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Amr and ‘Umar
By ArabicTree | July 12, 2008
If you know a bit about the history of the Arabic language, historically, Arabic had no dots or tashkeel (vowels). This makes life tricky; sometimes, you cannot tell what the word is except by context. Certain combination of words look the same. Like mi’atun and minhu.
Another combination are the two names Amr (عَمَر) and ‘Umar (عُمَر). Notice that when you take the dots and tashkeel away, the two names look exactly the same! And this is a problem, because the Arabs didn’t have taskheel and dots before.
So how do they resolve this? The same way as mi’atun and minhu: they add an extra letter. So ‘Amr is written like so:
The extra waw is not pronounced–it simply exists to distinguish the two names.
And why is it still there today? Allahu ‘alim, Arabs don’t put taskheel except when necessary. So the majority of written Arabic has no tashkeel in it; so these things are still necessary.
Topics: Grammar, Intermediate |
July 15th, 2008 at 4:20 am
May Allah reward you… Nice site mashaAllah.
I think in the future you may want to consider audio lessons.
I’ve added you to my blogroll.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Masha Allah, again some really useful posts. To the best of my knowledge, though, ‘Amr is with the waaw, and ‘Umar without the waaw. You might want to just quickly confirm that.
July 26th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Jazakumullahu khayran, you’re right; my bad. I remember ‘Umar with damma, so I add the waw…
Audio lessons are not really my thing