The Arabic Letters Raa & Zeiy

The Letters Raa & Zeiy

·        The next letters of the alphabet are Raa and Zeiy

·        Raa and Zeiy look very similar except that Raa has no dots and Zeiy has one dot on top

·        Raa sounds mostly like the letter R in English
Zeiy sounds pretty much like the letter Z in English

·        The name of the letter Zeiy is sometimes pronounced Zeiy (“Zaa-ee”)
And other times it’s pronounced Zaa
Zeiy is more popular in modern Arabic

Listening & Pronouncing

·        Raa sounds mostly like R; here’s how you pronounce it:
Pronounce R and check where your tongue is while pronouncing
Just bring your tongue a little bit forward (towards your teeth)

·        Zeiy sounds like Z; there’s really no difference

·        Exercise: repeat the words you hear

Reading & Writing

·        Raa and Zeiy have the same body

Raa has no dot
But Zeiy has one dot on top

·        Raa and Zeiy do NOT connect to the following letter
But the space between them and the next letter is really small most of the time

·        Exercise: how many Raa and Zeiy do you see in the following texts?

ترى بعر الآرام في عرصاتها وقيعانها كأنه حب فلفل

Answer [4 Raa, 0 Zeiy]

أزف الترحل غير أن ركابنا لما تزل برحالنا وكأن قدن

Answer [4 Raa, 2 Zeiy]

·        Raa/Zeiy and Daal/Dhaal are not hard to differentiate
The Daal/Dhaal body has an angle
But the Raa/Zeiy body is a big, downwards curve

·        Let’s compare them

·        Exercise: copy the following words

رب

جاحز

درز

ذرب

Proceed to lesson 10