Solar letters
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In this article, phonemes are transliterated as in the article DIN 31635 (see also Arabic transliteration).
In the Arabic language, the solar letters or sun letters are the set of letters that, at the start of a word, do assimilate with the ﻝ (l) of a preceding article. There are fourteen of these consonants (ﻥ ,ﻝ ,ﻅ ,ﻁ ,ﺽ ,ﺹ ,ﺵ ,ﺱ ,ﺯ ,ﺭ ,ﺫ ,ﺩ ,ﺙ ,ﺕ; transliterated as t, ṯ, d, ḏ, r, z, s, š, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ, l, n). The remaining fourteen letters are called lunar letters.
When followed by a solar letter, the Arabic article al- is pronounced by geminating the initial consonant of the noun (while in orthography, the writing ﻝ| is retained, and the gemination may be expressed by putting šadda on the following letter).
The solar letters all have in common that they are dental, alveolar and postalveolar consonants in the classical language, and the lunar letters are not. (ج / ǧ is pronounced postalveolar in most varieties of Arabic today, but was actually a palatalized voiced velar plosive in the classical language, and is thus considered a lunar letter.)
