Learn Arabic Letters
To learn Arabic alphabets different courses are available. These courses are specially arranged in such a way that a newbie can easily understand these letters. The terminology “Arabic alphabet and Arabic letter” is considered incorrect by some. But for a newbie, it’s very helpful to learn Arabic quickly. Arabic does not have an alphabet while is considered an object and the letters are called glyphs. But for new learners, these glyphs are considered letters. Let’s see the letters and how they pronounce
Arabic alphabet:
There are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. These letters are written from right to left. Generally, short vowels are not written.
These letters change their shape with respect to their position in a word.
Detailed description
28 letters in the Arabic alphabet
There are 2 more letters in the Arabic alphabet than the English alphabet which contains 26 letters. But the pronunciation of both alphabets is always the same. But sometimes the letter “c” is pronounced like “s” (ceases) and sometimes like “k” (cucumber). While in the case of “gh” we can see that it is sometimes pronounced as ‘g’ (ghost) and sometimes pronounced as ‘F (enough). But the specialty of Arabic letters is that they always remain the same and are pronounced in the same way.
Right to left.
Arabic is always written from right to left: morf tfel ot thgir
While English is written from left to right: from left to right.
More practice is needed to get a full command on it.
Short vowels are not written
In Arabic 3 types of short vowels are found and they are not written, as in the case of “can” a short “a”, and “I” in case of “with” while a short “u” in case of “100k”. These short vowels are omitted in long vowels writing as (“ee” in “tree”).
e.g. “The book in the tree is very ugly and rotten”
“Th bk ‘n th tree ‘s vr ‘gl ‘nd rttn”. It is difficult to omit a short vowel at the beginning stage because it’s really hard to guess which short vowels are missing. This difficulty is only tackled by learning Arabic grammar.
Arabic letters change their shape with respect to their position:
Arabic writing is cursive mostly like English writing. In a word, all the letters are connected and they do not exist in separate forms and due to this feature. Certain changes are occurring in their shapes. When you write an English word certain changes are also made there. For example, the letters “s “will be bounded to the letters on the left with the diagonal stoke if the processing letter is e.g. an “n”. while in Arabic these changes are different.
After having experience with Arabic letters, the pronunciation of these letters is easy to some extent. For this purpose, the letters are split down into the following three groups.
Uncomplicated
In this category, all those letters are found which exactly pronounced as their English equivalent
A : long sound like the word “mad” in English.
, : a glottal stop; depending on where to put and maybe short “u”, “a” or “I” sound
B : similar to the English word “b” in “bread”
T : Similar to the English word “t” in “tea”
Th : close to “th” in “three”, but not like
in “there”
Dj : as “j” sounds in “john”
D : as “d” sounds in “door”
Dh : close to
in “three” but not like
in “there”.
Z : same as “z” in “zoo”.
S : as “s” in “serpent”
Sh : sounds the same as “sh” in “shine”
F : sounds the same as “f” in “ferry”
K : “k” in “kilo”
L : same as “l” in “look”
N : “n” in “nose”
M : same as “m” in “mouse”
H : sounds same as “h” in “hurricane”
W : same as “w” in “water”
U : a long “u” sounds in English word “boom”
Y : “y” in “year”
I : a long “I” sound like the two “e” in “three”.
Average.
These letters are similar to English sounds but hard to pronounce.
R: alike English where “r” sounds at the start of a word, e.g. in “road”, but extra towards the front of the tongue and like the Spanish “r”
H : close to English letter “h”, but powerfully from the throat.
S : alike English letter “s” but more energetic and darker
D : close to English letter “d” but more forceful and tragic
T : Similar to the English letter “t but more emphatic and darker
Z : sounds like a “darker” version of the Arabic “dh” sound
Tough:
These letters are hard to pronounce for newbies but speaking with natives and listening to recordings can be helpful in this regard.
Kh : like the “ch” sounds in the English word “loch” while in German as ch sound in the word “sprache”
Or the “j” in the Spanish word “jamon”.
C : this sounds like a high-frequency version of the English “a” sound but pinches from the back of the throat
Gh : sneeze from the back of the throat but tongue pokes the root of mouth, like a French “r”.
Q : similar to English letter “k” but expel from back the throat and intense darker.
Placing letters collectively to form words:
After describing the letters and their pronunciation. Let’s see how we can create a word by placing them in the correct order.
The word Mumtaaz means “excellent” in Arabic. In Arabic, we will write it as starting from right to left
Another example is
Salaam means “peace” in Arabic. We will write in the same way
That’s a brief introduction about Arabic letters that how can we learn Arabic letters and how can we pronounce them correctly. Different online courses and classes are available to teach the newbies. If you are interested to learn more about Arabic letters you can simply join these courses and can enjoy the learnings at an affordable budget.