I'd be interested in any possible refutations! Sorry if it's not as clear as it seems to me.


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## Abu Rashid

> I always thought it was this. Like an ى is at heart a ي which for some reason got to be pronounced as an alif in some cases. (This having been a sound change that occurred before Islam and the standardization of Arabic). But since it had been a ي it was written as a ي and remained a ي orthographically (remember there were no dots back then). It was just pronounced as an alif in those circumstances.



I think it's more a case of long vowels (alefs, waws and yaas) all being varations of the same thing. They are not actually letters or consonants in their own right, but are just extended vowels. So in this sense they seem to be interchangeable in some sense, in that a weak root which has a long vowel in it, will be expressed with different vowels in different circumstances. So for instance كان is the 3ms for the root ك-و-ن but as the middle radical is a weak letter, it changes a little depending on the situation.

I dont think it's necessarily the result of a sound shift of any kind, I don't think the 3ms was ever pronounced كَوَنَ  at any stage in the history of the language (or predecessor languages).

As an example the same root exists in Hebrew (albeit with a slightly different meaning) but is pronunced "kuun". If we compensate for the Canaanite vowel shift (aa -> uu) and we add the final harakah on the end, and we end up with kaana, exactly as it is in Arabic. this suggests that it was probably always pronounced kaana even in earlier stages of Semitic language development, but since early languages like Hebrew didn't have a proper way of representing vowels (alef in Hebrew seems to be restricted to only representing hamza, not the long vowel sound as it does in Arabic), it just got written as kaf-waw-nuun, or else the vowel shift in Canaanite languages had occurred before writing became commonplace.


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## psxws

That's really interesting. But I guess even if there wasn't a sound shift, the idea that it was just always written with a ي still stands, and you just knew when it was supposed to be pronounced as an alif and when it was supposed to be pronounced as a ya. (I mean at this point without dots you were supposed distinguish things like ح from خ or ج  by context anyways, so it's not that far-fetched.) And then when adding the dots the two were differentiated. Is there any reason to think that was not the case?


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## WadiH

psxws said:


> I always thought it was this. Like an ى is at heart a ي which for some reason got to be pronounced as an alif in some cases.[...]



This theory is not mutually-exclusive with what I stated above.


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## TheFriendlyArab

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I was- Oh, yeah. Hello internetty people! I was taught (or rather, taught myself) that this letter was pronounced as "alif" and never as "yaa'". But when I see things translated (or romanized between English and Arabic) or words directly from the Arabic language I see this letter pronounced as "yaa'".For instance, I was watching a movie dubbed into Arabic and at the beginning a caption was placed by the uploader (or whoever) that read الدى فى دى (literally: ad-deefeedee) for the abbreviation DVD.  Is this is exclusive to certain dialects? And is "ى" always pronounced as "yaa'" in certain dialects (because I'm pretty that never happens in MSA or Classical Arabic)?


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## AndyRoo

Hi,

It's a feature of the Egyptian dialect to have a dotless final yaa. It does occur in classical Arabic too sometimes. See http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=369685


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## إسكندراني

It's a feature of Egyptian MSA; Egyptian tradition/regulation. And others occasionally too I think, I've seen Libyans and Sudanese use it consistently for example.


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## arabist-1

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Can alif-maqsura ى (ya without dots) at the end of a word, like: على on, be considered as a long-vowel?


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## AndyRoo

Yes it is a long vowel.


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## fdb

According to the classic grammarians of the middle ages, _ʼalif mamdūda_ means long /ā/ followed by _hamza_; in _tajwīd_ it is longer than normal /ā/. _ʼalif maqṣūra_ means final /ā/ not followed by _hamza_, regardless of whether it is written ا (as in دنيا) or as ى (as in كبرى). But, in most modern grammars, in Arabic and in European languages, the name _ʼalif maqṣūra_ is applied only to final /ā/ when it is written with ى .


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## arabist-1

Understood, but can I call _ʼalif maqṣūra_ means final /ā/ not followed by _hamza_, ى the 4th long-vowel ?


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## fdb

No. From the point of view of phonology there are only three long vowels: /ā/, /ī/, /ū/. But /ā/ can be written in three different ways: ا , ى  and zero (as in ذلك ) .


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## arabist-1

Ref: /ā/ can be written in three different ways: ا ,    ى     and zero (as in ذلك ) . 

Assume in third example, assume you mean "implied" written, not actually written, but still sound, as in   ذلك

The invisable alif............


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## paieye

I thought that مَكْسُورة meant in this context 'broken off,'  indicating that the alif was to be halted abruptly.  Is that wrong ?


