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Arabic letters and diacritics: Difference between revisions
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Even if you don't want to have some deep knowledge of Arabic, when you know the alphabet, at least you can correctly read the Islamic terms and be less confused about their pronunciation (and also look more professional). This article is for people who speak English and have no knowledge of Arabic. | Even if you don't want to have some deep knowledge of Arabic, when you know the alphabet, at least you can correctly read the Islamic terms and be less confused about their pronunciation (and also look more professional). This article is for people who speak English and have no knowledge of Arabic. | ||
The Arabic "alphabet" is not compatible with the English alphabet. There are letters | The Arabic "alphabet" is not compatible with the English alphabet. There are letters in English, which cannot be transliterated into the Arabic alphabet and vice versa. The word "alphabet" is derived from the words "'''a'''lpha" and "'''b'''eta", while Arabic doesn't have a simple letter like "a". So "alphabet" might not be the best way to describe the Arabic letters and abjad is used instead (الأَبْجَدِيَّة العَرَبِيَّة, ''al-abjadīyah al-ʻarabīyah'', the Arabic abjad). | ||
Although there are letters which represent vowels, they are used only to represent long vowels. The short vowels in words are either indicated by (optional) diacritics, or just not indicated at all and the reader just has to know how to pronounce it. There are two "levels" of diacritics. The first is I‘jām (إِعْجَام), small dots which are considered to be a part of the letter. They were not present in the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts. They are absolutely important as they determine the consonant. For example: | Although there are letters which represent vowels, they are used only to represent long vowels. The short vowels in words are either indicated by (optional) diacritics, or just not indicated at all and the reader just has to know how to pronounce it. There are two "levels" of diacritics. The first is I‘jām (إِعْجَام), small dots which are considered to be a part of the letter. They were not present in the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts. They are absolutely important as they determine the consonant. For example: | ||