Editing Classical Arabic (section)

===Vowels===
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|+[[Monophthong]] phonemes
! rowspan="2" |
! colspan="2" | Short
! colspan="2" | Long
|-
! [[Front vowel|Front]]
! [[Back vowel|Back]]
! [[Front vowel|Front]]
! [[Back vowel|Back]]
|- style="text-align: center;"
! [[Close vowel|Close]]
| {{IPA link|i}}
| {{IPA link|u}}
| {{IPA link|iː}}
| {{IPA link|uː}}
|-
![[Mid vowel|Mid]]
|
|
|{{IPA|(eː)}}<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Studies |first=Sibawayhi |title=solomon i.sara_sibawayh on imalah-text translation |url=https://www.academia.edu/36974800 |language=en |website=Academia.edu}}</ref>
|
|- align="center"
! [[Open vowel|Open]]
| colspan="2" | {{IPA link|a}}
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|aː}}
|}
:Notes:
:* {{IPA|[ɑ(ː)]}} is the allophone of {{IPA|/a/}} and {{IPA|/aː/}} after uvular and emphatic consonants
:* {{IPA|[eː]}} arose from two separate sources, often conflated:
:**The contraction of the triphthong {{IPA|*ayV}}. Some Arabs said ''banē'' (< *banaya) for ''banā'' ("he built") and ''zēda'' (< *zayida) for ''zāda'' ("it increased"). This {{IPA|/eː/}} merged with {{IPA|/aː/}} in later Classical Arabic and most modern Arabic dialects.<ref name=":0" />
:**A completely different phenomenon called [[imāla]] led to the raising of {{IPAslink|a}} and {{IPA|/aː/}} adjacent to a sequence {{IPA|i(ː)C}} or {{IPA|Ci(ː)}}, where C was a non-emphatic, non-uvular consonant, e.g. ''al-kēfirīna'' < ''al-kāfirīna'' ("the infidels"). Imala could also occur in the absence of an i-vowel in an adjacent syllable. It was considered acceptable Classical Arabic by Sibawayh, and still occurs in numerous modern Arabic dialects, particularly the urban dialects of the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean.
:* [{{IPA|eː}}] may have been the original pronunciation of a final ی which is otherwise pronounced as [{{IPA|aː}}]. In the Kisā'i and Hamzah recitations of the Qur'an, this pronunciation is used, whereas in the Hafs pronunciation {{IPA|aː}} is used instead. An example of this can be seen in the names Mūsā (Moses), 'īsā (Jesus), and Yahyā (John), which would be pronounced as Musē, 'īsē and Yahyē in the former two manners of recitation.