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Lesson Transcript

Intro
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: How to write vowelling signs? (keyboard tutorial)
Explanation
This lesson is a quick tutorial on how to add vowelling signs to Arabic text. This tutorial works for Windows QWERTY keyboards, so if your keyboard has another layout, it won't apply.
First let's check our 3 main vowelling signs independently. We have Fatha(فَتحَة), damma(ضَمَّة), and kasrah(كَسرَة). What you want to do is first write the consonant to which you want to add the vowelling sign. Then, you’re going to type the vowelling sign. You’ll notice that the vowelling sign is added on top of or below the consonant.
For Fatha, you want to press SHIFT+Q.
for damma, SHIFT+E,
and for kasra, SHIFT+A.
Let's try and write down the word kutiba(كُتِبَ). This word has a damma on the k, kasra under the t, and a fatha on the b. You should press the following buttons in this specific order:
ك, SHIFT+E, ت, SHIFT+A, ب, SHIFT+Q.
كُتِبَ
Pause the video and try it yourself!
Now let's check out some more vowelling signs. Tanween(تَنوين) is a vowelling sign that’s added to a word when it's in certain positions in a sentence. It is pronounced an/in/un or tan/tin/tun depending on the position of the word in the sentence and the last letter of the word.
To write a tanween with a fatha, pronounced an/tan, you press SHIFT+W.
To write a tanween with a damma, pronounced un/tun, you press SHIFT+R.
To write a tanween with a kasra, pronounced in/tin, you press SHIFT+S.
Note that the tanween only occurs on the last letter of the word. Let's try and write the word marhaban meaning “hello.”
م, SHIFT+Q, ر, ح, SHIFT+Q,ب,
ا , SHIFT+W
مَرحَباً
Next we have shaddah(شَدَّة) and sukuun(سُكون). These two are easy.
Let's talk about shaddah first. It only occurs with consonants. Its role is to double the sound of the consonant it affects. From d to dd, for example.
To write a shadda, you want to first write the consonant you want to double. Then, you press SHIFT+tilde, which is the button right below the Esc button on your keyboard. Now, when you double the consonant, you also have to add a vowel after the doubled sound. To do this, right after you write the shadda, you can add Fatha, damma, or kasrah on top of the shaddah itself. This creates the sound dda/ddu/ddi.
Let's practice this by writing the word "shadda" itself, which just so happens to have a shadda on its second letter.
ش, SHIFT+Q, د, SHIFT+tilde, SHIFT+Q, ة.
شَدَّة
Lastly we have the sukuun. This is a vowelling sound added to a consonant which doesn’t have a vowel attached to it. It’s especially used when there’s another consonant following this consonant.
You write a sukuun by pressing SHIFT+X.
Let's see an example for sukuun, the word juhd. Look at the romanization of this word. You’ll notice that there are 2 consecutive consonants, h and d. To make sure that it’s pronounced correctly, we put a sukuun sign on the h. So let's write the whole word.
ج, SHIFT+E,ه,SHIFT+X,د.
جُهْد
Note that sukuun is sometimes omitted when it isn’t necessary. So, if you see a letter without any vowelling between letters with vowelling, it automatically means that it has a hidden sukuun.

Outro
That’s it for our lesson!
If you have any more questions, please leave a comment below!
I’ll see you in the next episode!
Bye! إلى اللقاء(ʾilā al-liqaāʾ)

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