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 Translation of Arabic letters is not recommended. However, in the initial stages of learning, using transliteration is inevitable and sometime useful. It facilitates transition from the pure beginner stage to the upper-beginner stage; plus, it speeds up learning. This lesson presents the actual pronunciation of Arabic sounds in English sounds,…

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 with hamza (أ) and alif without hamza (ا), as in أَكَلَ "he ate" which bec…

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (48) Read the Story الْأَخَوَانِ: مَعْرَكَةُ التِّنِّينِ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (47) Read the Story النَّجَّارُ الذَّكِيُّ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (46) Read the Story الزَّوْجَةُ الْحَكِيمَةُ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (45) Read the Story فَلُّوحٌ 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 …