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==The Quranic Consonantal Text== | ==The Quranic Consonantal Text== | ||
The Qur’anic consonantal text (QCT) is the original consonantal skeleton of the text of the Qur’an. It is derived from | The Qur’anic consonantal text (QCT) is the original consonantal skeleton of the text of the Qur’an. It is derived from the vast Uthmanic corpus of copies of the Qur’an created after the third caliph Uthman standardized the Quran and ordered the destruction of all other different versions. The QCT was written without most (but not without all) of the diacritical marks and dots which now typify Arabic texts, including hamzahs, consonant dots and short vowel marks (rarely used in modern Arabic writing but used in the Quran and Hadith to ensure proper pronunciation). Other differences between QCT and modern Arabic writing include the mid-word long ā vowel which is usually unwritten in QCT. | ||
The QCT shows a number of differences from both the later interpretation of it in the Islamic tradition and later medieval norms around writing Arabic. | The QCT shows a number of differences from both the later interpretation of it in the Islamic tradition and later medieval norms around writing Arabic. | ||
'''Final Yaa’''' | |||
Some Arabic words such as raʾā رأى and fatā فتى are spelled with a final “y” (ى) but pronounced as a long vowel ā. The ‘y’ that is pronounced as ā is called Alif Maqṣūrah and in modern spelling it doesn’t take the bottom two dots which are reserved for a genuine ‘y’ or ‘ī’, i.e: in modern prints of the Quran, a word-final ى is pronounced as ā, while a word-final ي (with the two dots) is pronounced as ‘y’ or ‘ī’. The QCT analysis, particularly evidence based on rhyme, shows that the Alif Maqṣūrah in the Quran wasn’t pronounced as ā. Early Arabic texts written in Greek show that this letter was pronounced as ē. It’s also pronounced as ē in some canonical readings. When Arabic was Classicized, the ‘ē’ sound merged into ‘ā’. | |||
The development of the triphthongs in Quranic and Classical Arabic, 2017 | |||
'''The Hamzah''' | |||
In most cases where later forms of Arabic and interpretations of the QCT would have a hamzah (the letter ء, in later Arabic used to represent the glottal stop) the QCT does not spell word with a hamzah in any position. The orthography of the QCT seems to indicate a total lack of the glottal stop in all cases save one : When a final ‘ā’ is followed by a hamzah, such as سماء samāʾ. Unlike with the other hamzahs, where rhyme seems to indicate the glottal stop was not pronounced, the rhymes involving this position seem to indicate the hamzah may have been pronounced, though it was never written. | |||
'''Nunation Lost''' | |||
The QCT never writes out the tanwiin, the addition of a nūn to the Iʕrāb ending of a noun, with one exception, where the expression kaʾayyin min “oh how many of” is written in all its 7 attestations in the Quran as كأين من , which is an older form where the nunation got fossilized into the expression. Otherwise the 3rd person masculine accusative ‘an’ is written just as a long ‘ā’ ا or else the tanwīn is not written at all. | |||
The QCT never writes out the tanwiin, the addition of a | |||
== The meaning of Hamzah (glottal stop) == | == The meaning of Hamzah (glottal stop) == |