Re: Arabic waslah

From: Maha Hassan (maha.hassan96@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Mar 14 2008 - 12:36:00 CST

  • Next message: Maha Hassan: "Re: Arabic waslah"

    Please, read below.
    Maha

    ----- Original Message ----
    From: Andreas Prilop <aprilop2008@trashmail.net>
    To: unicode@unicode.org
    Cc: Kenneth Whistler <kenw@sybase.com>
    Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 8:40:57 AM
    Subject: Re: Arabic waslah

    On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Kenneth Whistler wrote:

    >> (alif together with waslah is U+0671.)
    >
    > And is encoded as an atomic unit in Unicode.

    Why is it different from maddah? The sign maddah alone
    is U+0653 and "alif with maddah" U+0622 is composed:

    U+0622 = U+0627 + U+0653

    Why are maddah and waslah treated differently?
    Maddah can be used with other letters, not only with alif, it extends the pronouncuation of any letter. But waslah is only used with alif, it made sence to have it only with alif as a glyph and never stand alone, actualy it will be big problem if it exists standalone . In general waslah is not used anywhere in the arabic language, but only exists in the Quoraan text and it is very important for recitation. What it does: if Alif-Waslah appear in the begining of the word, it merges the previous word with current word as if there is no space between words. If it exists in the middle of the word, the alif is not pronounced.

    And how does waslah relate to U+0610? The glyph for U+0610
    in the Unicode standard looks exactly like a waslah.
    If you use a bigger font size, you will notice they are not the same. Althought I am not an expert, I never knew there is an acronym for "Sallallahu alyahe wasallam". May be I am mistaken, but I remember I saw in one of previous Unicode versions "Sallallahu alyahe wasallam" as one glyph consists of the 3 words one above the other, it was the correct way.

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