The Phenomenon of Assimilation of Al-Tha'alabi (875 AH) In His Interpretation Al-Jawaher Al-Hissan

This study examines one of the phonetic phenomena in the interpretation of Al-Jawaher Al-Hissan for Al-Tha’alibi (d.875 AH), which is: assimilation.  It occurs due to the influence of sounds and the contiguity surrounding sounds, and often it is occurring in environments that the speaker tends to rush in the utterance of words, and mix them together, and not to give the letter its phonetic right to fully pronounce it. The assimilation is a way to reduce the difficulties in pronouncing sounds and get rid of identical or similar sounds that are occurring sequentially. Because the Arabs have the independence to tilt their tongue from a position and then return it to it, it is not easy for a speaker to move an organ of articulation twice in a row while uttering two identical sounds or sounds produced from the same area of articulation. Arab grammarians and recitation scholars have both focused in their treaties on assimilations and classified it into different categories, depending on their approaches. This research follows the classification of Al-Tha’alibi’s, who classifies assimilations into: progressive, regressive, and coalescent. These types were reflected in the different Quran recitations which bears witness to Arab’s various dialects. In addition to assimilation, there is another linguistic term called the voicing of the identical letters, which is a well-known phonological Arabic language feature.