Eric's Arabic Hour- Lesson 2

Hello again blogosphere!  I am back once again to help with your Arabic skills to the extent you are interested or can stomach it.  This is the second lesson in Arabic that I have done and it covers the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th letters of the Arabic alphabet.  You can find the first lesson here for reference. 

ب

The second letter in the Arabic alphabet is ب or “Baa”.  The letter makes the same sound as the English letter “B” and can have an added short vowel of “a”, “u”, or “e” depending on whether a fatah, dumma, or kesra is added respectively.  I have provided a review of the three and the tanwin below.

    

َ   - Fatah    ُ  - Dumma

If it is a fatah above the letter it gives it an “a” sound to the end of the letter and if a dumma is above the letter it adds an “u” or “ew” sound.  For example, if a fatah were added to the letter ب it would be pronounced “Baa” as opposed to the stand alone letter pronunciation of “B”.  If there is a kesra (as shown below) below the letter it receives a brief “e” or “i” sound as in well…. “in”.

ِ   - Kesra

You may have noticed that the fatah and kesra look the same.  The only difference is that the fatah will always be above the letter and the kesra will always be below the letter.

The tanwin is a doubling of the fatah or kesra that looks like what is shown below to the left alone and what is shown below to the right with the alif.

ً   or   ٍ   اً  or  اٍ

This gives the letter an “an” sound for the fatah much like is found in the word “tan” and an “in” sound for the kesra like the word “in”.    

ت

The third letter of the Arabic alphabet is the ت or “Taa”.  The ت is pronounced the same as the English letter “T”.  It can be modified, as is the case with all Arabic letters, by adding the fatah, kesra, dumma, and tanwin.

ث

The fourth letter of the Arabic alphabet is the ث or “Thaa”.  The ث is pronounced the same as the “Th” in the English word “Thought”.  It is a softer “Th” sound as opposed to the one that can be found in the English word “There”. 

I hope you found the lesson informative.  In the next lesson I will go over the next 3 letters and will try to start to add words for you to practice with!

To see Eric's other Arabic Lessons Click Below:

Lesson 1