17th Letter: Tha (dialectic Za in the gulf)

MaRHabaen to the 17th dreamscape.  Can you find the 5 symbols in the Suura?

1) The picture of the airplane with the 17 year old pilot who just got his license alerts us to the fact that this is the 17th letter of the Arabic alphabet.


2) The shape of the Zither with is bow and sheets of music give us the complex shape of this letter.  Basically, it's just like the last letter except we have to include the dot in the gap between the round bulge and the pole.


3) The sound of the word Zither gives us both possible pronunciations of this letter across the Arabic speaking world.  A Dark Th is the proper MSA sound, but a Dark Z is a common alternate.  The Zither is an Eastern European instrument that is like a cross between the banjo and the violin.  It's the perfect icon for this letter even though we usually use animals because it's hard to find th/dh words.  Remember thoth and the dhole?  This is the 3rd word we have to pull from obscurity because th/dh sounds in English words for concrete (graphic) nouns are so rare.


4) The Zither is Black in this dreamscape so we know the letter is Dark.  Normally we will transcribe this sound a Capital "D" + h because "Dh" emphasizes that this sound is both Dark and vocalized.  The dhole is vocalized but not Dark.


5)  The teen pilot is flying during the day, so this is a Solar (Sun) letter.


AS A WORD


Dhaii (Pronounced like a deeper, throatier version of the old English word Thy) means
I.  honeycomb
-- Imagine the young pilot stuck the Zither to giant honeycomb in the front seat of the plane to keep it from blowing out.