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, sun, moon and/or letters:
“Far from the sun and summer-gale
In thy green lap was Nature’s Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray’d,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face:”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“You weep, you weep for the sun an Image.
...
the wind calls hideously,
woe for the children’s fate,
woe for a palace rent,
woe, woe for these who spent
life-blood
in hate.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“The moon is door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist—nothing shields him from the world’s gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)