International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature -ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au

[خ – Characteristics of Alphabets: with Special Reference to Role of the [kha as Dustbin in the Arabic Language

Ahmed Gumaa Siddiek*, Abdulmahmood Idriss Ibrahim -Zaeem Al-Azhri, & Shaqra University, KSA Corresponding Author: Ahmed Gumaa Siddiek, E-mail: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history This paper is shedding light on the significance and functions of some of the Arabic alphabets. Received: November 04, 2019 An Arabic letter is found to play an effective role in expressing the speaker or the writer’s ./phonetically transcribed as / ,[خ- Accepted: January 27, 2019 target meaning. Our concern here is with the letter [kha Published: March 31, 2019 The discussion in this essay will focus on one strange phenomenon; that this letter is playing Volume: 8 Issue: 2 a unique role in Arabic. It is found to associated with almost all the ugly words and dirty Advance access: February 2019 jobs in the Arabic language. Its work is similar to the function of the dustbin, where all the house garbage is collected. From 285 root words begins with this letter, it is found that 85% of the words are carrying negative connotative or denotative meanings. To the best of Conflicts of interest: None the researchers’ knowledge – there is no similar letter found to play the same role, in any does in Arabic. With this result the researchers can show ,[خ] Funding: None other language as this letter how rich and lively this language is. The Arabic language has great potentials to maintain survival, shoulder to shoulder, with other living languages of the world. It is also expected to play - with some efforts from its speakers and its linguists - an effective role in the recent human history.

Key words: Arabic, Alphabet, Letter Kha, Dustbin, Garbage, Phonology

INTRODUCTIONS to work hard towards this aim. Another effectual factor that will keep this language alive is its internal natural potentiali- Is Arabic Endangered? ties, the intrinsic power within the language itself, embedded Arabic is said to be one of the endangered languages. in its phonetic system, rich vocabulary, advanced grammar, According to (Al-Qasimi,)(1) the Arabic language is expect- semiotics and its highly sophisticated literature, where great ed to face this unfortunate fate if continue to neglect it. works were introduced and will be introduced to the native A recent UNESCO report has also revealed that a number speaker and to the international reader as well. of the world’s languages are threatened with extinction, in- The Arabic language is one of the richest languages in cluding Arabic.(2) But our own belief, relying on our own many linguistic aspects; but vocabulary is the most import- inferences; Arabic is found to stay, as this language has ant feature, where Arabic excels many languages in this re- many potential factors to maintain its existence as a living spect. The (trilateral) system of generating and coining new language, not to mention the increasing number of its speak- words in Arabic is so efficient that one word can have many ers, and their effective economic and political influence at synonyms to replace another and work for the target mean- world level. We can add to that the growing number of Mus- ing, with great precision, to clearly carry the message to the lims, who are familiar with the language to some degree as addressee. There are many tricks that the Arabic speaker they need it to perform their religious rituals five times a day, can use to generate (a huge) number of words from one root where some Quranic Verses are recited during prayers. The of three letters only. The Arabic vocabulary is so rich. For ,(أسد-Quran is another important factor that can support Arabic example one hundred words are used to name the (lion is said to have more than five hundred (جمل-Language to survive as an effective and natural repository while the (camel of this language. The Quran was revealed to Mohammed synonyms, to describe the same animal.(4) (peace be upon him) in Arabic. But Al Dhibaib(3) corrected This paper is shedding light on one particular aspect of some common belief that Allah Almighty had promised to the Arabic, that is the significance and functions of some Ar- [خ-preserve the Quran. The Quran will remain forever, but the abic letters but with particular reference to the letter [kh Arabic language maintaining is the direct responsibility of which is phonemically transcribed as /X/; as a separate (pho- the Arabs and Muslims together, who are the ones who need neme).This letter plays a great role in shouldering the burden

Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.8n.2p.45 46 IJALEL 8(2):45-60 of the entire (dirty) job in the Arabic language. Its role in world population will be Muslims. This will be about 3 billion Arabic corpus vocabulary is similar to the role of the garbage people almost the same number of the Christians which will collector, whose job is to collect our dirt in the dustbin. This be round 3.1 billion (32%) of the world population.(11) This -is playing the same role, as a (dustbin) to receive number of Muslim population will be of great help to main [خ] letter with-generosity-almost more than 85% of the Arabic words tain the Arabic as an educational, cultural and economic tool that are associated with (dirty) meanings or negative associ- in this modern history. A Muslim: man or woman, are keen ations. This feature to the best of our knowledge is almost to learn and practice Arabic in their daily life. They are spir- rare or not present in any other language. We have consult- itually motivated to love this language, as it is the language ed some French, Russian and Urdu speakers-who denied or of the Quran-the holy Book of all Muslims. This invaluable were not sure about the existence of such a phenomenon in authenticated document had been revealed To Mohammed these languages. The phenomenon is not known in English (peace be upon), to benefit mankind, and to remain forever either, but some English speakers believe that some letters in the most valuable book of excellent teachings. their language are ugly, but neither dirty nor associated with Arabic also has been adopted as one of the major five dirty meanings or jobs5. languages of the United Nations as recognition of the role The significance of this phenomenon can tell us how rich of its cultural, economic and political influence worldwide. the Arabic Language is, in its phonological and semantic But some others see Arabic as an endangered. Histori- system; as to employ one letter to function as dustbin, where cally, Arabic had been the official Language in many plac- all dirty words in the language are collected and thrown in. in the world (e.g Persia and Turkey) but it disappeared This role is similar to the role of the vulture-among birds- and replaced by the local languages of these people. This whose job is to consume up the bodies of dead animals, to is a gloomy picture-indeed- as it gives evidences that Ara- kha] bic may be an endangered language. The internet is another-خ] keep our environment clean, and so does the letter in Arabic. evidence that 80 %(12) of the data in the World Web Net is published in English. The Arabic content is so poor that it Some Characteristics of Arabic does not exceed 5.3% of the world digital content. The In- ternet Users Stat Web Site tells us that the population of the Arabic according to Encyclopedia Britannica,(6) is a Semitic Arabic speakers is about 422 million people. That is about Language, languages that form a branch of the Afro-Asiat- 5.6% of the world population. The Internet Arabic users are ic language phylum including Hebrew, and . about 219 million people; this percent is about 5.3% only of Members of the Semitic group are spread throughout North the world internet users.13 This is an indicator of bad omen to Africa and Southwest Asia and have played preeminent roles the future of this language. But our belief, Arabic will remain in the linguistic and cultural landscape of the Middle East for an energetic language because of its rich vocabulary, ad- more than 4,000 years. It is the most important Semitic lan- vanced phonological, morphological and semantic systems. guage, in terms of the number of speakers. Arabic is one of Some great efforts are being carried out by computational the five official languages of the United Nations. The stan- linguists to develop the Arabic content in the World Web Net dard Arabic is spoken by about 422 million people in the to serve scientific, artistic and literary purposes. Some com- Arab world(7). But it is familiar to about one and a half billion putational linguists believe that; “Arabic is an exciting-yet Muslims, who use Arabic in their daily prayers; in addition to reciting a daily part of the Holy Quran in this language. challenging-language for scholars because of its many lin- Some other languages have used the : Hausa, guistic properties that have not yet been fully described. Ar- Kashmiri, Kazak, Kurdish, Kyrghyz, Malay, Morisco, Pash- abic Computational Linguistics authenticate recent work of to, Persian/Farsi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tatar, Turkish, Uyghur researchers in both academia and industry, who have taken and Urdu.(8) The Arabic language and the Arabic culture are up the challenge of solving the real-life problems posed by (14) always entwined(9) with Islam which has and still forming an understudied language” Farghaly believes that;[these the greatest values for all Muslims, all over the world. This efforts] explore new Arabic machine translation systems, situation recommended Arabic to be recognized as one of innovations in speech recognition in linguistic corpora. Ara- the five official languages used in the United Nations and bic Computational Linguistics will be an indispensable ref- (15) suggested December 18th as the Day of Arabic since 1973.(10) erence for language researchers and practitioners alike.” Such efforts in our belief, will put Arabic on the right track to go shoulder to shoulder with the other effective languages Rationales for this Research of the modern world, such as English, Chinese and Spanish. Today a great deal of talk is said about the future of the Arabic Other similar efforts are adopted by King Abdullah’s language. The devotee usually sees the half-full cup. These Initiative for Arab Internet Content(16) under supervision of people see the bright picture of the future of the Arabic Lan- King Abdul-Aziz City for Technological Sciences in coor- guage. They also value the efforts of teaching and learning dination with some relevant authorities inside and outside this language, at the individual, as well as at community lev- the Kingdom. This initiative helped to achieve an Arabic . The good news is-Arabic is spoken by no less than 400 language presence on the Internet accounted for 3% of the million people as native speakers. On the other hand Arabic global content accessed through the Internet. These efforts is the language of religious rituals to more than one billion are expected to serve more than one billion Muslims in the and eight hundred million people now. By 2060, 31% of the world. This amount of data is proportional to the volume of as [خ – Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha Dustbin in the Arabic Language 47 access to Arabic language in the Internet, which had been are here to say that the internet was the main source of data. estimated as only 0.3% of the global content compared with Some Web Pages may not be that very much authenticated, other languages.(17) but they were useful as secondary source of data to provide Our attempt in this article is to share in the revival of the us with some hints about the topic. Arabic language with some efforts as to reflect some genius features of this language of how to employ one letter- the METHODOLOGY -as an individual (phoneme) to play a great contribu -[خ-kha] tion in the language function. There were two categories used to collect data for this re- search. The first category of data was collected from an elec- tronic dictionary in the Web Site: at https://ar.wiktionary. The Objectives of the Research org/wiki(19). The second source was (Almojam Alwaseet), an [خ] The first objective of this research is to show the capacity of Arabic-Arabic dictionary, where the data about the letter Arabic language in serving the practical human needs in the was collected. Then the data was processed and results were use of language as effective means for communication and compared between the entries of the letter (kh) in the two as a referential tool to express feelings and exchange ideas. dictionaries. Thus, the research is based on the comparison [خ-of the selection of the first (100) (entries) of the letter [kha [خ-Our objective here is to reflect the role of the letter [kh in use and how this phonemic element is employed to serve in the electronic dictionary and the paper dictionary. some (dirty) functions associated with negative meanings Then the words were tabulated, see (Table 1) below. The here first slot is the root word in Arabic. The second slot is the [خ-within the Arabic corpus vocabulary. The letter [kh is working as dustbin-where all ugly and negative words, meaning given in Arabic. The third slot is a translation or used by Arabic speakers-to describe negative situations-are equivalent in English for the Arabic word. Then the slot pooled in one place. So this letter is associated with nega- number four is to see if the word is attributed to a human tive attributes, to convey negative connotations in the Arabic quality, while the slot number five is to say if the word is Language. The second objective is to see if this phenomenon affiliated to describe a characteristic related to animals. The exists in other languages, and if the same phoneme plays slot number six is to decide if the word is describing an in- the same negative role as it does in Arabic. So with these animate or non-living object. The ninth slot is for the neutral comparative efforts we may give some clues to reflect some characteristic of the word, if it does not reflect any positive characteristics of Arabic that may give evidences that Ara- or negative (human-animal or object) traits. The plus (+) bic is going to play some historical and critical role in our sign is used to indicate if the specific phenomenon is present modern history; as a vehicle of Islamic Civilization and Ar- to describe any one of the three categories (human-animal or abic Culture. According to (Crystal) the world may one day object); while the minus (-) sign will indicate the absence of speak Arabic, as stated that in an interview with the Brit- this feature in the specific category. So one hundred words ish Council, where he said that, “we can imagine one day we were selected and classified as we have seen, and the total might all end up speaking Arabic. The reasons are perfectly number is written at the bottom of the table to sum each col- obvious to anybody who looks at the world.”(18) umn. The processing then followed by calculating the results of each column to see how positive or negative connotation The Significance of this Research that each word provides. This work is targeting many audiences such as: First: The pessimistic group: who see the dark future of CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ARABIC Arabic as diminishing or endangered. To this group of peo- LANGUAGE ple we would dedicate this effort to show how this language Vocabulary will deeply set roots to survive and find its way to universal- ity among other dominant living human languages. Arabic is written from right to left. But there are many other Second: To Teachers of Arabic and Syllabus Designers: features that distinguish Arabic from other languages. Ar- the message is clear that Arabic is so rich but new pedagog- abic has unique grammar and simple spelling rules as the ical methods and techniques are needed to effectively help number of utterance is always the same as the number of teaching this language to reflect its richness in all aspects. letters written. In addition to those features Arabic has two Third: To Decision makers: in governments and the edu- forms known as Standard Arabic (Fus-ha) and a colloquial cational organizations, these are the people who are directly variety known as (al?mia), but both forms serve the practical responsible for the attainment of the national educational needs of Arabic speakers. The standard Arabic is officially objectives and political agendas. They need to think of Ara- used in education: in school classrooms, universities, radio, bic Language Education as one the most important factors to TV, government offices and in Mosques where religious rit- maintain cultural entity and national identity. uals are practiced. But the first important feature of Arabic is vocabulary. Arabic is rich in its corpus vocabulary. Arabic Dictionary is the richest language dictionary in vocabulary Delimits and synonyms. Some large Arabic dictionaries contain more To the best of our knowledge, this topic has not been trodden, than one million individual words. The number of Arabic vo- so you may come to some shortcomings within the paper. We cabulary was estimated as 12.305.000 in the second century 48 IJALEL 8(2):45-60

in the electronic Dictionary (خ-Table 1. Summary of the first (100) entries of the letter (kha 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Arabic Arabic English related to related to Related Positive Negative neutral Word Meaning Equivalent humans animal to objects association association - + - - - + Men of deception الرجل الخداع الخب + - + - - + Subjection to Allah الخشوع اإلخبات Total 100 100 65 32 28 11 75 35

AD. While the estimated number of the English vocabulary contrast, has many spellings that don’t correspond to indi- is not more than 600.000 words according to Oxford Dictio- vidual letter sounds, as in the word “rough.” For this reason, nary.20 Those words are not limited to the root of the lexicon, Arabic spelling might be considered easier than that of many because Arabic is a language of derivation. The linguistic languages, including English. In Arabic utterance, the num- entry item in the traditional Arabic lexicon is the root, and ber of sounds you utter is equal to the number of letters of the [/k/t/b/= كتب] from the root many words can be generated.21 word you say or write. For example the word which means (wrote) in English, the speaker would utter only three sounds (phonemes) which are[/k/,/t/,/b/]=[/ktb/] Phonology Arabic is a phonetic .[كتب:to construct the morpheme [ktb According to Atyb (2018)22 the most important feature that language, where the letter immediately corresponds with the distinguishes the sounds of the Arabic language is their sta- sound or the utterance the speaker produces. This is totally bility, as these sounds have not changed through history. different from English where letters do not correspond with is [كتب :and that the Arabic Language has did lose any of its sounds. the sound in the same word. So the spelling of [wrote But the relative diversity of speech that we see with some different from its utterance which is going to appear phonet- of these sounds, is natural, and was known since the exis- ically in Oxford Dictionary like this: [/rəʊt/].(28) tence of the human languages. It is also inconceivable that all people should speak in one way. But some contemporary languages, witnessed some sounds change and transforma- The Production of the Arabic Phonetic Sound tion. And some of these sounds died away as we can see According to Newman “Arabic has 30 phonetically distinct with some English sounds.23 According to Atyb (2018:127) consonant segments, and 6 vowels (all oral). If we compare -had been dismissed from the English and Arabic inventories against the representa [خ-some velar sounds like the [kh the English pronunciation during the 17th century. This letter tives of the world’s languages; in terms of the number of was represented by the combination of two letters (gh). Ac- consonants, Arabic is situated within the average range of 20 cording to (Baugh & Cable: 1993), cited in Altyb (p.127) the and 37 segments (though most languages tend towards 20 to in 27 sounds). However, if we added the 24 Arabic geminates [خ] gh) sound had been pronounced as /X/ similar to the) in the total number of consonant segments in Arabic goes up [خ-Arabic in such words as (light) and night).24 But the [kh English was as unfortunate to be totally dismissed from the to 53, .e. 2.3 times the mean for the world’s languages.”(29) English Language environment and remained to face its fate Newman continues to say that Arabic is also exceptional to play the dirtiest role ever found in any other language in when it comes to»… the number of distinct vowel qualities, the Arabic Language. in that it is well below that of the mean (8.7%), with only Standard Arabic has (28) consonant phonemes and 5.4% of languages in UPSID having three vowel qualities. It 6 vowel phonemes (8 vowels in most modern dialects). All is therefore hardly surprising that the vowel-consonant ratio phonemes contrast between “emphatic” (uvularized) conso- (the number of vowels divided by the number of consonants) nants and non-emphatic ones.(25) Some of these phonemes is also quite uncommon in Arabic, with 0.1 being more than have coalesced in the various modern dialects, while new three times lower than the UPSID average of 0.36.”(30) phonemes have been introduced through borrowing or pho- nemic splits. A “phonemic quality of length” applies to con- X/= /خ/ =/Description of the Sound/kh sonants as well as vowels. Each letter has a basic form, but in Arabic is written as /X/, it is a voiceless /خ/ this form often changes depending on whether the letter is The phoneme placed at the beginning, middle or end of the written word.(26) velar fricative.It represents the sound [x] or [χ] in Modern is very similar to [خ] Standard Arabic. The pronunciation of German, Irish, and Polish unpalatalised “ch”, Russian (х),(- Arabic Phonetics: Where Letters and Sounds Meet Cyrillic Kha), and Spanish “”. The most common trans- -al-الخرطوم) Arabic is a phonetic language, which means letters corre- literation in English is “kh”, as in Khartoum (شيخ(.)spond to sounds. While this is true of many languages to Khartūm) and as in Sheikh (31 is written in several ways depending on its [خ-a certain extent, but Arabic is unique that there aren’t any The [kha group of letters that create completely unusable sounds.(27) position in the word. It can appear in 4 forms, initial, medial, and [ج-So in Arabic the number of utterances the speaker produc- final or isolate as well. It is a twin of the letter [jeem See the table below .[ح-es is the exact number of letters he/she writes. English, in the letter [(ha as [خ – Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha Dustbin in the Arabic Language 49

