Language Learning

Is there a word in English without a vowel? No. There cannot be a word without a vowel. Vowels help us divide words into syllables; besides, it is articulatorily difficult to move from one consonant to another. Therefore, vowels aid this movement. Reading the above three lines, y…

In the initial stages of learning, using transliteration is inevitable and sometime useful. It facilitates transition from the pure beginner stage to upper-beginner stage; plus, it speeds up learning. This lesson presents the actual pronunciation of Arabic sounds in English sound…

In the previous lesson, you came to know how the first fifteen Arabic letters are joined to other letters. You also learned that there are six letters that never join to letters that follow them. They are ا, د, ذ, ر, ز, and و. In this lesson you will see how the remaining fifteen…

Arabic is a cursive language; its letters must be joined to form words. This entails that they change their shapes. The change in shape is not straightforward, as a letter can have three different shapes: one at the beginning of the word, one in the middle of the word, and one at…

The Arabic Alphabet (2) This lesson is about the Arabic letters and long vowels. In previous lesson, you learned the Arabic letters and their pronunciation which varies according to the short vowels (al-ħarakaat al-qaSiirah, الْحَرَكَاتُ الْقَصِيرَة) that accompany them. For exa…

The Arabic Alphabet (1) The Arabic Alphabet is composed of twenty-eight letters. All of these letters are consonants. Two of them are also used as vowels. In addition to these, there are the alif without hamza and the madda (آ), which is a combination of alif and hamza or two ha…