Main features of Arabic writing.

The first widely known feature is words writing direction. Unlike European languages words in Arabic are not written from left to right, as europeans are used to, but vice versa - from right to left.

At the same time, it must be kept in mind that the order of writing numbers in Arabic is the same as in European languages, i.e., from left to right.

The second feature: forms of typewriting letters are the same as handwritten ones.

The third feature: there are no capital letters in Arabic alphabet, all letters are lowercase as can be seen in [Example 1].

The forth feature: all letters in Arabic are consonants. Arabs use diacritical marks for vowels, which are usually not reproduced in texts (except for the Quran and educational literature). It is implied that a person familiar with Arabic can easily figure out where and what diacritic must be. Various versions of the same text with and without diacritical marks are also represented in [Example 1]. Actually the lack of diacritics in the text is not a big problem because during the process of reading in Arabic such a skill can be developed quite quickly.

The fifth feature: the roots of most Arabic word have 3 letters. Various parts of speech are made up of them by adding some auxiliary letters according to the rules of the Arabic word formation (in Arabic صَرْفٌ, it sounds like "sorf"). If you wish to look up an Arabic word in a dictionary you must know its root letters since the words are arranged there in root letters order.

The sixth feature: the shape of a letter depends on its position in the word. The same letter can have up to 4 forms of writing: a stand-alone letter and a letter in initial, middle and final positions.

Arabic pronunciation features.

The second difficulty for non-arab is Arabic speech, as it contains some sounds which are not present in European languages. The ways of right pronouncing Arabic letters (مَخَارِجُ الخُرُوفِ - sounds like [makhoriju-l-khuruf]) will be explained in detail later in this course. The audio materials existing on the site should help you to get the right idea about it.

Congratulations! You have taken the first step to learning Arabic. As it says, practice is the best master, so do not forget to perform the exercise #1, placed in "Exercises" section on this page for better fixing it in the mind.