as it appears in Arabic are loaded with different emotions and human feelings that (خ) The position of the letter words provided the Arabic words with energy, to effectively ex- press events, names and emotional situations, in the minds Position Phonetically Isolated Final Medial Initial and imagination of the addressees. in word: خـ ـــخـ ــخ خ /Glyph /kh form: Strength and weakness of the Arabic letter :Abass (1998:45)) asked these questions جـ ــجـ ــج ج /Glyph /Jeem form • Does the Arabic word extract its strength from the first ?letter with which it begins ـح ـحــ حــ ح /Glyph /ha form • Does the Arabic language also look so smooth because of the degree of the smoothness of the letter in which the ?is one of the letters that doesn’t have a coun- words ends (خ-The (kha terpart in English. [So] non-Arabic speakers usually pro- It is obvious that the early Bedouin with his ultra-struc- nounce it with a sound similar to the English letter [K]. But tural sensitivity, living in a non-polluted and non-interrupted [K] is the counterpart of a different Arabic letter called Kaf desert environment, had noticed that the strong letter became or the combination [KH].(32) Other letters in Arabic such most powerful and tough, when it occurred at the beginning [ك] ,are twin sisters or shape-mates of the of the word. For this very reason, the effect of the letter [ح-ha] ,[ج-as [jeem -but they do not play the same ugly or dirty role in whether soft or strong, in the meanings of words, vary ac ;[خ-kha] Arabic, as (85%) of the dirty job is carried out alone by this cording to its position in the word. within the Arabic Language corpus. In Old ,[خ -letter [kh English, one of the sound values of the phoneme yogh was /X/. Words like niʒt, hiʒ, burʒ, miʒt and thoʒ were respelled Classifications of Arabic characters according to their by French scribes with a gh, so we get night, high, burgh, sound characteristics might and though as common spellings for these words in The accurate production of the sound of each Arabic letter early Middle English. To begin with, the gh continued to be worked to secure and preserve the originality of the sounds pronounced. When we read in the opening lines of The Can- of the Arabic letter through history. In this way letter pronun- terbury Tales about the little birds sleeping all through the ciation traditionally continued to be produced in the same ‘nyght,’ we need to take that spelling at face value and read manner as the early Arab generations had used it. (Ibid: p.47) it as /nIxt/, with the ‘ch’ sound of Scots loch or Welsh bach. In this way every letter preserved the echo of its original But the /X/ disappeared from southern English during the sound, in the same way the first Arab speaker inspired its 15th and 16th centuries. North of the border, and in some other original meaning. This preservation of the sound produc- provincial accents, it stayed--hence modern Scots spellings tions of Arabic letters maintained the Arabic language to stay such as moonlicht nicht.”(33) original and natural up to date. It is natural for the young people to understand the Quranic text which was revealed 15 centuries ago, while a young man or woman in modern المعجم:Consulting Dictionaries: (Almojam Alwaseet England cannot understand the language in which Chaucer (الوسيط had written his poetry or tales 1400 years ago, because of the Abbas (1998)(34) believes that the first Arabic speaker ex- Great Vowel Shift that took place in the English Language tracted meaning of words from the physical objects that he/ since then. See Atyb (2018:90).35 she saw. So, the origin of the meaning of the Arabic word had been directly driven from Nature. Through his/her keen observations, and from what had practically applied to his/ The Lexical Meanings of Arabic letters her five human senses, the Arab individual gave names to Abass (1998:47) believes that the proximity of letters did objects.But the most surprising about this survey, was the not give them similar approximation in vocalizations or in existence of the five human senses in pyramid shape, that meanings. If a sister letter is replaced by a twin letter in a began with the tactile denser sense of touching, as the most word, the word would not have a meaning closer to its mean- important human sense, followed straight up by the other ing that it had before the substitution, but it might lead to X]is compatible with most of its-خ]senses of (tasting, smelling, seeing and hearing) and each contradiction.” The letter one of these senses was presented by one category of specific meanings, but its variation depends on how it is pronounced. letters.Abbas (p.22) concluded from his study saying that, So if it is soft and close to the throat; its vocal effect will “After we have finished our research; it was proved to me be a mixture of tactile sensation and warmth. But when it from thousands of examples, that the early Arabic speaker is pronounced with heavy stress, it gives a tactile feeling of had adopted the characteristics of letters to express inten- something hard and tough. It can also give a feel of nasty tions and feelings. Therefore, that the early Arabic speaker taste and offensive smell, as well. This letter in its heavy mated the aesthetic values of letters with the human values; stress position, according to Abass “can reflect the ugliness this was the reason that explained where the Naturalness of that appears to the sight. It can produce a sense of awful- the Arabic Language came from. The Arabic characters (let- ness to disturb the hearing sense and it can also effectively ters) with their specific characteristics and meanings were/ help to express the human feelings of disgust, revulsion, re- 50 IJALEL 8(2):45-60 pugnance, abhorrence and restlessness, agitation and impa- negative impression began to grow in our inner psychology tience.” So the question now is: how did the early Bedouin towards this Arabic sound. This letter as Abbas says,(36) produce and pronounce this letter to express his needs and “It seems to me that the earliest Arab person had in- serve the target meanings? To answer this question, Abass vented this letter to specially serve the meanings of me- (1998) said that: diocrity, unevenness patchiness, weakness, poorness, “It was necessary for me to resort to a dictionary. And inferiority, dirt and rudeness, in an elegant linguistic by referring to (Almojam Alwaseet) I found (250) root structure. The role of this letter is similar to the role of a I found (60) of dustbin, which a wise housewife places in one neglected .[خ-sources began with the letter [kh those words referred to psychological diseases and corner in her marvelous palace, where she collects all disadvantages, (30) of them showed signs of physical her waste materials in it.” (p.177) illness and disability and (45) of those words had the So referring to the summary of (appendix), we can see meaning of vandalism, splitting, penetration, while (37) that out of the total (100) there are (75) words with negative sources pointed to the meanings of laxity, triviality and association. Some of these words describe human features. turmoil. And of out those corpus, (9) words were ex- Some others are describing animal or non-living objects. pressing sources of human sentiments mentioned in the Let us for example take column No.(4), there are about 65% category of diseases and psychological defects.” (p.47) of the total words belonging to this category; where all the X] was al- words are concerned with human. So if we take the first ten-خ] Abbas found that, the sound of the letter ways corresponding with the meanings and function. So words in this column we will find that (5) words out of (10) الخبط-الخب-الخبيث-) about (85%) of the words in Arabic that began with letter words are about a human features -which means decep (الخب) The first word is .(االخبات- الخبل X] had been found to have negative meanings, attitudes or-خ] (sly=خبيث) features. They generally have negative associations; whether tion - a bad human quality. Then there the word they referred to a denotative or a connotative meaning or which is another notorious word to describe a negative hu- madness) a=الخبل) whether the sound of the letter was softly or strongly pro- man quality. The third negative word is duced. This result is compatible with our results. When we word so bad to describe somebody to indicate loss of mental used the electronic (at.wiktionary) on the Internet Web Site, ability or the inability to use the brain effectively. So we can we found that from the first (100) entries in the dictionary; X] when-خ] see that from the very first ten words we find there were 75% of the words carrying or indicating negative comes at the beginning of the word, with some stress, it ex- meaning or associations. (See appendix) presses a negative quality attributed to a human being. Now, let’s randomly try the words from 41 to 50. (See appendix). DISCUSSIONS When we check this group we find that 6 words out of 10 الخرف-) Once, we were holding some wrong beliefs about Arabic, are attributed to human beings for example All the six words have الخرق- االخرم - الخعبل –.)المخزوم - الخزي but the picture became so clear when we specialized in is the loss of mind, while الخرف)) translation English-Arabic-English. That was the moment negative connotations as foolish person). Both words are=الخرق) when we came to understand how rich the Arabic language the second one is is to assimilate all tricks of other languages when it comes negative and hard to be attributed to a normal person. Then .(the one whose nose is partially cut) = االخرم)) to translation. We came to the fact that the problem was not we come to within the language but within the people who speak that It is an ugly picture of an ugly person. But the last one is -shamefulness);the word is so bad to describe some = الخزي) language. In our opinion effective education of Arabic is neglected in most of our education organizations; as little body for his deeds or behaviour as being shameful. Such an attention is given to this language, which is the symbol of adjective will make a person unsociable all his/her life. So our Arabic and Islamic identity. Then through our reading out of 20 words there are 12 words having negative associ- of the we could easily see how great and ations or negative qualities attributed to human beings. rich this language was/is and how it will continue to be. This paper is an attempt to reflect the beauty and value of Psychological Human Diseases this language. From our observations we began to feel how the Ara- To compare these results with the previous study of (Ab- bic letters play practical roles to precisely and effectively bas:1998), let’s refer to his research on page (174). Abbas convey the meaning though the strong vocalization and the said that from (250) words he enlisted from (ALmojam sound production of the letters (phonemes) of the Arabic Al- Alwaseet), there were about (60) words out of them, their which will be /X/ as it appears meanings attributed to human psychological disorders or [خ-phabets. The letter [kh in the phonetic chart description has attracted our attention physical abnormalities. The table below is a summary to re- -X]is employed by the Arabic speak-خ] to the negative role which we noticed this letter plays. So flect how this letter we decided to carry out some detailed investigations about ers to play the entire dirty job in the Arabic language. See it. Our plan was simple. We just took the first (100) entries Table (4:1), all the words here are describing psychological [خ-from an electronic dictionary in the internet then we made diseases or disorders of human beings. So the letter [X analysis of the functions that letter /X/ can do. We found that can work as a fast ready reference or glossary at the reach -is uttered was ugly, of any psychologist or psychiatrist to sum up all human psy /خ-almost every word in which the /kha sounding awful, negatively tasted, touched or smelt. So a chological state in a moment. as [خ – Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha Dustbin in the Arabic Language 51

