Diacritics in Arabic (3) Diacritics in Arabic determines word meanings. In the previous lesson, you learned about the shape of the diacritical marks and where they are positioned in relation to letters, i.e. above or below the letter. This lesson is about the importance and role of diacritics. The fourteen diacritical marks listed in the previous lesson are collectively called…

Diacritics in Arabic (2) In the previous lesson, you learned that Arabic certainly has vowels, but they are not written, especially in Modern Standard Arabic, because they are diacritical, i.e. not actual letters. These vowels are called short vowels or الْحَرَكَاتُ الْقَصِيرَة al-Harakaat al-qaSiirah. Besides them, there are other diacritical marks. What are they? This lesson…

Diacritics in Arabic (1) Is there a word in English without a vowel? No. Linguistically, there cannot be a word/syllable without a vowel/syllabic consonant (i.e., a consonant that has some features of a vowel sound). Vowels help us divide words into syllables. Besides, it is articulatorily difficult to move from one consonant to another. Therefore, vowels aid the movement/tran…

Transliteration of Arabic Letters Translation of Arabic letters is not recommended. However, in the initial stages of learning, using transliteration is inevitable and sometime useful. It facilitates transition from the pure beginner stage to the upper-beginner stage; plus, it speeds up learning. This lesson presents the actual pronunciation of Arabic sounds in English sounds,…

The Arabic Alphabet (1) There are twenty-eight letters in the Arabic Alphabet. All of these letters are consonants. Two of them are also vowels (i.e., besides being consonants, they are also vowels). In addition to these, there are the alif without hamza (ا) and the madda (آ), which is a combination of alif and hamza (ء/أ) or two hamazas. So, there are thirty letters in total.…

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (40) Read the Story الْحَيَّةُ الْبَيْضَاءُ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (39) Read the Story التَّاجِرُ مَرْمَرُ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (38) Read the Story الشَّيْخُ الْهِنْدِيُّ and answer the following questions.

Arabic Reading Comprehension Test (37) Read the Story حِذَاءُ الْبَخِيلِ and answer the following questions.

Attached pronouns in Arabic are the pronouns that we attach to verbs, nouns, prepositions, or particles. Generally speaking, pronouns in Arabic are separate, attached, or implicit (i.e. implied or not overt). The separate pronouns  in Arabic are similar to the subject pronouns found in most world languages in addition to the dual and feminine forms that exist in Arabic. As for …

Arabic is a right-to-left cursive language. This short e-book "Ibnulyemen Arabic Alphabet and Cursive Writing" typographically shows how the Arabic letters are connected to to form words. There are twenty-eight letters in Arabic. Each letter has four shapes: at the beginning of the word, in the middle of the word, at the end of the word, and in isolation. This, as a result, see…

This is a short e-book of eleven short stories written in simplified Arabic. The original versions of these stories were written by Kamel Kilani and Mohammed Al-Abrashi, both Egyptian writers. They are fairly long and meant for native speakers of Arabic. The wording and structures of these stories have been tweaked and simplified to make them suitable for (advanced) beginner le…

Attached pronouns in Arabic are pronominal suffixes; for each separate pronoun there is a corresponding attached pronoun. These pronominal suffixes are are attached to nouns, prepositions, and verbs. With nouns, they function as possessive pronouns. With preposition, they function as object of prepositions. With verbs, they function as either subjects or objects.  In the table …