Lesson 2

Arabic Vowels

We have learnt how we pronounce Arabic letters when they come alone, but in real life these letters always come in words, as like any letters in any language.

The question now is: how we pronounce them when they come in a word?

When these letters come in a word they have something called vowels. These vowels enable us to pronounce the word correctly.

I do not mean vowels letters like: a, e, u… etc., but I mean something else. Let’s take the letter “M” in English as an example to understand what vowels mean here:

Man – Moon – Mill

Look how we pronounce the letter “M” with three ways in these three words. These three ways of pronunciation called “Vowels”. These vowels take the same way in Arabic language.

Each letter in Arabic has many ways (vowels) to pronounce in classical Arabic, but we do not use all of them in slang.

Vowels in Arabic have shapes and names. We write and pronounce vowels in classical Arabic, but we do not write them in slang, we just pronounce them.

Let’s get to know the famous vowels in Arabic:

Vowel	Name	Pronunciation
َ	Fat-ha
ِ	Kus-ra
ُ	Dum-ma
ْ	Skoon
ّ	Shad-da

Remember: “Fat-ha” is placed over the letter, like this “كَ”. “Kus-ra” is placed under the letter, like this “كِ”.

Now, let's apply this practically. I will connect the letter "هـ" with another letters. I will give each of them a vowel, and then I will pronounce them.

Remember: These words do not have any meaning. They are just samples for clarification.

Samples	Pronunciation
هَبَ – هَتَ – هَفَ
هَبِ – هَتِ – هَفِ
هَبُ – هِتُ – هَفُ
هَفْ – هِتْ - هُبْ
هَفَّ – هِتِّ - هُبُّ

Remember: Look how I stress the letter has “shad-da”, and how I pronounce it when it has “shad-da and fat-ha”, “shad-da and kas-ra” ….. etc.

Remember: Shad-da has three forms. These forms are: َّ  /  ِّ   /  ُّ

Remember: We usually do not write Arabic vowels in slang, we just pronounce them.

Now, let’s take some real words, and apply what we have studied on them. Remember, I will draw vowels just for clarification:

English	Arabic	Pronunciation
Book	كِتَابْ
Notebook	كَرَّاَسَهْ
Age	عُمْر
Ladder	سِلِّمْ
Human	إنْسَاَنْ
Animal	حَيَوَاَنْ