attributed to psychological the human being showing pride and raising nose high in the /خ/ Words begin with human diseases air as a symbol of arrogance, though he/she has no pride to claim this positive quality. The rhythm of both words is No. Arabic Arabic English Equivalent very significant. There are two words that stand there to word Meaning describe characteristics only used for female. We can see which is used for a woman who turns into a (خرطت المرأة) Deceive خدع ّوغش خب خب .1 ((الخرمل To go mad-loses brain bitch or indulges in sinful practices. But the word فسد عقله وجن ُخبث. خبِل .2 To become rotten is about foolish lady. There are common words shared by خس -وردؤ خت .3 which is about making lies (خرص) Woman with bad behaviour men and women such as السيئة الخلق الخبقَّاء من .4 which is about human greed. Both are two bad (الخيشر) and النساء -deception human qualities. So the above table is a summary of nega خدع عن غفلة ختل .5 -Foolish person with tive qualities attributed to human beings, describing psy األحمق. الخجخاجة 6 unpredictable behavior chological problems or psychological disorder. All the words are so effective to carry the message to the address- To show pride and arrogance تكبر وتعاظم إخرنشم 7 .ees or the audiences في نفسه To make a lie كذب. خرص 8 Turned into bitch More Psychological Human Abnormalities فجرت خرطت المرأة 9 An old person, especially one In Table (4:2) also the following 15 words all about human فسد عقله من ِخرف 10 خضرع البخيل)) who has become weak . negative psychological characteristics such as الكبر -The foolish woman which is about a miser man or woman who tries to look gen المرأة الحمقاء الخرمل 11 .foolishness erous although that is against his true nature بكسر الراء ِخرق 12 حمق attributed to Psychological and /خ/ Words begin with Unbelievable physical Human Abnormalities الباطل ُالخزعبِل 13 The worse of everything No. Arabic Arabic English Equivalent الرذل من كل الخسيل 14 شيء word Meaning To raise his nose as sign of رفع أنفه اخرنطم 15 To pretend look nice but تسمح، وشيمته خضرع البخيل .1 pride and arrogance وتكبر opposite his real nature تأبى السماحة Weak and fragile of men الضعيف الخزرافة من 16 Failed in his profession حمق وخرق في خلب بكسر الالم .2 الخوار الرجال or trade عمله Greedy شره خيشربفتح 17 Feint deceiver الخداع ّالمكار الخلبوب .3 الشين To smote ones love with فتن قلبه وذهب به خلبسه .4 Also who flees from war هرب جبناً وبكسرها 18 charm because of great fear Fled, went away فر وهرب خلبص .5 Bad-worse in everything الرذل الرديء الخشل 19 Vile and bad mannered السيء الخلق ُالخندب ُوالخندع 6 Foolish person قمحألا .ةئيطحلا 20 والخسيس لطخلا Humiliation, weakness ِال ِذّلَّة والضعف الخناعة 7 Went mad جن خن البعير From Table (4:1) above we can see how Arabic employs 8 ,Treason, disloyalty الخائن الخيانة one letter out of (28) alphabets to play such a role. All the 9 20 words in the above table clearly describe the state of the traitor, conspirator Being humiliated and ّذل وخضع اخرمس human mind at one specific period. All the words are car- 10 weakened واخرمص .rying negative meanings or associations attributed to man The fool األحمق الخضاض Let’s examine some example. We find that words - num 11 A wretched man اللئيم ْالخنسر bers,1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 15, 17 and 20; all describe the state 12 underwent submissively خضع وانقاد خذئ له َ َخذأ، deceive (is a bad word 13=خب) of the human mind. The word وخذءاً -to describe a man or a women who practices deception op posite quality of truth and integrity. The same meaning is Subjected to carry out ذّهلل، ومنه خاضن خضن الجمل 14 orders immediately القوم -means to = الختل,deceive=خدع) expressed by the word to go mad or lose showing no rejection = خبل – خرف) ceive (. The two words mental abilities) both words express a high state of the hu- man mind when it is useless and unable to practice the Being openhanded is one of the excellent qualities highly function of thinking and taking right decisions. Foolishness valued by the Arab individual. There were famous people or being foolish has been expressed by three synonyms who were stamped as ‘bounteous’ and ‘generous’ and known foolishness or the state of being fool- for this quality all over the Arabian peninsula such as Hatim =الحمق -الخطل-الخرق) stands for the feint deceiver as (الخلبوب) ish). All words have something to do with the human cog- Al-Ta-ee. The word are two words that give bad quality of man (الخندب) both express the words إخرنشم-)اخرنطم) nitive abilities. The two words 52 IJALEL 8(2):45-60 is a di- Dirty and Awful Connotations (الخيانة) to being vile and bad-mannered. But the word kha] and-خ] which is Table (4:4), is about words that begin with the (خائن) sastrous word if someone is imprinted to be the state of committing treason, conspiracy or disloyalty. The describe general negative issues about awful and nasty fea- word may be used in different context to express bad social tures. The entire groups of words are very offensive. phenomenon of wife or husband each betrays his/her partner. kha] to express Dirty and Awful-خ] Words begin with It may carry also political connotations of someone who be- connotations trays his nation or his country, such as the famous case of the Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling who betrayed his No. Arabic Arabic English Equivalent country for the Nazi and stabbed his people on the back. word Meaning Useless floating materials ُغثاء السيل إذا الخث .1 carried by flood خلَّفه ونضب عنه Physical Human or Animal Abnormalities A cow discharging its remains ألقى مافي جوفه خثي البقر .2 من روث Table (4:3) consists of (15) words all of them have negative Animal remains الروث الخذق .connotation or denotations attributed to human beings or an- 3 Human remains الخراءة خرئ .imals. All the words describe some diseases that hit human 4 beings or animals. Rotten cotton القطن الفاسد في ُالخرقُح .5 براعمه there are 11 /خ-So out of the 15 words begin with /kha words, that is 73% of the total words describe a disease that Meat going bad - to get rotten فسد خزن اللحم 6 which is epilepsy-the ((الخطب affect human beings such as To stain with blood لطخه بالدم خشعمه sudden mental fit that attacks a person and makes him/her 7 To speak vulgarity نطق بالقبيح خفس means becoming 8 ((الختر lose control of himself/herself, while Change and becomes rotten تغير وفسد خلف الشيء 9 ِخرثت المرأة)) weak due to bad food or liquid. And the phrase خلوفاً -describes human obesity especially in woman whose but A person with very ugly face القبيح الوجه خس- tocks’ size becomes so big to attract attention. But there are 10 المستخس words out of the 15 words that is 20% describe diseases 3 Meat gets rotten with نتن خم اللحم affiliated only to animals. All the words describe one partic- 11 ular animal diseases especially of camel race, which is the offensive smell A gigantic man with ugly الضخم الكريه ُالخنابس من most familiar companion of the Nomads in their life. And 4 12 features المنظر الرجال words out of the 15 which is 27% refer to types of diseases Rotten hay or meat اليابس العفن ومن الخشيء من shared by both human beings and animals. So still the 13 اللحم اليابس النبات kha] is doing the dirty job as dustbin of all the negative-خ] words in the Arabic language. It is still employed to work as New born pig ولد الخنزير الخنَّوص 14 a scavenger to collect the garbage words and put them in the Pig رذق ناويح ريزنخلا Arabic Language dustbin. 15 attributed to physical Human or animal Abnormalities /خ/ Words begin with No Arabic word Arabic Meaning English Equivalent Attributed Animal to humans qualities - + Epilepsy or colds الصرع أو الزكام ُالخباط .1 + + To become weak due to bad food or water ضعف من مرض أو شراب ختر .2 - + Woman with fleshy buttocks ُضخمت خاصرتاها واسترخى لحمها ِخرثت المرأة .3 + - Camel disease on the neck داء يأخذ في عنق اإلبل الخرس الخزباز .4 + + To walk unevenly نفض رجله من َظلع خزعل الماشي .5 + + Scabies عمه الجرب خشف البعير 6 + + Castrated person or animal ضامر الخصيتين الخصي 7 - + To get old in skin ِهرم وترهل جلده خضرف 8 + - Camel disease داء يصيب اإلبل َالخفج 9 - + Knee disease داء يصيب المفاصل فيعرج منه ُالخمال 10 - + Nose disease where speech comes out from both داء في األنف يردد معه اإلنسان الخنَّب 11 mouth and nose كالمه من أنفه - + The hermaphrodite من يمل سمات االنوثة والرجولة معا ُالخنثى 12 - + Man walking like a wanton lady مشية فيها تكسر الخوجلى 13 + - Horse disease hits the muscles داء يصيب عضل الخيل ُالخناف 14 - + A man’s one eye getting smaller than the other صغرت إحدى عينيه وكبرت األخرى خيص الرجل 15 Total 11 7 as [خ – Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha Dustbin in the Arabic Language 53

