The Arabic Alphabet and Their Pronunciation Lesson 1

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The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters (حروف). The Arabic alphabet is written and read from right to left and horizontally. 25 are consonants (حروف ساكنة) and 3 are vowels (حروف متحركة), two of which also occur as consonants. First let’s have a look at all of them in the table below:

ا	Alife	A	ض	Da’od	D
ب	Ba	B	ط	Ta’a	T
ت	Ta	T	ظ	Za’a	DH or Z
ث	Tha	TH	ع	Aa’en	Like A
ج	Jim	J	غ	Ghayn	GH
ح	Ha	H	ف	Fa	F
خ	Kha	KH	ق	Qa’af	Q
د	Dal	D	ك	Kaf	k
ذ	Dhal	DH	ل	Lam	L
ر	Ra	R	م	Mim	M
ز	Zay	Z	ن	Nun	N
س	Sin	S	ه	Ha	H
ش	Shin	SH	و	Waw	W
ص	Sa’ad	S	ي	Ya	Y

Some of the letters in Arabic do not exist in English, as you may have noticed. We will first go through the letters that exist in English. The table below shows the letters that you may not have any problem learning or pronouncing:

A	ا	Z	ز	K	ك
B	ب	S	س	L	ل
T	ت	SH	ش	M	م
TH	ث	S	ص	N	ن
J	ج	D	ض	H	ه
D	د	T	ط	W or U	و
R	ر	F	ف	Y or I	ي

Now we will go through the Arabic letters that are either hard to pronounce or are pronounced a little bit differently, you shouldn’t t worry if you can’t pronounce them the right way, because there are always close pronunciations in Arabic, and you still can be understood.

ح	H	Sharp H like in the name Hassan
خ	KH	KH pronounced from the front of the throat, like the J in Spanish
ذ	Z or DH	The perfect way to pronounce is like TH of “this”
ظ	DH or Z	The closest way to pronounce is again the TH like in “this”
ع	‘or 3	This one is hard to pronounce, so you can just pronounce it as A in the English sentence “a mess”
غ	GH	GH is easy to pronounce if you can say the French R in “au revoir”
ق	Q	Simply like Q but a little bit sharper
ة	Ta’marbuta	A special form of the ت (Ta) is the ة (Ta’marbuta), written like ه (Ha) with two dots. It almost always indicates the feminine gender and only occurs at the end of a word like (شنطة، طالبة)

The table below shows the three forms that a letter can take, a letter in a blue font shows a letter starting a word, the red font shows a letter in the middle of the word, and the black font shows a letter at the end of the word, as you may have noticed, there is no big different between the three forms. Just a tip for you: most of the time the letter at the end looks exactly like the letter when it’s alone.

In a word	Independent position	Trans- literation	In a word	Independent position	Transli- teration
ضضض	ض	D	ابا	**ا	A
ططط	ط	T	ببب	ب	B
ظظظ	ظ	TH as is This	تتت	ت	T
ععع	ع	Breath- Less A	ثثث	ث	TH as in Teeth
غغغ	غ	GH	ججج	ج	J
ففف	ف	F	ححح	ح	H
ققق	ق	Q	خخخ	خ	KH
ككك	ك	K	دبد	**د	D
للل	ل	L	ذتذ	**ذ	TH as in This
ممم	م	M	رتر	**ر	R
ننن	ن	N	زتز	**ز	Z
ههه	ه	H	سسس	س	S
وتو	**و	W or U	ششش	ش	SH
ييي	ي	Y or I	صصص	ص	S

**: letters having stars next to them can only connect with other letters placed before them and not after, which means that if a letter is placed after them, that letter should take a form as if it was placed in the beginning of the word.

Note also that the letters I marked with stars in the table above never connect with other letters marked with stars either before or after.

So, you must be careful with these starred letters, because sometimes they may make you think that they’re the last letter of a word because they have that form of an ending letter, while in the reality they may not be the last letter of the word.

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I hope this lesson will be helful for Arabic learners, please give us feedback and opinions, thank you very much

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