Sun and Moon Letters

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 and, sun, moon and/or letters:

    “That if a dancer stayed his hungry foot
    It seemed the sun and moon were in the fruit:”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “That if a dancer stayed his hungry foot
    It seemed the sun and moon were in the fruit:”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted.”
    —John Lyly (1554–1606)

    “Soldier, there is a war between the mind
    And sky, between thought and day and night. It is
    For that the poet is always in the sun,
    Patches the moon together in his room
    To his Virgilian cadences, up down,
    Up down. It is a war that never ends.”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “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)