-which are All the words are about peeling cutting scratching, open (خثي البقر) Let’s begin with the first words about cows discharging remains. The same meaning is sev- ing a gap, hitting something, disentangling, separating, cut- -which is the dirtiest word in the ting swiftly, and cutting part of the human body such as cut (الخراءة) ered by the word entire Arabic Dictionary as it is about the remains dis- ting a person’s nose. So all the words can be employed to charged by human beings. The word is so offensive when serve a dirty mission though the implementation of language. used in vulgar speech to insult someone as he or she is mere kha] at the-خ] :kha] in the Word-خ] khara). The rest of the words describe (rottenness) The Position of the-خرا) such words of number 5, 6, 9 and11, which are all about End and Middle of the Word things getting rotten, like meat or plants. But there are two has four positions in the Arabic word. It [خ-words 10 and 11 that describe a negative physical human The letter [kha -is about a person with ugly face, can appear initially-at the beginning of the word in the mid (المستخس) feature. The word is about a gigantic dle or at the end of the Arabic word or isolated at the end ( ُالخنابس من الرجال) where the other word But in all positions .[/ز/-/ر/] some other letters such as the kha]is also employed-خ] man with ugly features. The letter the role of the letter has never changed as it plays the scav- against animals. The last two words are about ‘pigs’. The enger’s role to collect the dirt of the Arabic language into its pig in Arabic literature is a dirty animal. Islamic religion rotten dustbin. deprives Muslims to eat its meat. So ‘pork’ is not consumed by Muslim community, where this animal’s meat is used. Position Phonetically Isolated Final Medial Initial The word also can sometimes be used as an insult. So if in word ـخ ـخـــ خــ خ /this would mean great insult. Glyph /kh/ /X (خنزير=someone is called (pig But the most surprising thing here is the word ‘pig’ begins form َّ which Referring to (Almojam Alwaseet), it is found (74) words (خنوص) kha]in Arabic as well as the word-خ] with -carrying the same negative denota [-خstands for the newborn pig that also begins with the same ending with the [kh letter. tive and connotative meanings. Out of these (74) roots about (76%) described human psychological disorders, physical Destruction, Scratching, Incision, Intrusion abnormalities or reflecting the feeling of dirt and awfulness. The next table can give a summary of such meanings. kha] still in bad position, where-خ] Table (4:5) is showing Table (4:6) above can support our discussion that the let- all the words on the table are expressing negative practic- kha]wherever it is found in the word plays the same-خ] ter kha] this time comes initially in the fifteen words-خ] es. The dirty game as garbage collector and does never change its which are describing destruction, disfigurement, mutilation [kha-خ] bad habits. Group (A) is about words where the and defacement. They all serve the same dirty job wherever comes in the middle of the word. All 16 words have negative they appear association whether they are qualities describing physical which means man with ((الشخت to express Destruction, human being features such as /خ/ Words begin with which means a fat man with much) َالدخنس) Scratching, Incision, Intrusion thin manners or flesh; or some others describing human behaviour such No. Arabic Arabic English Equivalent sarcastic). The same notion = السخرية) discontent and=السخط) word Meaning (kha] in column (B-خ] can be applied to words ending in Peel قشره خدشه .1 where we can find words with negative connotations- de Ruin scribing a human, animal or object characteristics. But in all خرب .2 -kha] is playing the same role of garbage collec-خ] Cut into pieces cases the شقه خرت الشيء .3 .Scratch with nail tor خدشه بِ ُظفره خرش الجسد .4 Dog fighting تخادشت ومزق تخارشت الكالب .5 ً /ha/=[ح] Letter بعضها بعضا To make a gap or a hole شقه وثقبه خرم الشيء 6 -but all the ,[خ-ha/ is the sister letter of [kha/=[ح] Letter -have different mean /ح-Hit the target with arrow tries that begin with the sound /ha أصابه به وأنفذه. خزه بالسهم 7 Cut meat ing according to its use, so the meanings of its derivatives حززه ولم يقطعه خدع اللحم 8 ,Cut and disentangle may be differentiated for dozens of purposes. Therefore قطعه وفصله خزع الشيء 9 Pierced into something there is often lack of sensory or moral bond, whether in شقه خرق الشيء 10 .Cut swiftly the single case or with the meanings of its derivatives قطعه بسرعة خذم الشيء 11 Hit the target with an According to (Abass:1998), that he referred to (Almojam أصاب الرمية خسق السهم 12 arrow Alwaseet) and found three hundred and eight root words وثبت فيها Twenty-two of them have .[-حbegin with the letter [ha Cut into pieces قطعه خدف الشيء 13 meanings that indicate genuine (human) feelings. Some وخذفه of them do not agree with the sound of the/ha/which is Cut part of the ear قطع طرفها خضرم األذن 14 soft and flexible, and some of them do not agree with this .Cut sound at all عطق. هفذخو 15 54 IJALEL 8(2):45-60

