Learn about vowel placement
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Intro |
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| Hi everybody! Nora here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Arabic questions. |
| The Question |
| The question for this lesson is: Is vowelling important? Where are the vowels in Arabic? |
| Explanation |
| If you look at an unvowelled Modern Standard Arabic text, it’ll seem as if it’s mostly consonants. Beginner Arabic learners might wonder how it’s possible to have so many consonants in a row! |
| The reason behind this is that most vowels in Arabic are transcribed in vowelling signs and not as independent letters. For beginner Arabic learners, vowelling signs are necessary in order to read Arabic text correctly. |
| That means that you’ll sometimes see words that look the same when they’re unvowelled, but have a different pronunciation. Let's see some examples: |
| Arabic |
| Romanized/English |
| قُل |
| ʾul / “Say” in the imperative form |
| قَلَّ |
| ʾalla / "It decreased” |
| أكل |
| ʾakl / "Food” |
| أَكَلَ |
| ʾakala / "He ate” |
| ذَهَبَ |
| ḏahaba / "He went” |
| ذَهَب |
| ḏahab / "Gold” |
| قُل--قَلَّ |
| ʾul--ʾalla / “Say” in the imperative form VS “It decreased” |
| أكل--أَكَلَ |
| ʾakl--ʾakala / “Food” VS “He ate” |
| ذَهَب--ذَهَبَ |
| ḏahab--ḏahaba / “Gold” VS “He went” |
| You have to consider the vowelling signs as an essential part of the main text when you learn new vocabulary. |
| It might seem challenging, but if you think of them as English vowels, just on top of or below the consonants instead of in between them, it won't seem as awkward. Native Arabic speakers rarely need vowelling though, because they can tell from the context which part of speech a word is and also because of their years of experience. You can get to that level too, by constant practice and regular vocabulary input. |
Outro |
| You can learn more about vowelling by checking our Arabic Alphabet Made Easy series on ArabicPod101.com. |
| If you have any more questions, please leave a comment below! And I’ll see you in the next episode! |
| سلام (salām) |
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