RAMADAN/RAMZAN.

Today is the first day of Ramadan, and Nancy Gandhi reminds us that in the Indian subcontinent it's known as Ramzan. So I thought I'd explain the d/z variation, for those who (as is quite natural) find it confusing.

The Arabic letter Daad (I'm using D for the sound normally written as d with a dot underneath) represents one of the "emphatic" consonants peculiar to the language; I won't try to describe their articulation in detail (especially since I have no confidence in my ability to pronounce them correctly), but they involve retraction of the tongue and pharyngealization, and this particular one is so difficult for foreigners to produce that Arabs sometimes call themselves "the people of the (letter) Daad." In most of the Arab world it is a stop, but in Iraq it is a fricative, like the /th/ of the (but with "emphasis"). Since it was from Iraq that Persia was conquered, the Persians borrowed this letter (like the other voiced fricatives of Arabic) as /z/, and since it was via Persia that the Turks and Indians received Islam (and along with it the Arabic language), words with Arabic D are represented in the Turkic languages and in Hindi/Urdu with z. Thus the names Zia (as in General Zia ul-Haq) for Arabic Dia and Reza for Arabic RiDa, and thus ramazan (Turkish) and ramzan (Hindi/Urdu) for Arabic ramaDaan. And a Ramadan mubarak to all my Muslim readers!