Concept
Arabic diacritics
Overview
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include consonant pointing known as iʻjām (إِعْجَام, IPA: [ʔɪʕˈdʒæːm]), and supplementary diacritics known as tashkīl (تَشْكِيل, IPA: [tæʃˈkiːl]). The latter include the vowel marks termed ḥarakāt (حَرَكَات, IPA: [ħɑrɑˈkæːt]; sing. حَرَكَة, ḥarakah, IPA: [ˈħɑrɑkæ]).
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where all letters are consonants, leaving it up to the reader to fill in the vowel sounds. Short consonants and long vowels are represented by letters, but short vowels and consonant length are not generally indicated in writing. Tashkīl is optional to represent missing vowels and consonant length. Modern Arabic is always written with the i‘jām—consonant pointing—but only religious texts, children's books and works for learners are written with the full tashkīl—vowel guides and consonant length. It is, however, not uncommon for authors to add diacritics to a word or letter when the grammatical case or the meaning is deemed otherwise ambiguous. In addition, classical works and historical documents rendered to the general public are often rendered with the full tashkīl, to compensate for the gap in understanding resulting from stylistic changes over the centuries.
Moreover, tashkīl can change the meaning of the entire word, for example, the words: (دِين), meaning (religion), and (دَين), meaning (debt). Even though they have the same letters, their meanings are different because of the tashkīl. In sentences without tashkīl, readers understand the meaning of the word by simply using context.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas received from particular objects to become general; which is done by considering them as they are in the mind such appearances,—separate from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called ABSTRACTION, whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general representatives of all of…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
States what Arabic diacritics is.
But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest integration. How small is the degree of this integration, however, when compared with that reached in well-developed languages is shown both by the great length of the compound words used for things and acts of constant…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Arabic diacritics is.
The essence of language lies, not in the use of this or that special means of communication, but in the employment of fixed associations (however these may have originated) in order that something now sensible--a spoken word, a picture, a gesture, or what not--may call up the "idea" of something else. Whenever this is done, what is now sensible may be called a "sign" or "symbol," and that of which it is intended to…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Arabic diacritics is.
Related ideas
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Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Alphabetical order.