Hamza (Arabic: همزة‎, hamzah) (ء) is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop [ʔ]. ... However, Alif was used to express both a glottal stop and also a long vowel /aː/. In order to indicate that a glottal stop is used, and not a mere vowel, it was added to Alif diacritically.

Why does alif have hamza?

Often people wonder why is the hamza carried by other letters at all. Here is a short explanation: Whenever a word starts with a vowel in Arabic an alif was written. So if the hamza existed on a yaa' that means that the different dialects pronounced it like a yaa' instead of a hamza'.

What does alif hamza mean?

Some grammarians regard alif (ا) and hamza (ء) as two distinct letters, while others regards them as two realizations of the same letter. ... When two alifs are found at the beginning of a word, a special type of alif /alf mamdouda/ is used with a special shape of hamza on, e.g. hopes (آمال), Adam (آدم), sorry (آسف).