Nunation (Arabic:تَنوِين,tanwīn), in someSemitic languages such asArabic, is the addition of one of three vowel diacritics (ḥarakāt) to anoun oradjective.

This is used to indicate the word ends in analveolar nasal without the addition of the letternūn. The noun phrase is fullydeclinable and syntactically unmarked fordefiniteness, identifiable in speech.

When writing Literary Arabic in full diacritics, there are three nunation diacritics, which indicate the suffixes-un (IPA: /-un/) (nominative case),-in /-in/ (genitive), and-an /an/ (accusative). Theorthographical rules for nunation with thefatḥah signـً‎ is by an additionalا‎alif (اً‎, diacritic above alif; orـًا‎, diacritic before alif; see below), aboveةً‎ (tāʾ marbūṭahتاء مربوطة) or aboveءً‎ (hamzahهمزة).

In most dialects ofspoken Arabic, nunation only exists in words and phrases borrowed from the literary language, especially those that are declined in the accusative (that is, with-an). It is still used in someBedouin dialects in its genitive form-in, such as inNajdi Arabic.

Since Arabic has noindefinite article, nouns that are nunated (except for proper nouns) are indefinite, and so the absence of the definite articleʼal triggers nunation in all nouns and substantives except diptotes (that is, derivations with only two cases in the indefinite state, -u in the nominative and -a in the accusative and genitive). A given name, if it is not a diptote, is also nunated when declined, as inأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ الله (ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūlu l-lāh(i)/ʔaʃ.ha.duʔan.namu.ħam.ma.danra.suː.lul.laː(.hi)/ "I bear witness thatMuhammad is the messenger of Allah."), in which the wordمحمدMuḥammad, a given name derived from the passive participle ofحَمَّدَ ("to praise"), is nunated toمُحَمَّدًاMuḥammadan to signal that it is in the accusative case, as it is the grammatical subject of a sentence introduced byأنَّ ("that").

In Levantine Arabic, it is standard to writefatḥatān on thealif, rather than on the previous letter:^[1] بيتاً - هدوءاً‎

Xiao'erjing is a Perso-Arabic script adopted for writing ofSinitic languages such asMandarin (especially theLanyin,Zhongyuan andNortheastern dialects) or theDungan language. This writing system is unique (compared to other Arabic-based writing systems) in that all vowels, long and short, are explicitly marked at all times with Arabic diacritics. In this script, the three nunations are used extensively to represent the alveolar (front) nasal sounds("-n"), and also sometimes to represent velar (back) nasal sounds("-ng").

Nunation may also refer to the-n  ending ofduals inAkkadian (until it was dropped in the Old Babylonian period).^[2]

• Arabic diacritics
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• iʿrāb

• Semitic linguistics
• Arabic grammar

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