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…

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (57) Read the passage عَبْدُ اللَّهِ الْبَرَدُونِيُّ: عَيْنُ الْيَمَنِ الَّتِي لَا تَنَامُ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (56) Read the passage نِزَارُ قَبَّانِيُّ: شَاعِرُ الْمَرْأَةِ وَالْحُرِيَّةِ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (55) Read the passage نَجِيبُ مَحْفُوظٌ: سَيِّدُ الرِّوَايَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّةِ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (54) Read the passage أَمَلُ دُنْقُلُ: شَاعِرُ الرَّفْضِ 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 …