Arabic letters and diacritics: Difference between revisions

The original Qur'an and many other Islamic sources (some of them not translated yet) are in the Arabic language. Also when discussing Islam in English, there are many Arabic words used, like salah, Allah, masjid, Muhammad and others. Many Arabic words cannot be properly transliterated into English, due to the incompatibility of the alphabets.

The Arabic "alphabet" is not compatible with the English alphabet. There are letters in English, which cannot be transliterated using the Arabic alphabet and vice versa.  

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:

Then there is the next "level" of diacritics, the harakat (حَرَكَات), which is optional and often not present in the Arabic text. The Arabic word "harakat" حَرَكَات without the harakat, would look like this: حركات. The three little lines above the letter determine the three "a" in h'''a'''r'''a'''k'''a'''t.

====P like in Euro'''p'''e====

There is no letter P in the Arabic abjad. Arabs have to say "Awru'''b'''a" (أوروبا).  

====V like in '''v'''ideo====

====G like in '''G'''abriel====

There is no letter g (like in '''g'''arden) in Arabic. So '''G'''abriel is '''J'''ibreel (جبريل).  

====CH like in '''Ch'''arles====

===Arabic letters compatible with the English alphabet===

===ِArabic letters ambiguously compatible with the English alphabet===

These letters (t, d, s) have two versions. The difference is like "je vais" and "je veux" in French. The best way to learn the difference would be to watch some videos on the Arabic alphabet and hear the difference.

There is also another kind of "t", that is pronounced as ت. It occurs usually at the end of a word and words ending on this letter are usually feminine. Thiw "t" is not read when reading the word alone, but it is read when the word is in a context of Arabic text. For example the word prayer, صلاة, can be read as either "salat" or "salah". When the "t" is not read, it is usually transliterated as "h".

Then there are these two similar letters (k, q).

Then there are these two letters, both transliterated as "h". Sometimes ح is transliterated as "h" with a dot below it.

And a special letter:

===ِArabic letters not compatible with the English alphabet===

Probably the ugliest sound of all letters:

These two are a pair similar to د/ض and others, but the basic doesn't have a proper equivalent in the English alphabet:

These two are very unique and definitely has to be heard to learn them:

And a glottal stop:

===ِArabic letters mixed together===

===How to "extract" letters from an Arabic word===

The Arabic letters are written differently in the beginning, middle and end of the word and also when they are written alone. Some of the letters have are connected and some of them are not connected with the others. The easiest way to determine the letters is to copy that word in to a text editor and insert spaces between the letters. That way, you will see their basic form. Some letters look very similar in some cases. Like the letter ف and غ, when they are in a middle of a word. Look at the middle letter:

Of course the correct way to determine the letters is to learn all the forms of the letters.

The words often start with the ال (al-) prefix. The prefix indicates a definite article, like "the" in English. Reading this prefix is complicated. The pronunciation of the alif (ا) is determined by ending vowel of the word before and the pronunciation of the lam (ل) is determined by the first letter after the ل. The alif is just read as the last vowel of the word before. The lam is sometimes read as "l", but sometimes it is read as the first letter of the word. When it is read as the first letter of the word, there is a shadda diacritic sign on the first letter of the word, indicating that the letter is to be pronounced with double length. The Arabic alphabet is divided into sun and moon letters. The sun letters "eat" the lam, the moon letters don't. When a word stars with a moon letter, the ل in ال is read as a regular "l".

So A'''l'''-Quran (القران) is read as A'''l'''-Quran, but A'''l'''-Rahman (الرحمان) is read as A'''r'''-Rahman, because ر is a sun letter.  

In the word الله (Allah), the second l "eats" the first one, and is pronounced twice as long, but they are the same letters, so the ل being a sun letter doesn't make much difference.

===How to write an Arabic word===