Learn Arabic Letters

Asmaa Akl

12 Dec 2019

Arabic is a difficult language to learn since its letters are completely different from those of the Latin alphabet. In order to properly learn Arabic, you must first familiarize and memorize the Arabic alphabet and the phonetics of Arabic letters. Before that, there are certain points that you need to keep in mind. There are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. Those 28 letters have different forms depending on their placement in a certain word. Additionally, Arabic is a right to left language meaning that it is written and read from right to left.

It is also important to note that short vowels are not written as letters but as diacritics (tashkeel) above a letter. For the purpose of this article we will only concern ourselves with the pronunciation of the letters accompanied with the fatha (ــَــ) above them. The fatha adds a short (ă) sound after the pronunciation of the letter itself. For more information about diacritics please visit our article “Learn Arabic Diacritics (short vowels): Tashkeel”.

Let’s first learn to identify the Arabic letters then we can take it further.

Arabic Letters in Their Isolated Form

أ	aa
ب	ba
ت	ta
ث	tha
ج	ja
ح	Ha
خ	kha
د	da
ذ	zha
ر	ra
ز	za
س	sa
ش	sha
ص	Sa
ض	Da
ط	Ta
ظ	Zha
ع	AA
غ	gha
ف	fa
ق	Qa
ك	ka
ل	la
م	ma
ن	na
ه	ha
و	wa
ي	ya

Learn Arabic Letters and Their Different Forms

When you start to learn Arabic, you might find it complicated since the Arabic letters you started to memorize and practice look quite different when they are inserted in a word. The reason behind this is that Arabic letters change forms depending on their position in a word. There are four possible placements for each letter of the alphabet and they are:

1- Isolated. They can stand alone at any part of the word, be it the start, the middle or the end.

2- The beginning of a word.

 

3- The middle of a word.

 

4- The end of a word.

 

Whether the letter is placed at the beginning, middle or end, it has an extended form. Look at the table below to see how a letter looks in each position:

Letter (Isolated)	Start	Middle	End
أ	ا	ـا / ـأ	ـا / ـأ
ب	بــ	ــبــ	ــب
ت	تــ	ــتــ	ــت
ث	ثــ	ــثــ	ــث
ج	جــ	ــجــ	ــج
ح	حــ	ــحــ	ــح
خ	خــ	ــخــ	ــخ
د	د	ــد	ــد
ذ	ذ	ــذ	ــذ
ر	ر	ــر	ــر
ز	ز	ــز	ــز
س	ســ	ــســ	ــس
ش	شــ	ــشــ	ــش
ص	صــ	ــصــ	ــص
ض	ضــ	ــضــ	ــض
ط	طــ	ــطــ	ــط
ظ	ظــ	ــظــ	ــظ
ع	عــ	ــعــ	ــع
غ	غــ	ــغــ	ــغ
ف	فــ	ــفــ	ــف
ق	قــ	ــقــ	ــق
ك	كــ	ــكــ	ــك
ل	لــ	ــلــ	ــل
م	مــ	ــمــ	ــم
ن	نــ	ــنــ	ــن
ه	هــ	ــهــ	ــه
و	و	ــو	ــو
ي	يــ	ــيــ	ــي

 

It might be confusing at first to learn Arabic letters’ forms, but with practice and the proper guidance, nothing is impossible. We at Nour Academy exist in order to provide professional guidance to learn Arabic online. Check our “Read Arabic letters Classes” or “Al-Nourani Qaeda classes” for a better learning experience on your journey to learning the Arabic language. If you want to learn Arabic letters in more detail stay tuned for part 2 of this article.