Why Shaddah?

Ever wondered why while reading the Qur’an do we assimilate some letters and not others?

A shaddah (w on top of the letter) is used when the first consonant has a sukoon (no vowel) on it and the second one is followed by a vowel. For example when you have a word that starts with ال followed by one of these letters u make shaddah (W) on top of the word: ت ث د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ل ن 
These are called sun letters
So u will say الشَّمس , because of the ش 
Therefore instead of Al shamsu it will be pronounced Ash-shamsu.
 
The rest of the letters are called moon letters. In thee letters you do not place a shaddah on top and the words are not assimilated.
For example: القَمَر will be pronounced al- Qamar and not Aq-Qamar. 
The fourteen moon letters are: ء ب ج ح خ ع غ ف ق ك م و ي ه 
 
 

The Quran defining itself

Naif Al-Mutawa, my favorite Clinical Psychologist and the creator of the comic book series ‘THE 99’ wrote an essay about this: http://al-mutawa.com/?Let_the_Qur%27an_define_itself and here are my thoughts:

It’s just common sense isn’t it? That after every Salaat if we ask Allah for guidance it is because we know that everything is not just black and white, there is a grey area. If we were to be parrots or even angels for that matter we wouldn’t have to worry about sensibility. The fact that Allah has given us free will and asked us to seek guidance and knowledge is proof enough for me that depth and perception is required and a must in Islam. In terms of language I think the essence maybe lost in translating it so we must try our best to learn Arabic however restricting it’s revelation and reading it without understanding, I believe loses then main premise of Allah’s revelation. It is said “So We have made this (the Quran) easy in your own tongue (O Muhammad, SWT), only that you may give glad tidings to the Muttaqun (the pious) and warn with it the Ludd (the evil doer) people.” Chapter 19, Verse 97. The Quran was revealed in Arabic as it was the Prophets native tongue and the language spoken and written by the people in that area. Arabic is a beautiful language that can be written concisely and no one can seriously translate the authenticity of Allah’s words or even capture the literally miracles presented in the Quran, but the Quran is revealed as ‘A Book for All’ and that’s how it should be.

Here is an amazing video regarding the literally miracles in the Quran:

http://thedeenshow.com/show.php?action=detail&id=1456