Talk:ى

See also Talk:ي, which this talk page formerly redirected to, for relevant discussions. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:58, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Wording too concise for me to understand

The current text contains:

”Also the final or isolated form of ي in the Nile Valley, electronically, similar to the Persian ي.”

To me this concise wording does not make clear whether “ی” is the final or isolated form of “ي” in the Nile Valley full stop; or whether “ی” is the the final or isolated form of “ي” in the Nile Valley solely when it is electronically similar to Persian “ي”. And what does “electronically similar” mean?Redav (talk) 11:22, 15 October 2023 (UTC) @Esperfulmo. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

1. U+064A ي this is the Arabic yeh in unicode. It has dots underneath and in isolate or intital/medial forms.
2. U+0649 ى this is the so called alef maksura which is only written in final form in Arabic texts.
3. U+06CC ی this is the Persian yeh in unicode. It has only two dots underneath in its initial/medial forms.

The second character is used on electronic devices for the initial/medial forms to express another vowel other than what is spelled with the first one, but this is not in Arabic, e.g. in Uyghur.

In handwriting, the shape of the letter only matters, whether it has two dots underneath or not, however, on electronic devices, if you have the Arabic keyboard, you'll have only the first two letters, whereas if you have the Persian keyboard, you'll only have the third letter.

Traditionally, yeh had only one form without dots in its final form to express yeh or alef maksura (also known as alef layyena).

A new version was popularized where is now known as Lebanon and since the 70s~80s, after adding Arabic to computers, the man who was consulted in the US was from that region and he made two separate characters for what is basically one letter, because he considered it "wrong" to have one character.

Now, the separation of the first and second letter is becoming more common among Arabic speakers when they type, but still uncommon in the Nile Valley (Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan).

It's noteworthy to know that the traditional form (without dots in the final form) is the one used to print sacred texts, like Koran.

In case you didn't already know, Arabic characters change their shape depending on their position in the word.

--Esperfulmo (talk) 19:59, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation!

I can now see a new entry text:

”Also the final or isolated form of ي in the Nile Valley, when typed on electronic devices, which looks similar in shape to the Persian ی in its final or isolated form.”

After also reading on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Regional_variations, I seem to understand the following:

• Modern Standard Arabic (and possibly some other languages as well) use ي for initial, medial, final and isolated yā’.
• Nile-Valley Arabic uses ي for initial and medial yā’, and ى for final and isolated yā’.
• Persian uses ی for final and isolated yā’.

If that is correct, I think the current text in the entry warrants a slight change, and I propose:

”Also (when typed on electronic devices) the Nile-Valley Arabic final or isolated form equivalent of Modern Standard Arabic ي; and this (unpointed) Nile-Valley Arabic form looks similar in shape to the Persian ی in its final or isolated form.”

The reason for this proposal is that the current text has some ambiguity, since it may be parsed and interpreted in at least two senses, one where “which” refers to:

• the final or isolated form of ي,

and another where “which” refers to:

• the final or isolated form of ي in the Nile Valley.

Particularly unitiated readers may not be able to disambiguate this from the context.

Even now that I did one or two beginners’ courses in MSA (which in my case means I have no practical MSA language skills to speak of), I was uninitiated enough to understand the previous text and to be unable to disambiguate the current text.Redav (talk) 19:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)