Characteristics of Letters  Part 2

 

Characteristics that have opposites

 

As stated in the introduction to the characteristics tidbit, now located in the tidbit archives, there are five pairs of opposite characteristics, and every letter in the Arabic language has at least five characteristics, one of each of the pairs.  No letter can have both of the opposite characteristics.  The first pair of opposites will be discussed in this lesson.

 The Whisper, defined linguistically as: the concealment

The applied definition of this characteristic is:  Running on of breath when pronouncing the letter due to weakness in its origin, when weakening reliance on the letter at its articulation point of origin.

This means that when any of the letters that have the characteristic of , there is a flow of breath as it is pronounced.  This weakens the letter as running of breath then weakens the strict reliance on the articulation point.

The letters that have this characteristic are the letters found in the group: .  All of these 10 letters are pronounced with a running of breath.  One letter  to note in this group is the letter .  If pronounced like the “f” in English, there will not be the needed air flow.  The English “f” is articulated from the edges of the two upper front teeth and middle of the lower lip.  The Arabic  has the same articulation point, but the part of the lip used is more towards the inside.  If a slight adjustment is made in the placement of the two front teeth on the lip, the air flow will then occur and the proper sound for the  which includes air flow will be heard, insha’ Allah.

The two letters  have running of the breath when they are pronounced, but they also have another characteristic of imprisonment of sound (not breath, but sound).  We will discuss how to employ both these characteristics when we discuss the imprisonment of sound in the next tidbit lesson.

The opposite of  is .

 is defined linguistically as: the apparent.  .

The applied definition in tajweed of  is: Imprisonment of running on of breath when pronouncing a letter due to strength  in its origin when strengthening reliance on it at its articulation point.

We can see then that the imprisonment of the running of breath is a strong characteristic since the letter that does not have breath running with it, relies on the articulation point more than one that does.

The letters that have  are all the rest of the Arabic letters that do not have .

Letter to be cautious with to make sure there is imprisonment of breath are:

 - this characteristic of imprisonment of breath is the only difference between  (which has ) and .  If the breath is allowed to run with the  it will either sound exactly like a , or its articulation point will move up as it weakens the reliance on the true articulation point of this letter which is the highest part of the throat.

 and  need practice to pronounce without the breath running, but at the same time, the sound running ( , which will be discussed next lesson, insha’ Allah).  

 

Chart of these two opposite characteristics:

Linguistic definition: Concealment	Linguistic definition: Apparent
Its applied tajweed definition: Running on of breath when pronouncing the letter due to weakness in its origin, when weakening reliance on the letter at its articulation point of origin.	Its applied tajweed definition: Imprisonment of running on of breath when pronouncing a letter due to strength  in its origin when strengthening reliance on it at its articulation point.
Its Letters:	Its letters: The rest of the Arabic alphabet