ذ — zal
«zal» is a consonant of the Urdu script, read as “z (bookish)”. Reads as a plain z: the voiced th of "this" it once carried survives only in the shape. For example, in the word “ذات” — lineage. The Urdu alphabet has 38 letters in total. The same angle as د, with a dot on top. Bookish words: ذات "lineage". It appears, for example, in the word “ذرا انتظار کیجیے” — wait a moment.
In short
| Character | ذ |
| Name | zal |
| Sound | z (bookish) |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 21st of 40: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are د and ر, appears in 28 words of this site.
How to type ذ
- On a phone: add the Urdu keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0630 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0630.
- Unicode code point: U+0630. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Reads as a plain z: the voiced th of "this" it once carried survives only in the shape
Other written forms
The same character is written differently on a shop sign and in a book. Here are all the forms you may meet.
| Form | Character | Note |
|---|---|---|
| final | ـذ | joins only from the right |
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- ذاتzatlineage
The character in the “د ذ ر ز ژ — tails with no beginning” group
Letters that join only from the right and so never change shape inside a word. Each pair shares one skeleton: an angle, or a stick with a tail. The second letter of the pair carries the dot. The retroflexes ڈ and ڑ live in the family above — Urdu built those itself.
Words with this character
- ذرا انتظار کیجیےzara intizar kidzhiyewait a moment
- ذائقہzaiqataste
- مذہبmazhabreligion
- ذرا دھیمےzara dhimequieter, please
- ذمہ داریzimme dariresponsibility
- ذریعہzariyasource
- کاغذ کی نقلkaghaz ki naqlcopy of a document
- کاغذkaghazpaper
- مذاکراتmuzakiratnegotiations
- ذمہ داریzimme dariobligation
- مصنوعی ذہانتmasnoi zehanatartificial intelligence
- ذہنی دباؤzehni dabaostress
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «zal» it is “z (bookish)”, as in the word “ذات”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 38 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Urdu character ذ read?
As “z (bookish)” — it is a consonant of the Urdu script. Reads as a plain z: the voiced th of "this" it once carried survives only in the shape. For example, in the word “ذات” — lineage.
What is the letter ذ called?
Zal. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Urdu script: it is called “zal” and reads as “z (bookish)”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.