Tuesday 6 April 2010

Let us read Arabic 1!

1- Alif

The first letter is called "Alif" . This letter's basic sound is a long "aa".



أ

What are the different forms of this letter?

Alone

End

Middle

Beginning

The letter

ا

ـــا

ــــا

ــــا

أ

Some notes about this letter:

1- Some Arabic teachers group some letters in one group and call it “selfish letters”. Don’t laugh, that is not the linguistic name, it meant to help the students to remember some characteristics of some letters. So, why do we call this letter a selfish letter?
Because it only accepts to be attached from one side, from the Right side not the left side. Let us see how it will look like when it is attached and how it is selfish:

سـامي

ــــا

عـاطِف

ــــا

2- This letter has two forms
1- A consonant form or “hamza" ء:The hamza is a glottal plosive Examples: Notice the sound of the Hamza in the following Arabic names: the alif letter is highlighted with red colour.

English transliteration

Arabic

The letter

Ahmad

أحْمَد

أ

Amal

أمَل

أ

2- A vowel form ا aa (a long A or an extended 'alif ).

The vowel form can appear at the middle or the end of words, but never at the beginning. It generally sounds like aa in (father).

Examples: Notice the sound of the “ alif” and the shapes in different positions in a word: the alif letter is highlighted with red colour

English transliteration

Arabic

The letter

Samy

سامي

ــا

Sama

سَما

ــا

Did you try to write it? If not, it is better to do it now before we move to the second letter
2- Be:

The equivalent English letter is B. It is pronounced like "b" in a word like " big" .To write Be:, start at the right tip of the letter, write that curve to the left and finally place the dot underneath. Dots always come last.

ب

What are the different forms of this letter?

Alone

End

Middle

Beginning

The letter

ب

ــب

ـــبـ

بــ

ب

Notice the pronunciation of the Baa in some words:

Transliteration

Arabic

The letter

ب

Basma

بـسْمَة

بــ

Beginning

Laban

لَبـن

ـــبـ

Middle

Kalb

كَلْب

ــب

End

Now let us try to read a word:

Meaning

Transliteration

Arabic word

Door

baab

بـاب

Congratulation! You have now your first word in Arabic, if you did not get it correct, don’t worry just go through the above explanation again.

3- Te:

The equivalent English letter is T. Does not it look like the smiley face? It looks quite similar to Be:, except there are two dots on top instead of one dot beneath the letter

ت

What are the different forms of this letter?

Alone

End

Middle

Beginning

The letter

ت

ــت

ـــتـ

تــ

ت

Meaning

transliteration

Arabic

The letter

ت

Fig

teen

تـين

تـ

Beginning

Book

kitab

كِتـاب

ـــتـ

Middle

House

beet

بيت

ــت

End

Notice the pronunciation of the Baa in some words

Try! Try to recoginise the letters in the above words that we have explained today!

4- The: - se:

It's almost the same as Taa, but there are three dots on top. You will find that it meshes the same way, too. It's pronounced like the TH in "think". But notice that the common way of pronouncing this letter in Egypt is like " se: "

ث

What are the different forms of this letter?

Alone

End

Middle

Beginning

The letter

ث

ــث

ـــثـ

ثــ

ث

Notice the pronunciation of the Baa in some words:

Meaning

transliteration

Arabic

The letter

ث

second

san’ya

ثانْية

ثـ

Beginning

triangle

musal’las

مُثلث

ــثـ

Middle

triangle

musal’las

مُثلث

ــث

End

Tuesday 15 December 2009

The Alphabets

Brief introduction about the Arabic Alphabet
The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. The Arabic alphabet has 28 basic letters. Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots above or below their central part. Arabic is written from Right to Left. Some of the letters in Arabic don’t exist in English and vice versa. You shouldn’t worry if you can’t pronounce them the right way, because there are always close pronunciations and you still can be understood.
Arabic letters should be written connected to each other. The Arabic alphabet letters have up to 3 forms or shapes; each letter takes a form depending on its position in the word. A letter has a form at the beginning of the word, in the middle of the word and at the end of the word; some letters however can keep the same form in one or two positions.

Friday 6 November 2009