Qur'anic Arabic uses a diaphonemic writing system that indicates both the pronunciation in Mecca, the western dialect the Qur'an was written in, and that of eastern Arabia, the prestige dialect of pre-Islamic poetry. For example, final was pronounced something like in Mecca, and written ي , while it had merged with in eastern Arabia and was written as ا . In order to accommodate both pronunciations, the basic letter of Meccan Arabic was used, but the diacritic was dropped: ى. Similarly, the glottal stop had been lost in Meccan Arabic in all positions but initially, so the Meccan letters were retained with the eastern glottal stop indicated with a diacritic hamza.