The position of the /X/ when it comes in the middle or at the end of the word in end position [خ-in medial position [kh [خ-kh] No Arabic word English Equivalent Arabic word English Equivalent Proud and daring to Debauchery بلخ Eye becomes large because of tumor لخصت عينه .1 Fainted داخ الرجل والبعير Large body الضخامة .2 Feeling proud and arrogant رضخ، زمخ Man with thin manners الشخت .3 Becomes badly-mannered َّطخ Fat with much flesh or meat َالدخنس .4 Foolish useless person رجل لُطخة Become s fat دخس .5 Foolish and obscene person المطاخ Things get bad ُوخش الشيء .6 With weak manners رجل موثَّخ ْالخلق Heart filled with fear نخب قلبه .7 To get thin after obesity بخبخ لحمه To range too far in useless speeches لخا لخيا .8 Whose back went in and his chest went out ِبزخ To become lean and weak سخف الشيء .9 A woman with big buttocks الدالخ من النساء Discontent السخط .10 The fat and loose man الربيخ من الرجال sarcastic السخرية .11 Getting too fat طنخ Feeling proud and arrogant زخف .12 Dirty person اإلخ بكسر الهمزة Become little and humble دخر دخوراً .13 Animal discharging liquid remains ثلخ الحيوان Stinginess- miserliness البخل .14 Fats change smell زنخ الدهن وسنخ Subjected and obedient بخع له .15

kha] we still find that-خ] Position Phonetically Isolated Final Medial Initial the role of the twin/jeem/with the in word the/jeem/works to serve positive meaning just like the/ha/ kha]in the-خ] and both letters play the opposite role of the ـح ـحــ حــ ح /Glyph /ha form Arabic language. So the /ha/ is the richest sound to express passion and X] and colloquial Sudanese Arabic-خ] warmth, and reflect the heart’s desires and tremors. Such a The kha]is not restricted to serve the standard-خ] sound with live glare in its upper layers becomes a melan- The role of the choly of emotions and passion expressing feelings of love Arabic, but it is also applicable to do the same job when used and nostalgia. It would have been better for the Arab indi- by the common people in colloquial Arabic or the (?mia), vidual to consider the/ha/an emotional oasis for the mean- which is spoken in different Arabic dialects throughout the kha]in many-خ] ings of tenderness, transparency, sweetness, and tales of Arab world. Many words that begin with the love (Abbas:1998). This situation of the/ha/is the opposite Arabic dialects serve the same negative association as the kha]in its standard version. The next table (4:7) can tell-خ] kha] which serves the meaning-خ] direction of its twin letter of waste, filth, ugliness physical, mental and psychological us how this letter is employed by the common Sudanese per- defects; although both letters are similar in their orthograph- son to serve these negative meanings or connotation in the ical form. Sudanese Arabic Dialect. can serve many [خ-Table (4:7) shows how the letter [kh .jeem functions in some local dialects of the Arabic Language/= [ج] Letter The table consists of three columns. The first column in- This letter expresses cohesion, resistance, scrambling and cludes some words that begin with the/kha/and express fullness; and the vast majority of the meaning of this letter passive situations or negative ideas. All or nearly all the indicates greatness and fullness. Despite the distribution of words in the three columns describe a human negative fea- the acoustic characteristics of the letter to express different tures, qualities or characteristics. For example, the first ,foolish person خدلة ,unskillful woman خملة) senses, 65% of the meanings qualify this letter to be one of three words is used to describe a خملة extravagant). The first word خمج the strongest of letters in the that serves positive meanings. woman who lacks skills of managing her own physical ap- pearance to look attractive, as well as being lacking ordi- Position Phonetically Isolated Final Medial Initial nary life skills such as lacking housewife skills. The word in word -extravagant) can be used in different context ac - خمج) cording the situation. So if the speaker is happy with a ـج ـجــ جــ ج /Glyph /Jeem form certain situation the word will be positively understood However, there are some sources that indicate negative and the opposite is true, if the speaker wants to criticize or psychological emotions and have tangible repercussion on condemn a certain feature or behavior as unaccepted; such the faces of people seeing or hearing it. So if we compare as spending extra money in trivial issues. The three words as [خ – Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha Dustbin in the Arabic Language 55

X]initial, medial or final in Sudanese colloquial Arabic-خ] Table (4.7) shows the No Initial English equivalent middle English equivalent final English equivalent Skinning animal سلخ obese تخة Unskillful woman خملة 1 Take out something by force ملخ Become obese تختخ Foolish person خدلة 2 Stained with blood or dirt لطخ extravagant اخمج Extravagant خمج 3 Subjected to instructions رضخ Kind of useless weak bird رخمة Talking nonsensicalities خرمجة 4 unwillingly Kind of useless tree مرخ bad mannered كيخة Useless person خايس 5 With bad nasty smell زنخ loose مخلخل Lazy person خامل 6 tasteless مسيخ offensive armpit or mouth بخرة gay خول 7 smell Slimy person تليخ Bad nasal sound ينخنخ Dose not accept loosing خرخار 8 Troublesome person لتيخ Fatty boy or girl مرخرخ villainous خسيس 9 Not well intact-loose person ملخلخ To share smoking a cigarette يخمس Useless boy خايس 10 Fatty boy or girl مرخرخ To touch someone’s buttocks نخس Addict to drugs-smoking خرمان 11 with finger

X]to express positive meanings-خ] useless boy) Words begins with خايس - خايس ,villainous خايس- خسيس ,gay (خول are taboo words which could hardly be used in normal sit- No. Arabic Arabic English Equivalent uations. If we move to the second column where the Word meaning -kha] comes in the middle, we also notice that all or al-خ] Honest صادقه خادنه most all the words describe human physical or psycholog- 1 Loved woman المرأة الحيية الخرود to become 2 تختخ ,obese تخة) ical characteristics. For example Still virgin and never البكر لم تُمس الخرود obese) both words describe physical state of man or wom- 3 an when they put on extra flesh and get overweight; but the touched Beautiful delicate young الشابة الحسنة الخلق الخرعب which is a kind of an eagle but the word is asso- 4 رخمة word lady الناعمة ciated with cowardice and useless person. It is sometimes ,Fertile-fertility of plant مترع بالوفرة الخصب is also an- 5 كيخة used to describe a person as an insult. The animal or woman )انسان-نبات-حيوان -other word used for useless person. Some words are at Wet and soft ندي خضل which 6 جخس tributed only to describe animals such as means castrated donkey, but it can sometimes be used to Bread العيش الخبز 7 [kha-خ] insult a male person. It is so hard to accept it. The Girl show genuine shyness اشتد حياؤها خفرت الفتاة may come at the end of the word as final letter and serves 8 Wind carrying good smell ّلطيب الريح الخمط with bad nasty 9 زنخ the same functions. Such words as To be clear or pure صفا من شوائبه خلص troublesome 10 لتيخ is slimy person تليخ tasteless مسيخ smell الشيء -person. They all reflect psychological description affiliat All the good deeds or االعمال الجيدة الخير ed to human beings. There are two words that may be un- 11 derstood in context when they are used to describe kids as intentions Garden with full trees and الحيقة الوارفة الخميلة fatty boy or girl. Both words 12 مرخرخ a loose person ملخلخ shades الظالل express contempt and dissatisfaction with such boys or girls, with such physical state to express looseness and Horse race االفراس الخيل 13 weakness in body and character. Beautiful young girl الشابة الناعمة حسنة الخود 14 الخلق [X-خ] Some bright side of the According to Abass (1998) “ The function of the dustbin To be fair we have to consider some positive words begin- will not change of course, if that wise housewife had once ning with this notorious letter. This time these words are giv- kha] is-خ] received (13) valuable beads of pearls and precious stones, ing positive and beautiful meanings. So when the but she by mistake, and unintentionally threw them into that produced with a bit further location at the back of the mouth dustbin with the garbage.” Abass wanted to say that the letter it will look so soft and tame. In this case we feel the mean- can sometimes have positive connotations similar to ings of tenderness, serenity and chastity compatible with the [خ-kha] -kha] can ex-خ] the above mentioned (13) jewels. This is the only good news way the sound is produced. In this mode the about this unfortunate Arabic letter, which was/is assigned press beautiful meanings. Surprisingly out the fifteen words to be like the dustbin, to serve and work as garbage collector on the table there are 8 words, more than 50% of the group of all the dirt in the Arabic language and all the and put in have good association, as they all stand to positively describe the dustbin. young women as delicate, beautiful, graceful and virgin. 56 IJALEL 8(2):45-60