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## AndyRoo

It is مقصورة and yes it means "shortened". Apparently this is because although it is a long alif it tends to get pronounced short as the accent of the written word is never on the last syllable, plus it is also of course always shortened before a همزة الوصل.


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## fdb

AndyRoo said:


> Apparently this is because although it is a long alif it tends to get pronounced short as the accent of the written word is never on the last syllable



This is true in modern dialects, but not in Classical Arabic, and certainly not in _tajw__īd_. As I attempted to explain above, _ʼalif maqṣūra_ has this name because it is shorter than _ʼalif mamdūda_.


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## AndyRoo

Oh yes, sorry you explained it perfectly and I didn't read it properly.


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## tedfromtoronto

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I am trying to learn to conjugate he saw..راى and I see that it ends with an alif maqsura.  Since I am very weak in orthography, I went back to watch the foundation video in the program by Mr. Mothanik.  He says that although the alif maqsuura is just an alif written in another way, we will be very grateful when we have learned more grammar that Arabic distinguishes between the two.  I now want to know what Mr. Mothanik meant, and does it help me learn the conjugation of راى ?  For example the masc dual 3rp person ends in an ordinary alif.  Thank you in advance.

Edit:
رأى he saw ends with alif maqsuura instead of a fatha and رايا they dual saw ends with alif as in regular trilateral verb fashion.  I am having a hard time explaining my problem but can someone please explain the orthographic rule (i.e. correct spelling) for alif maqsuura in these cases?  Also am I correct in that they sound the same except that the a suffix is prolonged in the latter: ri-a, ri-aa?  Thank you.


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## cherine

No, I'm afraid you're not correct. The singular is ra2aa, the dual is ra2ayaa. The singular ends with an alef maqSurra that turns into a yaa2 when other pronouns are added: رأينا، رأيتم، رَأَيْنَ except when said pronoun is the waaw, in which case we have رَأَوْا .

Allow me to remind you that you have a previous *thread* about this verb, so if you need to further the discussion, you'll have to post your relevant questions there, to keep the topic in one place. Always search before opening a new thread, and give your threads proper titles. Thanks.


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## tedfromtoronto

Thank you Cherine for your post and for organizing my posts under this thread.  For completely I am copying and pasting another reply to my question from another internet site, which echoes your comment:

Source (Yahoo! Answers)
Alif maqsura is ordinary alif but it always comes at the end of words, and pronounced like it,...it was modified to make the word differs from the ordinary alif used as a pronoun of two males subjects attached to the past verb.  and also to be used instead of the ordinary one to produce a new word with new meaning:
ala(ordinary)=became high
ala(maqsura)=on
ila(ordinary)=except
ila(maqsura)=to
ya is another letter and must have two dots under it.
there is no rule for using it ,(within my knowledge), you have to know the words one by one, there are few verbs and many nouns, most of people female names could be written in both ways


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## Drink

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I've seen some old books that put two dots even under alif maqsura. Is this common in old books? I know that historically the ya' at the end of the word used to not have two dots and was the same letter as the alif maqsura. But I guess when they started using the two dots at the end of the word, they at first put them on the alif maqsura as well?


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## analeeh

There are plenty of books that are poorly printed that do this, dotting alif maqsura and yaa2 inconsistently. I'd always just assumed this was a typographical problem, but maybe I'm wrong.


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## Ibn Nacer

I found on the contrary that the two points of the letter ي (at the end of the word) are often omitted. So it can be confused with the alif maqsûrah...

I think that the Egyptians often do that.


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## fdb

This has nothing to do with books being "poorly printed", it has to do with different orthographic traditions. In the Levant (Syria, Lebanon etc.) the final yaa' that is pronounced /ii/ is written as ي but if it is pronounced /aa/ it is written ى. In Egypt, at least in the past, it is exactly the other way around: final ى is /ii/ and final ي  is /aa/. If you look at mediaeval manuscripts you will see that some scribes always write ي in final position, while others always write ى.


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## Ibn Nacer

^Je ne sais pas si c'est vraiment l'inverse, personnellement j'ai constaté que dans certains textes égyptiens, ils écrivent toujours sans les deux points que la lettre soit précédée d'une voyelle i ou a... Voici un scanne d'un livre scolaire d’Égypte :





Je trouve personnellement que cela est ambiguë, j'en vois pas l’intérêt, je ne comprends pas qu'on ajoute une difficulté comme ça...


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## Ghabi

*Ibn Nacer,* for the dotless final yaa2, please refer to the thread linked to in Post#19. Here *Drink* in Post#34 is asking about something different.


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