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Letter Lab
ذذال
zaal · /z/ in Urdu, identical in sound to ز, distinguished only in spelling for words of Arabic origin
Letter 13 of 38
Mimi the mascot, smiling

Starts with this letter

ذہنmind
ذراjust a little, slightly
ذمہresponsibility, charge
Trace over
Trace the whole letter

Draw the body exactly like dal: one single curve from the top right shoulder, pulling down and bending into a tail that finishes pointing back to the right at the baseline. One unbroken pull.

Mimi the mascot, thinking
For parents

In Arabic, ذ and ز are two different sounds. In Urdu, they collapsed into the same /z/ sound but kept their separate spellings, because Urdu inherited the words whole from Arabic. So your child does not learn ذ for a new sound, they learn it for a class of words. Tell them it lives inside words like ذہن, ذمہ, ذرا and is part of how those words have always been written.

ذ is a letter that carries history in its dot. The same sound has more than one way to be written, and your child is now part of the small circle of people who know the difference.