| Ahlan bikom, ana Carole! Welcome to Arabicpod101.com’s Abjadiyyah Made Easy! |
| The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Arabic alphabet: the Abjadiyyah! |
| In the last lesson, we introduced 2 letters of the first group that look alike, ر and ز. |
| If you've been practicing, I'm sure you're doing a great job. This lesson will be a great chance for you to review all the letters we learned so far. Let’s practice together! |
| First, we’ll review the basic rules: |
| 1- In this series, we’ve classified the Arabic alphabet into 2 groups: |
| The first one is the group of letters with counterparts in English language. |
| The second one is the group of letters that don’t have counterparts in English. That means they’ll be a bit more challenging to pronounce, but remember, practice makes perfect! |
| 2- Letters of the Arabic alphabet have 4 ways to connect to the letters before and after them: |
| Isolated, initial, medial, and final. |
| However, there are letters that don’t follow that rule and only have 2 forms of connection. They are و ز ر ذ د ا. |
| Now let’s review the letters we learned so far! |
| In the first lesson we learned ا and ن. They are the letters you need to form the word “أنا”, meaning the pronoun “I”. |
| Let’s practice writing them together one more time: |
| First we have ا: |
| Here is the Isolated form: ا |
| And here’s the final form: نام |
| ا only has 2 forms, as we’ve already explained before. |
| Now let’s review ن: |
| Isolated: ن |
| Initial: نام |
| Medial: منام |
| And final: من |
| That’s it for the first lesson! Did you remember that the initial form of ا is the same as the isolated form and the medial form is the same as the final form? |
| Now let’s move on to the next lesson. |
| In the second lesson, we learned ب _ ت and ث |
| First we have ب: |
| Isolated: ب |
| initial:باب |
| Medial: قبل |
| final: قلب |
| Then there is ت: |
| Isolated: ت |
| initial: تاب |
| Medial: نتأ |
| final: مات |
| Finally we have ث: |
| Isolated: ث |
| initial: ثواب |
| Medial: مثل |
| final: بحث |
| That’s it for lesson 2. Their shapes look like a boat, remember? Next, let’s review lesson 3: |
| In the third lesson, we learned 3 more letters that look alike: ح _ ج and خ |
| Here’s ج: |
| Isolated: ج |
| initial: جبن (which means “cheese”) |
| Medial: مجد (the word for “glory”) |
| final: نسج (the verb “to weave”) |
| Now let’s check ح: |
| Isolated: ح |
| initial: حج |
| Medial: محل |
| final: بلح |
| Finally we have خ: |
| Isolated: خ |
| initial: خل |
| Medial: نخل |
| final: مخ |
| That’s it for lesson 3. Next, let’s review lesson 4: |
| In the fourth lesson, we learned د and ذ. |
| Let’s practice writing them together one more time: |
| First we have the د: |
| Isolated and initial: دب |
| Medial and final: عند |
| Now let’s check the ذ: |
| Isolated and initial: ذيل |
| Medial and final: منذ |
| That’s it for lesson 4. These letters are 2 of the 6 which only has 2 forms. Finally, let’s review lesson 5: |
| In the fifth lesson, we learned ر and ز. These 2 letters also have only 2 forms. |
| First we have ر: |
| Isolated-initial: رب |
| Medial-final: بر |
| Then there is ز: |
| Isolated-initial: زيت |
| Medial-final: مميز |
| And that’s the end of our review for the first 5 lessons! Did you remember most of them? Keep practicing and you’ll get better in no time! Now we’ll continue with some Arabic writing rules: |
| To be able to read Arabic correctly, you also need to master the vowelling system of the Arabic language. Vowelling signs are marks above or beneath the letter that adds a vowel sound to that letter. However, vowels in the vowelling signs are pronounced shorter than the actual vowels; |
| Let’s see the 3 basic vowelling signs when used with ب : |
| First , here’s a fatha. The pronunciation will now be بَ ba |
| Next, this is a kasra. This is now pronounced as بِ bi |
| And finally, here’s a dammah. It changes the pronunciation to بُ bu |
| Now, let’s practice writing and pronouncing these basic vowelling signs! |
| أَخ ,brother, أَخ |
| أُخت, sister, أُخت, |
| جَد, grandfather, جَد |
| أَنا, I, أَنا |
| أَنت, you, أَنت |
| Vowelling is very important because it can change a word’s meaning. For example, here are 2 words that have the same letters, but are pronounced differently and have different meanings because of the difference in vowelling: |
| حَر (“har”) means hot, while |
| حُر (“hor”) means free. |
| There are other vowelling signs in Arabic, but they aren’t as common as the 3 basic signs we learned in this lesson. We’ll go back to them in the next review lesson. |
| Now it’s time for Carole’s Tips: |
| The concept of vowelling might feel a bit unnatural to non-native speakers. However, Arabic learners need vowelling to be able to read correctly, especially when faced with new words. Native speakers don’t need vowelling, because they know the words and how they’re pronounced already. Make sure you master the 3 signs we learned in this lesson - they will help you read faster and more correctly. Good luck! |
| That’s it for this lesson! I hope this lesson helped you memorize the letters in the lessons from 1 to 5 and get a feel of how the vowelling system in Arabic works. You did a great job! In the next Abjadiyyah Made Easy lesson, we’ll learn 2 more letters of the first group that look alike. See you then! Salam! |
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