How do you spell لكن in Arabic?

The Arabic word لكن means but; however. The word is usually written like this: لكن.

However, sometimes it is written like لاكن, which is similar to how it should be pronounced: “laakin”. But why do some people simply write لكن?

Actually, all the words mentioned above should be written with a strange vertical dash:

This brings us to the topic of the so-called dagger Aleph (أَلِف خَنْجَرِيَّة as خَنْجَر means dagger). This kind of Aleph – ...ٰ.… – has to do with the history of the script.

The most famous word with a dagger Aleph is the word Allah – in Arabic: الله – because the singular word for a god in Arabic is: إلٰه

Why is that?

The original Semitic alphabet had no vowel signs. Eventually, some vowels came to be marked with letters, but in the Qur’an you still have many words whose (long) vowels are not marked as we are used today.

Usually people don’t notice this because the Qur’an is fully vocalized, but for example, if you read the first Sura 1 al-Fātiha (سورة الفاتِحة), you will see that the word الْعالَمِين in the second verse has no Aleph. Nor does the word مالِك in the fourth verse. They have daggers instead.

Let’s look at them (notice that some browsers might not display the signs properly):

Eventually, the script became more orderly and today we have absolute rules. However, some words, including grammar words like هٰذا and religious words like اْلرَّحْمٰن are still spelled in the old way and vocalized with daggers.

Note: The same happens in Hebrew. Old Biblical names like כהן (“Cohen” which means priest in Hebrew) and שלמה (“Shlomo”; meaning: Solomon, son of David; in Arabic: سُلَيْمان) are spelled in the old way, instead of כוהן and שלומו.

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