ma'ruf

English

Alternative forms

• ma'rūf, maruf, marūf, mārūf

Etymology

Borrowed from Classical Persian مَعْرُوف (ma'rūf, “famous”).

Noun

ma'ruf (plural ma'rufs)

1. (linguistics) A class of vowel used in various Arabic script languages, including Classical Persian, Dari Persian, Kurdish, Pashto and Urdu, among others:
   1. A vowel phoneme that is phonemically equivalent to a vowel in Classical Arabic.

      Antonym: majhul

      • 1902, Indo-Iranian phonology (Indo-Iranian Series)‎^[1], volume 2, United States: The Columbia University Press:

        The New Persian [of Iran], as is well known, has confused in many words the majhūl (' unknown [to the Arabs]' =Persian sounds) vowels ē, ō with the ma'rūf ('known [to the Arabs]'=Arabic sounds) vowels ī, ū.
        The Judaeo-Persian and the Baluci, like the Indian pronunciation of New Persian, maintain clearly the original distinction between the majhūl and the ma'rūf vowels.

   2. (by extension) The pronunciation, or reading, of a semivowel or other vocalic character as a vowel phoneme that is similar to its normal phonemic value in Classical Arabic. Contrasted with majhul.
      • 1921, “The Unknown Yā in Persian”, in Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona‎^[2], volumes 3-4, pages 86-87:

        [...] there are two kinds of Yā in Persian, namely, the Ma'rūf and the Majhūl. The Ma'rūf or known Yā is the Yā which occurs in such words as رقیب, تیر, شیر (milk), دید, پیل etc., while the Majhūl or Unknown Yā occurs in words such as خویش, تیز, شیر (lion), سپید etc.

      • 1910, R. C. Busher, A Complete Urdu Course Consisting of the Essentials of Grammar, Progressive Exercises, Readinglessons and Vocabularies, Longmans, Green and Co.:

        If the stem ends in either ی-ma'rūf (i) or ی-majhul (e), the letter ج is inserted, for the sake of euphony, between the stem and the termination: e.g., from پینا to drink, we have پینجیئے, پیجیو, and پیجییگا, from دینا we have دیجیئے, etc.

      • 1872, John Dowson, A Grammar of the Urdū Or Hindūstānī Language‎^[3]:

        Mârūf مَعروُف and majhul مَجھوُل, known and un-known. These Arabic terms are applied to the letters و wāo and ی ye. In Arabic the simple vowel sounds of these two letters are ū and ī, the sounds o and e are unknown in that language; so ū and ī are said to be mârūf, but o and e are majhūl. The majhūl sounds are sometimes called Âjamī or Persian.