Connecting Arabic Letters (1) Connecting Arabic letters is the focus of this lesson. 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 end of th…

The Arabic Alphabet (2)  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 vowels (al-ħarakaat al-qaSiirah, الْحَرَكَاتُ الْقَصِيرَة) that accompany them. For example, we pronounce the letter ل as لَ la, لِ, li, or لُ lu. What if long vowels follow the lett…

The Arabic Alphabet (1) There are twenty-eight letters in the Arabic Alphabet. All of these letters are consonants. Two of them are also vowels (i.e., besides being consonants, they are also vowels). In addition to these, there are the alif without hamza (ا) and the madda (آ), which is a combination of alif and hamza (ء/أ) or two hamazas. So, there are thirty letters in total.…

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 …