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 and moon, sun, moon and/or letters:
“Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast
each with a splendor
which man in all his vileness cannot
set aside; each with an excellence!”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
““What,” it will be questioned, “When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?” O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.””
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)