9th Letter: dhael

MaRHabaen to the 9th dreamscape.  Can you find the 5 symbols in the Suura?

1) That little cat hiding in the hole in the tree tells us this in the 9th letter because cats are said to have nine lives.


2) The shape of this letter is the shape of the dhole's gaping mouth pointed up at the hole the cat is hiding in.


3) The sound of this letter is the "th" sound found in only a few English words like "that," "these," "those."  More often than not, our English th makes a non-vocalized sound like in the words "think" and "through."  So why is the animal in this picture spelled with a "dh" and not a "th" you might ask?  Make the "d" sound with your mouth, and then make the "t" sound.  Notice how your tongue goes to the exact same spot in your mouth.  It is not your tongue that makes the difference between these two sounds, it is your throat.  Your vocal cords vibrate for d and not for t.  It's the same thing with "dh" and "th."  In both sounds you put your tongue between your teeth.  The "dh" is vocalize in the throat, and the soft th is not.  In English we only use the soft th in spelling whether vocalized or not, but we should use both the "dh" and "th" instead for greater clarity.  And in fact, we do now use "dh" in new foreign lone words in English.  English evolves rapidly which is why it is so hard to spell in English.  This wild jackal-like canine from India is spelled dhole in English.  Pronounce it with the vocalized "th."  When we transliterate words with this Arabic letter we will use the lowercase "dh."   


4) None of the animals in this picture are black, so we have to pronounce vowels following this letter as Light vowels.


5) This dhole is chasing the cat up the tree on a sunny day.  This is a Solar letter and you will have to double it to reflect it over any immediately preceding "L" sounds in a word.


AS A WORD


"dhuu" means:
I. (preposition) possessor of, owner of, holder of, endowed with, having
-- This preposition would not be used to say that the dhole was the possessor of the tree.  Rather it would be used to say that the dhole has red hair or a bad temper.  
-- Imagine the cat saying "YOU need to cool off your red-hot temper dhole!"


Here's another picture of dhole in case you've never seen a real dhole before--rare are the animals who have a name starting with a vocalized th/dh sound that we can use as an icon for this sound!  This might be a harder one to remember at first, but work on it.  We need this character for future stories.  This is going to be a foundation for much more that just learning this letter.  I used to think of a cat saying "that's all folks" at the end of an old fashion cartoon, but we need a more flexible icon than that for our future vocab building stories.  Go with this!  Here's the real dhole.  Get to know him.