The noun phrase is fully declinable and syntactically unmarked for definiteness, identifiable in speech.
In most dialects of spoken Arabic, nunation only exists in words and phrases borrowed from the literary language, especially those that are declined in the accusative (that is, with -an).
A given name, if it is not a diptote, is also nunated when declined, as in أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ الله (ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūlu l-lāh(i) /ʔaʃ.ha.du ʔan.na mu.ħam.ma.dan ra.suː.lul.laː(.hi)/ "I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.
"), in which the word محمد Muḥammad, a given name derived from the passive participle of حَمَّدَ ("to praise"), is nunated to مُحَمَّدًا Muḥammadan to signal that it is in the accusative case, as it is the grammatical subject of a sentence introduced by أنَّ ("that").
In Levantine Arabic, it is standard to write fatḥatān on the alif, rather than on the previous letter:[1] بيتاً - هدوءاً Xiao'erjing is a Perso-Arabic script adopted for writing of Sinitic languages such as Mandarin (especially the Lanyin, Zhongyuan and Northeastern dialects) or the Dungan language.