Ḏāl

Ḏāl (ذ, also 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).

It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word: The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ḏ, .

In early forms of the New Persian language and a in practice followed by its writers, who used the letter dhal (ذ) in lieu of dal (د), in the middle of a word when the dal is preceded and followed by a vowel, or when dal was in the final position and preceded by a vowel, the letter was referred to as a dotted dhal or dal-i mu'ajjam (دال معجم.

[3][4] Between and within contemporary varieties of Arabic, pronunciation of cognates with the letter ḏāl differs: 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.

Arabic dialect#Formal and vernacular differences) ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ʿ p ṣ q r š t