Learning the Arabic Alphabet

This week I decided to begin to familiarize myself with the Arabic alphabet. Learning a new alphabet is extremely hard. However, if I want to excel in college I should start now. I hope to graduate college with a minor in Arabic so that it will better equip me in the International Relations field.

First Impressions

The things I noticed starting off with the alphabet is that everything is read from right to left. This will make things even harder as I am already accustomed to reading left to right.

Also, when forming words, the letters all seem to blend together and it is hard to differentiate from each letter. I expect to get a handle of this when I become more proficient in it, but as of right now it seems kind of overwhelming.

The Alphabet

So the Arabic alphabet consists of 28 letters which is shown below. This chart, like the alphabet, is read from right to left. The top row is the character, the middle row is the name, and the bottom row is the English letter (or letters) that it represents.

ج	ث	ت	ب	أ	Arabic Character
/Jīm/	/Thā’/	/Tā’/	/Bā’/	/Alif/	Letter Name
j	th	t	b	a	Letter Sound
ر	ذ	د	خ	ح	Arabic Character
/Râ’/	/Dhāl/	/Dāl/	/Khâ’/	/ħā’/	Letter Name
r	dh	d	kh	h	Letter Sound
ض	ص	ش	س	ز	Arabic Character
/đâd/	/ŝâd/	/Shīn/	/Sīn/	/Zāy/	Letter Name
d	s	sh	s	z	Letter Sound
ف	غ	ع	ظ	ط	Arabic Character
/Fā’/	/Ghayn/	/ξayn/	/Zâ’/	/ŧâ’/	Letter Name
f	gh	`	Z	t	Letter Sound
ن	م	ل	ك	ق	Arabic Character
/Nūn/	/Mīm/	/Lām/	/Kāf/	/Qâf/	Letter Name
n	m	l	K	q	Letter Sound
		ي	و	هـ	Arabic Character
		/Yā’/	/Wāw/	/Hā’/	Letter Name
		y	w	h	Letter Sound

The Rules

Part of what makes this language so hard is that each letter has about 4 different forms that it can appear in. The characters listed above are in the form where they are by itself. Those letters are not connected to each other to form words. If you were to put one of the characters in a word then it would look different if it was the first letter, different again if it was in the middle, and different again if it was the last letter. So each of the characters could have a different look for the beginning, middle, and end of a word. This makes it very hard for someone trying to learn it.

For example:

ب is the Arabic character for b. However at the beginning of a word it looks like بـ , in the middle it would look like ـبـ , and at the end it would look like ـب . That's 4 different variations of the same letter. So all in all I would have to learn 112 new characters for this language! Thankfully some of the letters have repeating variations and some even look similar. This takes some of the stress out of it. 

Short Vowels

Another thing I learned about the alphabet is that it is mainly consonants. To express a vowel there is a separate symbol added above or below each character. Here is another chart expressing the short vowels of the alphabet. Once again it reads right to left.

دُ	دِ	دَ	Arabic Character
/Đammah/	/Kasrah/	/Fatħah/	Vowel Name
u	i	a	Vowel Sound
The 'u' in put	The 'i' in sit	The 'a' in /ba/	English word with similar sound

The letter being used as an example is د (Dāl) which is the letter d. There are 3 examples of د , each being used with a different short vowel. 

The first column has a little slash above which represents the letter A.

The second column has a slash below which represents I.

The third column has a squiggle above that looks like a ribbon that represent U.

Reflections

I most definitely have my work cut out for me. I think for right now I will just stick to learning just the alphabet by itself and worry about the variations another time. There are actually more vowels that I didn't mention called "long vowels". I was already too stressed out over what I had already tried teaching myself I didn't want to add anymore.

I also came across a children's video to help them learn the alphabet. This is probably something could help me since I am also new to this language. 

I know that once I finally learn this language (and even just the alphabet) I will be immensely satisfied. It will be very difficult but I know that I am up for the challenge. This will be an exciting and interesting new experience.

Bibliography

 "Free Arabic Language Course, Learn Arabic." Free Arabic Language Course, Learn Arabic, Arabic Tuition. Madinaharabic. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

"Learn the Arabic Letters and Alphabet - MyEasyArabic.com." Learn the Arabic Letters and Alphabet. Myeasyarabic.com, 1 June 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.