in Arabic have [/خ-CONCLUSIONS 85% of all the words that begin with [/kh This paper focused on some characteristics of Arabic, but it negative connotative or denotative meaning. Is/are there any mainly dealt with one particular feature concerned with the similar letter/s in the alphabet of any language that play/s (39) functions of the Arabic letter in the Arabic language. We quot- this similar role as this /X/does in Arabic?” . ed (Abbas:1998)(37) who carried out an experimental study in But the most important finding is how the Arabic lan- Arabic on the characteristics of the Arabic letters in his book guage effectively works, at the level of the (phoneme) to (the Characteristics of the Arabic Letters: Khasais Alhroof employ the letters of the alphabet, to express with precise- ness, the language functions, as it is reflected in this paper, Alarabiah Wa m?aniha) which was published in 1998. He in [خ-which focused and revealed the task of the letter [kha tested the meanings of (23) characters from hundreds of tables the Arabic language. Arabic is proved to be rich and unique based on the accurate uses of the meaning as they appear in in the way of generating vocabulary, its grammar, its pho- the Suras and Verses of the Holy Quran. (Abbas:1998) through nology and its morphology, so it will face no dark fate as to his work found that every word he had studied showed a lin- be endangered or nominated as extinct. Our belief Arabic guistic miracle. He asserted that such work in such a way had will survive to impose and occupy a good position with never been investigated before by any Arab linguists. We fol- other great languages of our modern time, as enormous - lowed the same way by tracing the role of this Arabic letter in forts are being exerted to develop new strategies of teach- an electronic Dictionary. We came to the same results that this ing and learning, as well as imposing its official status as letter does play the very same role in the Arabic whether it is lingua franca and medium of education. Also the linguistic at the beginning, in the middle or at the end. It does not change computational efforts are seriously taken to develop the its habit to preserve this role for itself. Arabic Digital Content in the Internet. Arabic is a tool of So through this research we have investigated the role cultural exchange at the local and international level as it is of the Arabic Alphabet to show how this letter can play the the medium through which the Islamic civilization and the role of garbage collector to pool all the dirt of the Arabic Arabic wisdom are/were introduced to the world outside, seems-to [خ-language and put it the dustbin. The letter [kha to share the universal discourse of cultural dialogue on this some extent-to have this negative position at least in one lim- planet and spire for a bright future for man. The good news ited languages. The next quotation is one similar example of according to Crystal(41) in a BBC interview that Arabic in the situation of the [kha] in the Persian language. Someone addition to Chinse and Spanish could overtake English in is saying that, “In Persian language there is a letter which is the future. pronounced as if an animal growled or something was stuck in your throat and you try to put it out or to force a small amount of saliva come out of your throat. When we/you do REFERENCES this we/you produce the /kh/ sound. I want to know if there http://www.ahram.org.eg/archive/Issues-Views/ is any English word to have such a pronunciation. Or is there News/110051.aspx. online 2017 (38) any English name to have such a pronunciation in it?” The http://www.voltairenet.org/article145997.html. Retrieved quotation is one example of how this letter’s fate is so bad 13-11-2017 to suffer in Arabic as well as in the Persian language as the http://www.voltairenet.org/article145997.html. Retrieved above quotation indicates. 13-11-2017 But our intention-here-is to show how genius the Arabic http://www.m-a-arabia.com/site/16311.html.Retrieved Oct language is to assign one letter to play all the dirty games in 2017 the language use. It is proved through the investigation that https://www.britannica.com/topic/Semitic-languages.Re- the [kha] shows negative association, passive connotative trieved Oct 2017 and denotative meanings, whether it comes initial, medial http://www.un.org/ar/events/languageday/.Retrieved Oct or final in the word. The case is not limited to standard Ar- 2017 abic only but the phenomenon is also present in colloquial http://www.un.org/depts/OHRM/sds/lcp/Arabic/.Retrieved Arabic as in the Sudanese case, where the [kha] is found to Oct 2017 serve all the dirty meanings in the local Sudanese dialect. Crystal, David at: https://www.youtube.com/ The results of our investigation are so close to (Abbas:1998) watch?v=5Kvs8SxN8mc./Retrieved on 3-6-2018 who found that 85% of the words, which he extracted from Siddiek: 2010. Language Situation in post war Sudan. (Almojam Alwaseet), began with the [kha] were serving http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ies/article/ negative meanings or connotations in Arabic. This result view/5563/5298.Retrieved Oct 2017 is similar to ours, when we consulted an electronic dictio- https://documentsddsny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/ nary in the Internet of the first 100 entireties of the[kha] and NR0/282/62/IMG/NR028 6-2018 found that 75% of the words that begin with this letter serve http://www.mbc.net/ar/programs/mbc-news/worldwide/ar- negative and dirty functions in the Arabic language. (See ticles/.Online 11/2017https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En- appendix) glish_in_computing. Retrieved Oct 2017 To our satisfaction we were keen to know if there is any Farghaly. Ali. http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/ language in the world in which one letter or letters play the distributed/A/bo5667079.html Online Retrieved 12-11- same role of the Arabic [kha] in those specific languages. We 2017 had put our question in the Web Site that, “I have found that Ibid. 12-11-2017 http://www.alweeam.com.sa/315000/% as [خ – Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha Dustbin in the Arabic Language 57

