Tāʾ marbūṭa
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| Ta' marbuta | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic | |||
| ة | |||
| Phonemic representation (IPA): | |||
| h, t, or silent | |||
The tāʾ marbūṭa (Arabic: تاء مربوطة, "bound tāʾ") is a variant of the letter tāʾ used at the end of words. It mostly exists in grammatically feminine words. It denotes the sound /h/, and when in construct state, /t/. The regular letter ta, to distinguish it from tāʾ marbūṭa, is referred to as tāʾ maftūḥa, meaning "open tāʾ" (Arabic: تاء مفتوحة)
The word risala# (Arabic: رسالة, "letter, message"; tāʾ marbūṭa is denoted here as #), when pronounced in isolation, ends in a soft /h/ sound—which is why the tāʾ marbūṭa (in this position) looks like a hāʾ (ه). When the word is suffixed with a personal pronoun -kum (meaning "yours"), it changes to risalat*kum (Arabic: رسالتكم; the asterisk is used here to mean any short vowel). The pronunciation is /t/, just like the regular, or open tāʾ (ت). But the identity of the "character" has not changed; it is still tāʾ marbūṭa. Note that the isolated and final forms of this letter combine the shape of the ha and the two dots of the tāʾ.
| Arabic alphabet | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ا ب ت ث ج ح | |||||
| خ د ذ ر ز س | |||||
| ش ص ض ط ظ ع | |||||
| غ ف ق ك ل | |||||
| م ن ه و ي | |||||
| History · Transliteration Diacritics · Hamza ء Numerals · Numeration |
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Ta marbuta is not traditionally considered a first-class letter in the Arabic alphabet; instead it is a solution to the problem that a single character takes two completely different pronunciations depending on context.
When words containing the symbol are borrowed into other languages written in the Arabic alphabet (such as Persian), ta marbuta usually becomes either a regular ه or a regular ت. Such words are subject to the normal rules of the grammar of the particular language into which they have been borrowed; thus, in Persian the ه from ta marbuta becomes a ى when the Idhāfa—the ending indicating possession—is added.
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