License to Spell

Diagnosis: Spelling

Arabic text in question

Arabic text as it should be

Note: You don’t use diacritics (تشكيل) in everyday Arabic. We use them here to clearly explain the grammar, spelling and meaning of words. To avoid confusion, we generally ignore auxiliary vowels that are necessary for pronunciation to avoid consonant clusters.

Analysis

This is a picture of a promotional postcard from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) aimed at recruiting Arabic speakers:

It features the Arabic phrase إكتشف الحقيقة, meaning Discover the Truth. Above the main message, in smaller white Arabic letters, it asks: كضابط لغات في وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية… هل تعرف ما يمكن أن تنجزه؟. This translates to: As a language officer at the CIA… do you know what you can accomplish?

There is a spelling mistake in the word إكتشف. Correct would be اِكْتَشِفْ اَلْحَقِيقَةَ

In Arabic, selecting the correct type of Hamza (همزة) is essential for grammatical accuracy:

• إِكْتَشِفْ (ʾiktashif) – starting with a cutting Hamza (هَمْزةُ الْقَطْعِ): إ. This is technically a spelling mistake in this context.

• اِكْتَشِفْ (iktashif) – starting with a connecting Hamza (هَمْزةُ الْوَصْلِ), also called Hamza of liaison: اِ. It is an extra letter that is used to avoid consonant clusters. In Arabic, you cannot start a word with a letter that has no vowel, i.e., with a سُكُونٌ. This is the grammatically correct form for the imperative of a VIII-verb (اِفْتَعَلَ) such as اِكْتَشَفَ.

Explanation

The verb اِكْتَشَفَ, meaning to discover, belongs to form VIII-verbs (الْفِعْلُ الْمَزِيدُ بِحَرْفَيْنِ). The imperative of these verbs always starts with همزة الوصل, i.e., ٱ or ا, and not with همزة القطع which would be أ or إ. Only verbs that are already enhanced by a glottal stop (pattern أَفْعَلَ – Western grammarians call them IV-verbs) start with a glottal stop in the imperative. The verb in question, اِكْتَشَفَ, follows the pattern اِفْتَعَلَ. The initial letter is only there to fix the pronunciation.

Unlike همزة القطع, which is always pronounced, همزة الوصل appears as a plain Aleph (ا). Its pronunciation depends on whether it starts speech (= glottal stop) or follows another word (not pronounced).

Thus, the correct spelling for the command “Discover!” is اِكْتَشِفْ (iktashif).

Personal Note

Confusing همزة الوصل and همزة القطع is a common spelling error in modern Arabic, even in official publications and advertisements. My guess is that some PR agency working for the CIA screwed this up. But you never know. Maybe it was just a very sophisticated way of checking to see if Arabic speakers would catch the error.

I pointed out the error to the CIA, but never got a response. This was several years ago. The error may have been corrected or, more likely, that the ad no longer exists anyway.

Source: Print

Time the picture was taken: July 2017

Location: United States

Credit
Picture credit: Gerald Drißner
Added: 04/04/2025 Gerald by Drißner

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