Nunation


Nunation, in some Semitic languages such as Literary Arabic, is the addition of one of three vowel diacritics to a noun or adjective.
This is used to indicate the word ends in an alveolar nasal without the addition of the letter nūn. The noun phrase is fully declinable and syntactically unmarked for definiteness, identifiable in speech.

Literary Arabic

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When writing Literary Arabic in full diacritics, there are three nunation diacritics, which indicate the suffixes -un , -in /-in/, and -an /an/. The orthographical rules for nunation with the fatḥah sign is by an additional alif, above or above .
In spoken Arabic, nunation only exists in a few expressions, with -an.
Since Arabic has no indefinite article, nouns that are nunated are often indefinite. However, many definite nouns can also be nunated: for example, in the expression أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ الله, in which the name محمد Muḥammad, a definite noun, is nunated to مُحَمَّدًا Muḥammadan to indicate that it is in the accusative case Names of people are treated as definite nouns in the grammar of Literary Arabic.

Akkadian language

Nunation may also refer to the -n ending of duals in Akkadian.