Talk:Alif


 * See also Talk:Aleph, the talk page for the article to which the article formerly here has been redirected.

Proposal to merge
I don't support the proposal to merge this with Aleph (letter): I think it would be too confusing to have both Hebrew and Arabic letters in the same article. Hebrew and Phoenician together is probably OK since the names are essentially the same and there are the same number of letters in the same order. But the Arabic letters ought to have their own series of articles. --rossb 13:53, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * on second thoughts, I agree. This will mean that we ultimately could have several articles on waw (letter), too, waw (Arabic), waw (Hebrew) etc.; until somebody does that, there will still be some articles 'shared' by the various Semitic alphabets. In the case of Alif, there is enough Arabic-specific material that can be added here. dab (&#5839;) 11:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)


 * on third thoughts, looking at beth (letter), ayin and friends, I suggest the following: Seeing that these article essentially treat the Phoenician letter, plus its various descendants, I would propose moving them from the Hebrew to the Phoenician name as their title. There can then be a "Hebrew", "Aramaic" and "Arabic" section as required. It makes sense to discuss these letters together; having independent "Hebrew" and "Arabic" articles will just lead to overly short articles that heavily rely on each other: better discuss it in one place. I have made articles on the six Arabic letters that have no direct Phoenician counterpart (Ḏāl etc.). In principle, there can also be an independent article on Arabic šīn: However, this will be able to do little more than give the glyphs, and refer to Shin (letter) where the letter is discussed in historical context. Until somebody thinks it necessary to create all these Arabic letter articles, the Arabic names just redirect to the Hebrew ones (or, by my proposal, to the Phoenician ones). dab (&#5839;) 10:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with dab in that there shouldn't be separate articles for hebrew arabic phoenician etc.. If you do the moves, that will fine by me; i'll change the templates on my proposal for the letters. I'm going to need some help with the arabic section. СПУТНИК ССС Р 13:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I've made Heth (letter) into a sample article looking how I think the 22 artcles linked from History_of_the_alphabet could be organized. I've made Semitic abjads a redirect to the history article, but it could also be an independent sub-article treating the descendents of Proto-Canaanite. Alternatively, the scope of Proto-Canaanite alphabet itself could be extended to include all descendent abjads. dab (&#5839;) 13:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * on second thoughts, the intro lacks precision. It should be, because the P-C name is reconstructed (compare e.g. Haglaz)
 * Ḥet is the reconscructed name of the eighth letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician [[Image:phoenician_heth.png|15px|]],  Syriac  ܚ, Hebrew  (also , heth)  , and Arabic    (in abjadi order).
 * dab (&#5839;) 13:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Alif meaning
So when the term is used, say as the name of the female Senegalese rap group, Alif, does it mean the same as the western "alpha'? Or are there secondary meanings to the word? --Knulclunk 13:08, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope, there's been some translation confusion. This term can mean many things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:30a:c0be:2e60:f495:c4b9:ad0f:aae (talk) 20:25, 5 January 2016‎ (UTC)