lesson 1

About the Arabic Alphabet

• Arabic is read from right to left

Arabic Alphabet

اللغة العربية سهلة

• There are 29 letters in the Arabic alphabet

29

• There is no such thing as capital letters versus small letters

Basically, there is no such thing as printing versus hand writing / cursive
So basically, there’s only one way to write Arabic

Read the chart of letters below from right to left, top to bottom
You can click on each letter to hear its name

• Basically, all 29 letters are consonants

Vowels are not part of the alphabet; they will be discussed later

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

• Each letter has 4 forms (which look very similar to each other)

o   when you write the letter by itself

o   when it comes in the beginning of a word

o   when it comes in the middle of a word

o   when it comes at the end of a word

These forms will be discussed later
The forms you saw in the chart are when the letter is by itself

• When we learn the Arabic alphabet in these lessons, we will talk about the following things:

o   what is the letter’s name?

o   how do you pronounce the letter?

o   how do you write the letter (in all 4 forms)?