Sun And Moon Letters
In Arabic and Maltese, the consonants are divided into two groups, called the sun letters or solar letters (Arabic: حروف شمسية ḥurūf šhamsiyyah) and moon letters or lunar letters (حروف قمرية ḥurūf qamariyyah), based on whether or not they assimilate the letter lām (ﻝ l) of a preceding definite article al- (الـ). These names come from the fact that the word for "the sun", aš-šams, assimilates the lām, while the word for "the moon", al-qamar, does not.
Read more about Sun And Moon Letters: Rule, Orthography, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words sun, moon and/or letters:
“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fallen leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)