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…

The Inception of Arabic Grammar The person behind the 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 famous for his …

If you want to learn Arabic online, Ibnulyemen Arabic provides directed and personalized learning. That is,  our lessons are conversation-, grammar-, or vocabulary-based. For example, we provide our students with thematic conversations that includes pronunciation and grammar components. For grammar, our lessons will help you construct sentences and assign parsing marks correctl…

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…

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (35) Read the Story مَاكْبِث and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (34) Read the Story الْمَلِكُ عَجِيبٌ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (33) Read the Story تَاجِرُ بَغْدَادَ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (32) Read the Story بِنْتُ الصَّبَّاغ and answer the following questions.

Attached pronouns in Arabic are the pronouns that we attach to verbs, nouns, prepositions, or particles. Generally speaking, pronouns in Arabic are separate, attached, or implicit (i.e. implied or not overt). The separate pronouns  in Arabic are similar to the subject pronouns found in most world languages in addition to the dual and feminine forms that exist in Arabic. As for …

Arabic is a right-to-left cursive language. This short e-book "Ibnulyemen Arabic Alphabet and Cursive Writing" typographically shows how the Arabic letters are connected to to form words. There are twenty-eight letters in Arabic. Each letter has four shapes: at the beginning of the word, in the middle of the word, at the end of the word, and in isolation. This, as a result, see…

This is a short e-book of eleven short stories written in simplified Arabic. The original versions of these stories were written by Kamel Kilani and Mohammed Al-Abrashi, both Egyptian writers. They are fairly long and meant for native speakers of Arabic. The wording and structures of these stories have been tweaked and simplified to make them suitable for (advanced) beginner le…

Attached pronouns in Arabic are pronominal suffixes; for each separate pronoun there is a corresponding attached pronoun. These pronominal suffixes are are attached to nouns, prepositions, and verbs. With nouns, they function as possessive pronouns. With preposition, they function as object of prepositions. With verbs, they function as either subjects or objects.  In the table …