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العربية Arabic
Family	Sub-family	Language of	Script
Afro-Asiatic	Central Semitic	Saudi Arabia, Syria, and 23 other countries. United Nations	عربي Arabic

Arabic is written in an abjad script. This means that in Arabic vowels are not fully written. To an English speaker this would seem a bit weird because the idea or stem of the words "learn", "learns", "learned", "learnt", and "learning" is "learn-" which uses both vowels and consonants. In Arabic however, the stems of words, the thing relying the actual base meaning of a word, is a set of consonants. Which vowels are put where is more often a grammatical feature than any indication of the root of the word. As a consequence, when many arabic words decline or conjugate, while the consonants stay the same, vowels are arranged in all kinds of patterns.

For example:

English	book	books
Arabic	كتابkitābũ	كتبkutubũ

This rather simple example shows that while in English it's harder to see the relationship between kitāb and kutub, in Arabic, the difference is marked by the adition of a single letter (the long vowel /a:/). But don't think the stem stops there. This stem of K T and B is used for book in 3 numbers and 3 cases, and for the verb "to write" in 2 voices, 3 moods, 2 tenses, 13 subjects, and 5 non-finite forms in all of about 8 kinds of ištiqāq—8 slightly different versions of the verb considered derivations, most of which are fully conjugated. However, many of said derivations also involve adding consonants, but anyway, it's easy to see why vowels take a back seat to consonants.

Contents 1 Consonants 1.1 Basic Set of 28 Consonants 1.2 Other consonants 2 Vowels and other diactritics

Consonants

Arabic is usually analyzed as containing 28 consonants (plus other minor letters). Many consonants share the same basic letter shape but are distinguished by the addition of dots. With the exception of 4 letter shapes which can only connect to the letter before them, every Arabic letter (like Latin cursive script) connects to the letters both before and behind it. While often it's predictable what shape a letter will take (most letters look identical in all forms but have a tail at the end of a word) some are very different. For this reason, each letter will be shown in isolation, and in a set of three which will demonstrate the shapes of letters when they are proceeded by a space (or non joining letter) and/or followed by a space. Letters that do not join forwards are shown only in their isolated and final form.

Basic Set of 28 Consonants

Name	Arabic script	Pronunciation	Notes
'alif	ا ـا	no sound, or lengthens a preceeding /a/
bā'	ببب ب	/b/
tā'	تتت ت	/t/
þā'	ثثث ث	/θ/
jīm	ججج ج	/ʤ/	In some dialects, notably Egyptian, ğīm can be pronounced as [g] which was probably its original pronunciation. [ʒ] is a pronunciation characteristic of Levantine and Maghrebi dialects.
ḥah	ححح ح	/ħ/
xah	خخخ خ	/x/	Althought officially an [x], many speakers produce it closer to [χ]
dal	د ـد	/d/
ðal	ذ ـذ	/ð/
rā'	ر ـر	/r/
zāy	ز ـز	/z/
sīn	سسس س	/s/
šīn	ششش ش	/ʃ/
ṣād	صصص ص	/sˁ/
ḍād	ضضض ض	/dˁ/
ṭā’	ططط ط	/tˁ/
ẓā’	ظظظ ظ	/zˁ/
3ayn	ععع ع	technically a /ʕ/ but mostly the sound is heard on the vowel following
ġayn	غغغ غ	/ɣ/	Although technically [ɣ], some dialects release it more as [ʁ]
fā	ففف ف	/f/
qāf	ققق ق	/q/
kāf	ككك ك	/k/
lām	للل ل	/l/	Note that the final form hangs below the line and has a tail, this is how it can be distinguished form an alif at the end of the word. Also, a lām followed by an alif has to be written لا ,ـلا and does not connect to the following letter.
mīm	ممم م	/m/
nūn	ننن ن	/n/
hā'	ههه ه	/h/
wāw	و ـو	/w/ also used in long /u:/
yā'	ييي ي	/j/ also use din long /i:/

Other consonants

Name	Arabic script	Pronunciation
alif maddah	آ ـآ	/ʔaː/	Alif maddah is used in place of the combination /ʔaʔC/ which is forbidden in Arabic, but as such is not a letter unto itself.
alif maqṣurah	ى ـى	/a:/	A letter which occurs only at the ends of words. It was once a yā’ but it was pronounced like an alif. For this reason the shape of a yā’ (without the dots) is kept. When suffixes are added to the word, alif maqṣura sometimes becomes a full alif, and sometimes the diphthong /aj/. Persian and Egyptian Arabic both use the alif maqṣurah letter to mean both yā’ and the alif maqṣurah.
tā’ marbuṭah	ة ـة	/h/ or /t/	Can only exist at the end of words, generally marks a feminine noun. It was once a ت and retains the dots of tā but is pronounced as a hā (that is, often silently at the end of words) but it is pronounced like a /t/ whenever anything is added to the end of the word or the final vowels are pronounced. Not considered a separate letter.

