Arabic Letters and Vowels – Review 1

Review 1

·        Arabic is read from right to left

·        The alphabet has 29 letters

·        Basically all the letters are consonants

·        Vowels are not written, but they are pronounced of course

·        There are 3 of them and they are little ticks on top or underneath a letter

·        If a letter has a vowel on top / underneath it, it means the vowel come after that letter

·        Arabic also has 3 long vowels

·        These ARE part of the alphabet

·        Each long vowel matches a short vowel and makes it sound longer (about twice the length of the short version)

·        Words are made up of a group of letters connected to each other

·        Some letters, though, can’t connect to the following letter

·        So there will be a very small space between that letter and the next one

·        Each letter is made of a body and maybe some dots

·        The body of each letter has 4 forms

o   when it’s by itself

o   when it’s in the beginning of a word

o   when it’s in the middle of a word

o   when it’s at the end of a word

·        The connection lines you see in the table above are exaggerated

·        Connection lines are usually extremely tiny

·        Letters are usually recognized by the number and position (above/below) of the dots, and certain qualities of the body (like loops, angles, lines)

Practice

·        How many letters and vowels do you recognize in the following recordings? You might need to listen to each a dozen times or more

·        How many letters and vowels do you recognize in the following texts?

جَرَحاتُ اللِسانِ لَها التِيامُ وَلا يَلْتامُ ما جَرَحَ اللِسانُ

Answer [10 Aleph, 0 Baa, 3 Taa, 0 THaa, 8 Fatha]

فَقُلتُ ءَيا رَباهُ ءَوَلُ سُؤلَتِي لِنَفسِيَ لَيْلى ثُمَ ءَنتَ حَسِيبُها

Answer [3 Aleph, 2 Baa, 3 Taa, 1 THaa, 13 Fatha]

·        Copy each of the below and try to pronounce them

ثابَتَ

ثَبَتَ

Proceed to lesson 6