D

uring this month, we are used to seeing advertisements on TV, newspapers, online media or any media in Indonesia that write the name of this special month in two different ways: “Ramadan” and “Ramadhan”.

A friend of mine and I argued about which was the correct version of the word. He said to me that the correct one was “Ramadan”, which was based on the KBBI (Indonesian Language Dictionary) edition IV published by Balai Pustaka in 2008, means the ninth month of Hijriyah.

But I said to him that the correct version was "Ramadhan". My stance was based on two things. First, the word “Ramadhan” was adopted from Arabic. So, if we want to write this word using a Latin alphabet, we have to refer on the basic letters of the word itself, using guidance on the transliteration Arabic into Latin alphabets. Second, we have to check the meaning of these words, “Ramadan” and “Ramadhan”. So, how should it be written?

In Arabic, “Ramadhan” has five basic letters. The first letter is rã, this letter is written in the Latin alphabet as the letter “r”. The second letter is mím, which if written in the Latin alphabet becomes an “m”. The third letter is dãd, which is transliterated as “dh”. The fourth letter is ´alif, which is written as an “ã”. And the fifth letter is nún, which is written in the Latin alphabet as “n”. So, the truest way to write this word in a Latin alphabet is “Ramadhan”.

If we check an Arabic dictionary, the meaning of Ramadhan is “summer before the spring came”. This is sensible enough, because during Ramadhan everyone is fasting, abstaining from eating and drinking all day long.

But, if this Arabic word transliterated as “Ramadan”, with the third letter dãl or “d”, the meaning unfortunately becomes “dirt eyes”. It is also mistaken to say that the meaning of Ramadhan is fasting, since in Arabic fasting is shoma.

Although the way we say “Ramadan” and “Ramadhan” seems no different because the word has been adopted from a foreign language, we need an Arabic dictionary to check the meaning and guidance on the transliteration of Arabic into Latin alphabets so as to avoid making mistakes.

Abdul Habib Ashary
Jakarta