Vowels and other diactritics

In Arabic, vowels are not written except in القرآن (the Qur’ān) where they are compulsory. To allow this, a system of vowel marks called ḥarakāt (حركات, feminine plural) has been developed to allow them to be written. When Arabic is written using these marks, the pronunciation is 100% predictable. Each حركة has to "stand" on a consonant. This means that at the beginning of a word, vowels have no place to stand since they have to follow the vowel they are on. For this reason Arabic uses alif. In some languages Alif (or its congnates) do what hamza does in Arabic, but since Arabic has developed a separate letter for the glottal stop, alif really doesn't have much to do. Thus, it is used to hold vowels at the beginings of words.

Arabic uses three short vowels /a/ /i/ and /u/. Each vowel has its own حركة ḥarakah.

Vowel	Short a	Short i	Short u
Arabic name	فتحةfatḥa(tu)	كسرةkasra(tu)	ضمةḍamma(tu)
symbol	ــَـ	ــِـ	ــُـ

Each vowel can be long or short. When a long vowel is used, a consonant letter is written after it. for instance, the letter alif, which usually holds a hamza or a vowel where there couldn't be one, when following a short /a/ makes it long. Long /i/ and long /u/ use ي and و respectvely. This makes them indistinguishable from a /j/ or a /w/ which happen to have a /i/ or /u/ before them. For the most part this is not an issue since they are pronounced identically in Arabic, but it can confuse students when a word's root contaings ي or و .

vowel	long a	long i	long u
symbol	دَا or دَى	دِي	دُو

Although rarer, long vowels can also be added to words for grammatical reasons, like ك ت ب making the active participle كاتب (writer) with a long /a:/ or مكتوب (that which is written) using a long /u:/.

Most speakers do not pronounce any vowels which are at the end of a word. In fact, before a stop of any sort (full stop, comma etc), which are usually called "pausa", the final vowel is only pronounced in Qur’ān reciation.

At the end of a word however, each vowel comes in two forms, one is the normal form explained above, the second is the "nunated" form. A vowel mark can be doubled (دً and دٍ )or lengthened ( دٌ ) at the end of a word. This is most often seen at the end of a singular indefinite noun like كِتَابٌ (a book). A nunated vowel is the same as its non-nunated counterpart, but an n is pronounced after, so كِتَابٌ wouls be read "kitābun" although, by itself, the word drops the final -un because it is followed by a pause. The names of these marks are tanwīn fatḥah, tanwīn kasrah and tanwīn ḍammah respectively. A tanwīn fatḥah sits on the last consonant of the endings ة، ى، اء، أ، ا. Otherwise, it is written atop an alif which follows the last letter of the word. Example: لطفاً luṭfan (kindly, please).

There are a further two marks. The sukūn, a circle over the letter دْ denotes the absence of a vowel. Although it seems superfluous, it helps if an unmarked letter must be an error since otherwise a vowel could be left off and someone who doesn't knwo the word would be none the wiser.

The second diacritic is a šaddah, which looks like a w over the letter. It means the letter is doubled, i.e. pronounced quice, and generally occurs on a letter between two vowels. As such, it has to be able to combine freely with fatḥah, kasrah, and ḍammah like so دَّ دِّ دُّ where fatḥah and ḍammah are above the šaddah, but kasrah, falls below it (instead of falling below the letter entirely) but this may not render properly in some fonts.

These are all the commonly used حركات although there are rarer marks like the dagger alif ' which sits above a letter which is followed by a long /a/ vowel but does not employ the letter alif for historical reasons. The best known example is the word Allah which is written اَللّٰه essentialy al-Ḷāh. The word used to be اَل (the) + اِلّاه (god) making al-illāh, but over time the i was dropped and the word became allāh. alas, at the time, there was no standardised writing system, so long vowels were nto always distinguished form short and as such, illah and allah did not have an alif. Today, since all the ancient manuscripts, inscriptions, and the original qur'ān use the spelling الله no alif is used, but a dagger alif is placed above the ل to mark that it is said as though it has an alif.

The opposite to this is probably the even less common letter ٱ which looks like an alif with a small ص above it. It marks a completely silent alif.

Arabic pages
Introduction · Articles · Gender · Plurality · Adpositions · Pronouns · Sounds and Writing · Syntax · Verbs