2414: Sun- and Moon-Letters Jul 31, 2021

In Arabic and Maltese grammar, there are letters known as 'sun letters' while the rest are 'moon letters'. This is a direct translation of the Arabic حروف شمسية‎ (churūf shamsiyyah) and حروف قمرية (churūf qamariyyah) respectively. The distinction is that sun letters see the [l] of the definite article الْـ (al-) assimilate with the following letter, such as in 'the sun' which is الشمس (al-shams) but assimilates to (ash-shams) with a geminated consonant, while 'the moon' القمر (al-qamar) remains as such, hence the names. There are equal numbers of overall sun and moon letters in Arabic including ﻝ [l] which means [l] gets assimilated by [l], but Maltese there are more moon letters including L [l].