Crystal, David in an interview @ https://www.youtube.com/ Abbas, Hass.(1998). Khasias Alhroof Al?rabia. The Associa- watch?v=_IJk5Tzh8jM. Retrieved 10-2017 tion of Arab Writers. Beirut Lebanon. Online: http://eli- Crystal in an interview at https://www.youtube.com/ brary.mediu.edu.our/books/MAL07052.pdf Retrieved watch?v=IJk5Tzh8jM, Retrieved 10-2017 10-2017 https://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki/Retrieved on 3-6-2018 Abbas, Hass.(1998). Khasias Alhroof Al?rabia. The Associ- https://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki/Retrieved on 3-6-2018 ation of Arab Writers. Beirut Lebanon. (http://elibrary. http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/12/17/62224.html. mediu.edu.our/books/MAL07052.pdf) 23-7-2017 also see https://https://www.quora.com/unanswered 5-11-2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vt1qpEOZmc.Re- Abbas, Hass.(1998). Khasias Alhroof Al?rabia. The Associa- trieved 17-10 2017 tion of Arab Writers. Beirut Lebanon. Online: (http://eli- https://www2.revolvy.com/topic/Arabic%20phonolo- brary.mediu.edu.our/books/MAL07052.pdf Retrieved gy&item_type=topic. Retrieved 10-2017 10-2017 http://education.seattlepi.com/characteristics-arabic-lan- Abbas, Hass.(1998). Khasias Alhroof Al?rabia. The Associa- guage-5872.html Retrieved 10-2017 tion of Arab Writers. Beirut Lebanon. Online: http://eli- http://education.seattlepi.com/characteristics-arabic-lan- brary.mediu.edu.our/books/MAL07052.pdf Retrieved guage-5872.html Retrieved 10-2017 10-2017 http://education.seattlepi.com/characteristics-arabic-lan- Abbas, Hass.(1998). Khasias Alhroof Al?rabia. The Associa- guage-5872.html Retrieved 10-2017 tion of Arab Writers. Beirut Lebanon. Online: http://eli- https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/wrote. Retrieved Oct 2017 brary.mediu.edu.our/books/MAL07052.pdf Retrieved D. Newman1 – Arabic Phonetics: Sound Descriptions http:// 10-2017 www.kau.edu.sa/Files/0001063/files/2826_phon5.pdf Abbas, Hass.(1998). Khasias Alhroof Al?rabia. The Associa- Retrieved 10-2017 tion of Arab Writers. Beirut Lebanon. Online: (http://eli- D. Newman – Arabic Phonetics: Sound Descriptions http:// brary.mediu.edu.our/books/MAL07052.pdf Retrieved www.kau.edu.sa/Files/0001063/files/2826_phon5.pdf 10-2017 Retrieved 10-2017 Abbas, Hass.(1998). Khasias Alhroof Al?rabia. The Associ- http://dictionary.sensagent.com/ha%CA%BE/en-en/Re- ation of Arab Writers. Beirut.Lebanon. trieved 10-2017 https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/197683-Pro- http://arabicquick.com/learn-the-arabic-letter-kha/Retrieved nunciation-Kh-in-English 10-2017 https://www.quora.com/unanswered 5-11-2017 Abbas, Hassan.(1998). “Khasais Alhroof Al?rabia”. Associ- Crystal. David. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IJk- ation of the Arab Writers. Beirut. 5Tzh8jM, Retrieved 27-3-2019 58 IJALEL 8(2):45-60 in an electronic Dictionary at:https://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki (خ-The first (100) entries begin with (kh No. Arabic Arabic English Related to Related to Related to Positive Negative Neutral Word Meaning Equivalent humans animals objects association association - + - - - + Men of deception الرجل الخداع الخب 1 - + + - - + Subjection to الخشوع اإلخبات 2 Allah-human - + - - - + sly الردىء الخبيث 3 + + + - - - The news االخبار الخبر 4 + - - - - - bread من القمح الخبز 5 + - - - - - Sort of sweet نوع من الحلوى الخبيص 6 - + - + + + hit ضرب خبط 7 - + - - + + madness الجنون الخبل 8 + - - - - - Something put يحمل في الحضن الخبنة 9 on lab - + - - + + hide الدس الخابية 10 - + - - + + treachery الغدر الختر 11 - + - - - + deception خدع ختل 12 - + + + + + The last اآلخر الخاتم 13 - + + - - + circumcision اخذ شيء من الختان 14 الذكر او المراة - + + + - - Milk going bad خثر اللبن الخثورة 15 - + - - + - Abortion of القاء الشيء الخثي 16 animals + + + - - + shyness الحياء الخجل 17 + + - - + + abortion السقط الخداج 18 + - - + - - Billow-hole in الوسادة المخدة 19 ground + - + - - + Protection for الستر الخدر 20 woman - + - + - - wine الحمر الخندريس 21 - + - - - + Scratching face الخرش الخدوش 22 - + - - - + betray اراد به مكروها الخديعة 23 - + - - - + Servant-slave االجير أو العبد الخدم 24 - + - - - + Boy –girl friend الصديق -الصديقة الخدن 25 - + - + - + Stoning الرمي بالحصى الخذف 26 somebody - + - - - + To let somebody تركه بغير عون الخذالن 27 down - + - - + + Human feces العذرة الخرء 28 - + - - + + destruction الدمار الخراب 29 + + - + - - Type of plan نيات الخردل 30 - + - - - + Payment of اتاوة الخراج 31 money + + - + + + Roaring of water صوت الماء – الخرير 32 snoring - صوت الرجل + + + + - - Pinning the show اداة للطعن المخرز 33 - + - - - + dumbness عدم القدرة على خرس 34 الكالم - + - - - + lying الكذب الخرص 35 - + - - - + hit الحت الخرط 36 + - - - + + Nose - trunk االنف الخرطوم 37

(Contd...) as [خ – Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha Dustbin in the Arabic Language 59

(Continued) No. Arabic Arabic English Related to Related to Related to Positive Negative Neutral Word Meaning Equivalent humans animals objects association association - + - - + + weakness الضعف الخرع 38 - + - - - + Loss of mind فساد العقل الخرف 40 - + - - - + foolishness الهبل الخرق 42 - + - - + + Whose nose is من قطع طرف األخرم 43 partially cut انفه + - - + - - Bamboo tree نوع من الشجر الخيزران 44 + - - + - - Kind of cloth نوع من الثياب الخز 45 - + - + - - The unbelievable اباطيل الخزعبيل 46 + - - + - - pottery الفخار الخزف 47 - + - - + - Animal with torn مثقوب االنف مخزوم 48 nose like camel + - - + - - safe مخبا االشياء او الخزانة 49 الفلوس الخ - + - - - + To get in يقع في بلوى خزي 50 trouble-fail - + - - - + To be subjected خضع خسأ 51 to superior - + - - + + Lost -loss الضالل والهالك الخسار 52 - + - + - - eclipses اختفاء القمر خسوف 53 + + - + + + Dry tree- rough اليابس من الخشب 54 الشجر-الغليظ - + - + - - Sound of guns صوت السالح الخشخشة 55 - + - + + + subjugate الخضوع الخشوع 56 + + - - + - The bat الخفاش الخشاف 57 + + - - + + Nose – nose االنف- داء يصيب الخشم 58 disease االنف - + - + + + rough ضد اللين – غير الخشونة 59 حسن الملمس - + + - + + fear الخوف الخشية 60 + - - + + + rich الغني الخصب 61 + + - - - + Waist- cold وسط اإلنسان- الخصر 62 االصابة بالبرد - + - - - + poverty الفقر الخصاصة 64 - + - - + + danger الخطر الخصل 65 - + - + + + eneour المنازع الخصم 66 - + + - + + castrated الذي فقد خصيتاه الخصى 67 + - - - - + henna الحناء الخضاب 68 + - - - - + witnessed two من عاصر فترتين المخضرم 69 historical periods تاريخيتين + - - + - - wading تحريك الماء الخضخضة 70 - + - - + + To be subjected االنقياد الخضوع 71 + - - + - - Soft plant النبات الناعم الخضل 72 - + - - + + Chewing food االكل بجميع الفم الخضم 73 with all mouth - + - - - + wrong ضد الصواب الخطأ 74 - + - - - - disaster المصيبة الخطب 75 - + - - - - danger الهالك الخطر 76 + - - - - - line رسم مستقيم الخط 77

(Contd...) 60 IJALEL 8(2):45-60

(Continued) No. Arabic Arabic English Related to Related to Related to Positive Negative Neutral Word Meaning Equivalent humans animals objects association association - + - - + + االستالب الخطف 78 - + - - - + المنطق الفاسد الخطل 79 المضطرب - + - + - - حبل لقيادة البعير الخطام 80 + - - - - - ما بين القدمين الخطوة 81 + - - - + االسرار الخفت 82 + + - - - + الحارس الخفير 83 + + - + - - حشرة الخنفساء الخنفساء 84 - + - + + + االنحادر الى اسفل الخفض 85 + - - + - - نعل البعير الخف 86 - + - - + + تحرك واضطرب خفقة 87 - + - - - - غير المرئي الخفاء 88 + + - - - - شقوق في االرض األخقوق 89 - + - - - + الخديعة بالكالم الخالبة 90 + - - - - - من البحر شرم منه الخليج 91 + - + - - + دوام البقاء الخلد 92 - + - - - + استالب اختالس 93 - - + - - + الطاعة وترك اإلخالص 94 الرياء - + + - - + اشرك بين شيئين الخليط 95 - + - - - + العزل الخلع 96 + + - - - + التابعون من بعد خلف 97 + - - + + + كل ما اوجد الله الخلق 98 - + - + + + العلة الخلل 99 - + - - - - المكان الذي ال الخالء 100 شيء فيه Total 65 32 28 11 75 35