Language Learning

Sun Letters and Moon Letters The Arabic letters are two categories: sun letters and moon letters. The definite article ال "the" triggers this classification. The ال precedes indefinite nouns and adjectives (i.e., attached to them to be exact). Basically, the ل in the ال assimilates to the certain subsequent letters. These letters are called sun letters. And it (the ل) does not…

Difficult Arabic Sounds Difficult Arabic sounds are the sounds that are produced from the same area of articulation. They differ very slightly. Unless we get enough exposure to and practice of these sounds in the early stages of our learning, most of us tend to mispronounce them. That is, we pronounce them in a way that resembles the closest sounds in our native language. Arab…

One characteristic of Arabic that makes its writing easy is that it is a phonetic language. That is, there is generally a one-to-one correspondence between the spoken form and the written form. In other words, there are no silent letters as is the case with English and French. This is especially true when writing isolated words. However, in writing natural connected speech, one…

In the previous lesson, you learn why a word in Arabic that is composed of the same letters can have multiple different meanings. The word سلم is composed of س, then ل, and finally م. Their shape in isolation is slightly different from their shape in a word. In this lesson, we will learn how to put Arabic letters together to form words. Unlike Romance languages, such as Englis…

Diacritics in Arabic (3) Diacritics in Arabic determines word meanings. In the previous lesson, you learned about the shape of the diacritical marks and where they are positioned in relation to letters, i.e. above or below the letter. This lesson is about the importance and role of diacritics. The fourteen diacritical marks listed in the previous lesson are collectively called…

Diacritics in Arabic (2) In the previous lesson, you learned that Arabic certainly has vowels, but they are not written, especially in Modern Standard Arabic, because they are diacritical, i.e. not actual letters. These vowels are called short vowels or الْحَرَكَاتُ الْقَصِيرَة al-Harakaat al-qaSiirah. Besides them, there are other diacritical marks. What are they? This lesson…