Table of Contents Lesson Description Lesson 01 The Arabic Alphabet Lesson 02 Introduction to Vowels Lesson 03 The First Short Vowel Lesson 04 The Second Short Vowel Lesson 05 The Third Short Vowel Lesson 06 The First Short Vowel Doubled Lesson 07 The Second Short Vowel Doubled Lesson 08 The Third Short Vowel Doubled Lesson 09 The First Long Vowel Lesson 10 The Second Long Vowel Lesson 11 The Third Long Vowel Lesson 12 Syllables and Doubled Letters Lesson 13 Joining Letters and Forming Words Lesson 14 Reading Practice 1 Lesson 15 Reading Practice 2 Lesson 16 Reading Practice 3 Lesson 17 Reading Practice 4 Lesson 18 Reading Practice 5 Lesson 19 Pronunciation of the Letters Lesson 20 Primary Qualities of the Letters Lesson 21 Secondary Qualities of the Letters

Lesson 2: Introduction to Vowels

Lesson two deals with the vowels of the Arabic language. You would have noticed that the alphabet is composed entirely of consonants. This type of alphabet is useless because we speak in syllables, and in order to create syllables, we require vowels between our consonants.

Syllables are the building blocks of speech and they come in three types; 1) consonant vowel, 2) vowel consonant, and 3) consonant vowel consonant. That is to say, a syllable may be formed by having a consonant followed by a vowel, such as in the word 'TO', a vowel followed by consonant, such as in the word 'OF', or two vowels with a consonant in between, such as in the word 'FOR'. In Arabic, we use only types one and three.

Since the Arabic alphabet has no letters which are vowels, there are symbols that are placed either above or beneath the consonants and these act as vowel sounds. They are three.

Furthermore, towards the end of words, the vowels may be doubled. When a vowel is doubled i.e. two of the symbols for that vowel are placed atop or underneath the letter, the sound of the word ends with an 'N'. Click on the vowels in the charts to hear the demonstrations. The long vowels will be discussed in chapters to come.

Note that each vowel has a name, the vowels collectively have a name, the letters which contain a vowel have a name, letters are named specifically depending on which vowel they hold, and doubled vowels are also given names. The first row of the charts contain the examples, the second rows show the individual names of the vowels, the third rows show the adjective used to describe the letter which is attributed with the given vowel, the fourth rows show the English equivalents, and the columns to the right show the collective name for the group.

Click on the letter with the vowel to hear a demonstration of the sound the vowel makes, and click on the name of the vowel to hear what it is called. Finally, note that a letter has been chosen at random to demonstrate the vowels; this is because vowels don't simply appear by themselves, they must be associated to a letter.

End of Lesson 2 | Proceed to lesson 3