Learn Quranic Arabic Lesson 1

Pretext:

Inshallah from today we will be disseminating Quranic Arabic. These lessons are organised in a way that you will learn Arabic to understand Quran without translation. You need to be motivated to learn and implement it onto your life. Understand the Quran as a first source of information, not via translated versions.

 Take a bold step in understanding what exactly is in the Quran  and what exactly you say while praying. Remember Quran is revealed on a common man, Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH)), and the addressee is a common man. Therefore, you are the one who has to learn and understand it. The only barrier to understanding is the Arabic language, which inshallah we will cover in lessons. You must also note that these lessons are designed to learn the Quranic Arabic so all the example, text , words will be taken from Quran. However, if you want to learn Arabic language as a language then Quran is the best start, because Arabic grammar is derived from Quran not the other way round.

All humans throughout the life learn different things and the key to harness those is dedication and motivation. Inshallah if you have those two qualities which ofcourse you have then Allah will help you in learning this easy Quranic language. So benefit from your qualities to secure a place in paradise by following and implementing the teaching of Quran. May Allah help us all... Ameen

In this course special lesson delivery techniques have been used. First few lessons level will be easy, however, if you skip those you will not understand the subsequent lessons.

Lesson 1: Alphabets and Vowels 

Difficulty Level: 

Easy

Duration:

30 minutes

Prerequisites:

Recognition of  Arabic Text

Lesson Objective: 

At the end of this lesson you will able to know Arabic Alphabets, vowels (called as vibrations)

Alphabets:

The first and foremost step in learning a language is to learn alphabets of a language. There are 26 alphabets in English language like:  a,b,c ... z, while in Arabic, the number of alphabets are not the same as English. There are 28 alphabets in Arabic given below:

Arabic Alphabets

  Hamza is an extra Alphabet

As you can see from the alphabet chart , there are 28 letters. However, in Arabic Hamza and Alif are counted as one. 
Sometimes you may see  the following alphabet written in the list

it also sounds "yaa", however this is similar to

The only difference is usage in the word. Don't worry much at this stage, it will be cleared as you learn more and more. You need to recognise the thing only at this stage 

To pronounce alphabets  correctly watch the following video:




Unlike English, Arabic text is written from right to left.

Vowels:

To make words from alphabet, you need to insert vowels at appropriate places. In English there are five vowels: a, e, i ,o, u. However in Arabic vowels do not belongs to alphabet set. Arabic vowels are different entity as those are use to vibrate the alphabets, that is why I have used vibration in the brackets in front of vowels. There are three vowels (single vibrations) in Arabic.

Short vowels

Fatah : it look like forward slash on your computer keyboard and is drawn above the alphabet . All the alphabets along with their vowels are given in the chart below

Fatah

Fatah extends the sound of an alphabet, it work like English vowel "a" 

To pronounce  Fatah  correctly watch the following video

 

Kasrah:it look like forward slash on your computer keyboard and is drawn below the alphabet. All the alphabets along with their vowels are given in the chart below

Kasrah (Zair)

Kasrah extends the sound of an alphabet, it work like English vowel "i"

To pronounce Kasrah correctly watch the following video

 
 
Damah: it look like single quote on your computer keyboard
and is drawn above the alphabet.All the alphabets along with their vowels are given in the chart below

Damah (Paish)

Damah rounds the sound of an alphabet, it work like English vowel "u"

To pronounce Damah correctly watch the following video

  

Besides vowel you have a rest (commonly known as Jazam or sakoon) on the alphabets , which give you a stop, this rest can be drawn on any alphabet. You will see  rest in two shapes: one look like Damah but is not fully rounded and the other look like circle. The reason for difference in shape is due to font used on computer, see below:

Remember: There will be no vowel (vibration) or rest on Alif. If you put vowel or rest on Alif, then it does not stay as Alif but convert to Hamza, and that is why Hamza and Alif are counted as one alphabet , as I mentioned in the beginning.

Don't worry about the following text, only read it for now and keep in mind

Fatah sound can be extended by adding Alif at the end

 

Kasrah sound can be extended by adding yaa with a rest (Jazam) on it

Damah sound can be extended by adding waaw with a rest (Jazam) on it 

Wow, lot of work to digest, but it provides a good foundation to build on it.

Summary:

You have covered in this lesson alphabets and vowels. Along with videos you know how to pronounce it and finally you touched some information about the vowel sound extension. 

In the next lesson we will be covering parts of speech. Don't be afraid and compare it with English language grammar. Arabic grammar is easy to understand but it needs  motivation, and with Allah's help you will succeed, Inshallah. so see you on next lesson.

Test: 

Look at the following chart and recognise the different  vowels (vibration) used and then practice on sounds