Back to search
The question

What kind of silent Yā’ and Wāw are those paused upon in words such as "al-Sa‘y (the endeavor), al-Khazy (the disgrace), al-‘Amy (the blindness), al-‘Afw (the pardon)"?

Share this answer

Source: FtawySummary from Ftawy's records · added here Sep 2, 20261 min readAlso available in العربية
The answer

The letters waw (و) and ya (ي) are strong consonants if they are vocalized (have a diacritic mark). They are described as letters of madd (lengthening) and leen (softness/diphthong) if they are unvocalized (sakin) and preceded by a vowel that suits them (a dammah for waw and a kasrah for ya). In this case, they are called letters of madd, leen, hawaa' (air/vowel), and illah (weak/vowel). They are also described as leen if they are unvocalized and preceded by a fathah (e.g., al-bayt, 'ayn, sawf). Two unvocalized letters (sakin) do not occur together in a single word unless the second unvocalized state is temporary due to a pause. The letter ya (ي) is never unvocalized and preceded by a dammah due to the difficulty in pronunciation; rather, it transforms into a waw (و) in this situation.

Summary from Ftawy's records · added here

Reviewed by El Fatwa's sharia committee.

Read the full answer on Ftawy
Where this answer came from
Source platform
Ftawy
Original fatwa ID
94134
Added here
. This is when the answer was added to El Fatwa, not the fatwa's date.
Text
Summary from Ftawy's records, reviewed by El Fatwa's sharia committee.
Read the full ruling
Read the full answer on Ftawy