It’s time for the first blog post since the introductory blog post. Since I haven’t completed the writing, phonology, vocabulary, and grammar combination, I can’t write this blog post in Arabic. Nonetheless, I will still be sharing what I have learned so far.

So far, I have learned the writing system.

 

Writing:
The Arabic Alphabet

Arabic uses an abjad which means vowels aren’t represented. In the case of Arabic, it represents long vowels and sometimes represents short vowels. (Side tangent but it’s much less random than English spelling)

ا – Alif
/aː/ or /æ/
Represents other vowels when a word starts with one
Sounds like the a in “father” or “cat”
Often altered with other markings (more on that later)

 

ب – Ba
/b/
Sounds like the b in “bucket” or “Bob”
One dot underneath (important to memorize dots)

 

ت – Ta
/t/
Sounds like the t in “turtle” or “tickle”
Two dots above

 

ث – Tha
/θ/
Sounds like the th in “third” or “think”
Three dots above

 

ج – Jim
/dʒ/
Sounds like the j in “jam” or “John”
One dot underneath

 

ح – Ha
/ħ/
Does not exist in English. Similar to the h in “hat” but further up the throat
No dots

 

خ – Kha

/x/
Does not exist in English. Pronounced like an h but in the position of a k
One dot above

 

د – Dal
/d/
Sounds like the d in “dad” or “Donald”
No dots

 

ذ – Dhal
/ð/
Sounds like the th in “the” or “that”
One dot above

 

ر – Ra
/r/
I can’t roll my r’s 🙁
Does not exist in English. Pronounced as a rolled r
No dots

 

ز – Zay
/z/
Sounds like the z in “zucchini” or “zombie”
One dot above

 

س – Sin
/s/
Sounds like the s in “sing” or “Sally”
No dots

 

ش – Shin
/ʃ/
Sounds like the sh in “shampoo” or “seashells”
Three dots above

 

ص – Sad
/sˤ/
Sounds like the s in “sing” or “Sally” but with a constricted throat (pharyngealisation will become a recurring theme)
No dots

 

ض – Dad
/dˤ/
Sounds like the d in “dad” or “Donald” but with a constricted throat
One dot above

 

ط – Ta
/tˤ/
Sounds like the t in “turtle” or “tickle” but with a constricted throat
No dots

 

ظ – Za
/ðˤ/
Misleadingly romanised as za rather than dha.
Sounds like the th in “the” or “that” but with a constricted throat
One dot above

 

ع – Ayn
/ʕ/
Does not exist in English. Somewhat like how you gargle water (it’s unique)
No dots

 

غ – Ghayn
/ɣ/
Does not exist in English. Pronounced like a h but in the position of a g
One dot above

 

ف – Fa
/f/
Sounds like the f in “fish” or “fortune”
One dot above

 

ق – Qaf
/q/
Does not exist in English. Pronounced like a k but further back
Two dots above

 

ك – Kaf

/k/
Sounds like the c in “carrot” or “car”
No dots

 

ل – Lam
/l/
Sounds like the l in “like” or “letter”
No dots

 

م – Mim
/m/
Sounds like the m in “mom” or “money”
No dots

 

ن – Nun
/n/
Sounds like the n in “none” or “never”
One dot above

 

ه – Ha
/h/
Sounds like the h in “hat” or “happy”
No dots

 

و – Waw
/w/ or /uː/
Sounds like the w in “water” or the u in “dune”
No dots

 

ي – Ya
/j/ or /iː/
Sounds like the y in “yellow” or ea in “eat”
Two dots below

 

ء – Hamzah
/ʔ/
Either on its own or thrown on Alif, Waw, or Ya.
Sometimes in English, in uh-oh or a pseudo-British accent.

 

ة – Ta marbutah
Sometimes /t/, sometimes silent
Used to mark words as feminine

 

ى – Alif Maqsurah
/aː/
Neuter or masculine version of Ta marbutah

 

A bunch of diacritic marks to compensate for the lack of vowels, to geminate, to mark the lack of a vowel, or grammatical case. This is getting a bit messy so I’ll spare the details but here they are:

نّ
نَ
نً
نِ
نٍ
نُ
نٌ
نْ

Anyways, that’s been a rant and a half. Next time around, I will post about some basic vocabulary and maybe some sentence structure and grammar if I can get there.

Cheers,
Tyler