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 related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪙‎‎‎, and South Arabian 𐩹.

In Modern Standard Arabic it represents /ð/. In name and shape, it is a variant of dāl (د). Its numerical value is 700 (see abjad numerals). The Arabic letter ذ is named ذَالْ ḏāl. It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:

The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ḏ, .

When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ד׳‎.

This sound is found in English, as in the words "those" or "then". In English the sound is sometimes rendered "dh" when transliterated from foreign languages, but when it occurs in English words it is one of the pronunciations occurring for the digraph "th". Azerbaijan is the only country name in Arabic that uses this letter.

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.