Talk:هن

North Levantine Arabic

Moved discussion from my talk page SarahFatimaK (talk) 08:05, 11 August 2021 (UTC):

Hi!

Thanks for reinstating هنه. I RFD'd it last year during a cleanup crusade, but my reasoning was way too shaky (Google results don't actually give real statistics on vernacular Arabic, go figure) and I've come to understand that ⟨هنه/هنة⟩ is just as common for people who tell apart /-e/ and /-i/ as ⟨هني⟩ is for people who don't.

But is ⟨هن⟩ as common as either of them? The pronoun doesn't have as strong a connection to Fusha's هن as هو and هي do to their Fusha equivalents, so it seems like there's less reason for people to spell it without a final vowel letter (contrary to the pronunciation, I mean) than there is for the singular pronouns. And, even though anecdotes of course can't be treated as actionable, I feel like I don't see ⟨هن⟩ nearly as often online as ⟨هني⟩ or ⟨هنه/هنة⟩. Dunno. Do you happen to know if there's a preferred spelling across formal publications on Levantine? And it's your call since you're currently the active NL/SL editor (thanks for the good work!), but do you think the main form should be at one of those other two pages instead of at هن? —M. I. Wright (talk, contribs) 05:11, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi @M._I._Wright:, thank you for your feedback.

Since I'm no expert on North Levantine Arabic and there is no standard orthography, I can't really answer the question which spelling is the most common one. I chose هن as main entry, because it resembles the MSA spelling and shows the ethymology as well as for consistency with هو and هي. SarahFatimaK (talk) 06:34, 11 August 2021 (UTC)