“The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard) – http://alifbatourguide.com/

Ẓâ – http://alifbatourguide.com/the-arabic-alphabet/zaa/

Ẓâ is for Ẓarf

You don’t need to know much about linguistics to hear the difference between a voiced and an unvoiced consonant. English G is the voiced form of our K. English B is the voiced form of P. English D is the voiced form of our T. Those are easy examples. It is possible for a language to make the distinctions very easy to see. When you study Turkish and learn that the consonants B, D, or J (spelled C), become, at the end of a word P, T or CH (spelled Ç), you hardly need to memorize it. It’s easy enough to hear voiced consonants turning into unvoiced ones. Kabâb becomes kebap; Ahmad becomes Ahmet; Persian loan word tâj becomes taç. You can predict the changes by ear without thinking much, without having to know the terms “voiced” and “unvoiced” at all.

As for the pronunciation of Arabic Ẓa, it is the voiced form of Ṣâd. That’s a harder one. Ṣpeakers of Arabic can get it immediately. For speakers of Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, etc. (as in English), Ẓa is (along with Ẓa, Dha and Ḍâd), just another way to say Ẓ.

As for transcription, I’m going for Ẓ. It’s not a completely logical choice, since it’s the same way we transcribed ض,but the stakes are low. (Maybe ض should have been Ḍ anyway.) 

continued at http://alifbatourguide.com/the-arabic-alphabet/zaa/

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