Difficult Arabic Letters
Difficult Arabic Letters are the letters that are produced from the same area in the mouth or oral cavity. Linguistically, let's call them difficult Arabic sounds since we are speaking about articulation. These sounds (or letters) differ in one or two phonetic or pronunciation feature, such as being voiced (accompanied by vibration in the vocal cords) …
Arabic Cursive Writing (2)
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 n…
The Inception of Arabic Grammar
The person behind the beginnings/inception of Arabic grammar was Imam Ali ben Abi Talib الْإِمَامُ عَلِيٌّ بِنْ أَبِي طَالِب, the cousin of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and his son in-law. He wrote the first rules that governed people's speech. Then he passed it on to Abu al-Aswad Dalim ben Amr ben Sufyan al-Duu’ali who was his companion and was famo…
Arabic Cursive Writing (1)
In the previous lesson, you learned why a word in Arabic that constitutes the same letters can have multiple different meanings and pronunciations. 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 join Arabic letters to form words.
Un…
Arabic Diacritics (3)
Diacritics in Arabic determines word meanings. In the previous lesson, you learned about the shape of the diacritical marks. You also became familiar with their pronunciation. Additionally, you learned where we position them in relation to letters, i.e. above or below the letter. This lesson is about the importance and role of diacritics. We call the fou…
Arabic Diacritics (2)
In the Arabic Diacritics (1), you learned that Arabic diacritics are vocal letters. That is, we do not write them like the regular letters of the Arabic alphabet. Rather, they are marks or signs that we add above or below the letter. Textually, they you can see them in the Holy Quran, children's books, most school textbooks, and some books of poetry. We c…
Arabic Diacritics (1)
Arabic diacritics are vocal letters, i.e. marks, signs, or symbols. Put differently, they are not written letters. Therefore, Arabic letters indicate consonants and long vowels only. Linguistically, vocal letters do not exist in many world languages. In such languages, the vocal letters are part of the alphabetic system. That is, they are the vowel letter…
Transliteration of Arabic Letters into English
Transliteration of Arabic letters into English is not recommended for a learner of Arabic as foreign language. However, in the early stages of learning, using transliteration is inevitable and sometime useful for most learners. It facilitates transition from the pure beginner stage to the upper-beginner stage. Plus, it speeds up t…
The Arabic Letters and Long Vowels
Arabic letters and long vowels are the focus of this lesson. In previous lesson, you learned the Arabic letters and their pronunciation which varies according to the short vowel that accompanies them. For example, we pronounce the letter ل as لَ la, لِ li, or لُ lu. What if a long vowel follows the Arabic letters, to what degree their pronunc…
The Arabic Alphabet
There are twenty-eight letters in the Arabic Alphabet. These Arabic letters are consonants. Two of them are also vowels; that is, besides being consonants, they are also vowels. In addition to these, there are the alif without hamza (هَمْزَة) (also spelled hamzah) (ا) and the madda (مَدَّة) (also spelled maddah) (آ). The maddah is a combination of alif with…
