Language Learning

Connecting Arabic Letters (2) Connecting Arabic letters is the focus of this lesson, namely the last thirteen letters of the alphabet. In the previous lesson, you came to know how the first seventeen Arabic letters connect to other letters. You also learned that there are six letters that never join to letters that follow them. We call these letters semi-connecting letters, a…

Connecting Arabic Letters (1) Connecting Arabic letters is the focus of this lesson. Arabic is a cursive language; therefore, its letters must be joined to form words. This entails that the shape of the letter changes. This change is not straightforward, as the letter can have three different shapes: one at the beginning of the word, one in the middle of the word, and one at t…

taa maftuha and taa marbuta ت / ـت and ة / ـة taa maftuha and taa marbuta as well as the haa marbuta are difficult to differentiate. For learners of Arabic as a foreign language, it is always difficult to distinguish between ت/ـت, ة/ـة, and ه/ـه when they occur at the end of words, and so is the case for native speakers. ت/ـت is called taa maftuha (تَاء مَفْتُوحَة) ; ة/ـة is…

Vowels in Arabic Vowels in Arabic are called harakat حَرَكَات, the singular of which is haraka حَرَكَة. Fortunately for the learners of Arabic as a foreign language, they are simple and limited. They are simple in that they are easily produced which makes the articulation of words straightforward. These vowels are [a], [i], and [u]; and for each short vowel, there is a corresp…

What is shadda? What is shadda? shadda شَدَّة is a diacritical mark that is indicated by the mark ( ـّ ). It means the doubling of a consonant. In other words, the consonant over which the shadda is placed is to be sounded/uttered twice without inserting a short vowel (i.e. fatha ـَ , kasra ـِ , or dhamma ـُ ), in between. So, instead of writing the same consonant twice, i…

What is taa marbuta? What is taa marbuta? taa marbuta is the taa that always occurs at the end of certain nouns and adjectives. If connected to the preceding letter, it is written like this ـة, as in سَاعَة ‘watch’, فَاطِمَة ‘Fatima (name)’, and خَيْمَة ‘tent.’ If it occurs after one of the letters that do not connect to the following letter (i.e. ا, د, ذ, ر, ز,و) , it is writ…