The Dummy Alef

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The Dummy Alef

In Persian, Pashto and Urdu, an unmarked alef at the beginning of a word is known as a dummy alef (alif in Urdu), a mute letter whose purpose is to carry or introduce a vowel sound. This is merely an orthographic convention borrowed from Arabic and doesn't reflect any actual characteristic of the sounds in Persian, Pashto or Urdu.

In Arabic, no word ever begins with a vowel, whether in writing or in speech. This may ring false to Western ears -- after all, what about words like Arab and how does one spell Iraq without an initial vowel? But in reality the first sound and letter of all such words is either a glottal stop (hamza) or 'ayn, both of which are consonants.

Iranian, Indian and Afghan languages, however, have got tonnes of words beginning with vowel sounds. Yet, for some bizarre, incomprehensible reason, their scholars incorporated the Arabic no-initial-vowel rule into their spelling system. Thus, ridiculous though it seems, no word in Persian, Pashto and Urdu may be spelt with an initial vowel other than the silent alef.

The dummy alef in Persian "carries", or could simply be read as, one of three short vowels:

short A (intermediate between the vowels in bad and bed)
short E (close to the vowel in bed)
short O (close to the British, not American, vowel in pot)

In Pashto, the dummy alef could be read as one of the following:

short A (close to the American vowel in box )
short E (as in bed) in Kandahar & Peshawar; or short I (as in bit) in Kabul
short O (close to the British, not American, vowel in pot) in Kandahar & Peshawar; or short U (as in put) in Kabul

in Urdu:

short A (as in but)
short I (as in sit)
short U (as in put)

Since none of these short vowels are written or in any other way indicated, one must simply know how the particular word is pronounced. Thus the combination of letters in Persian could be pronounced asb, esb or osb, but fortunately only the first word (horse) exists in Persian.

Since the consonants for V (or W) and Y also double as long vowels, the dummy alef at the beginning of a word signals that the following waav or yaa' is a long vowel.

	Persian	Pashto	Urdu
(word-initial only)
	the long U in food	the long U in food	the long U in food
	the long O in roll	the long O in roll	the long O in roll
	the long O in roll	the diphthong in about	the vowel sound in caught
	the long I in keen	the long I in keen	the long I in keen
			the E in café
			the EI in eight
		the EI in eight

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