Your Easy Guide to Understanding Arabic Vowels

 

 

 

Without a doubt, the sounds of each language are unique, but having a vowel system is one thing they all have in common. It's impossible to speak without vowel sounds. Although languages differ in the number of vowels sound they use, they are an essential component of any human language, making it important to pronounce them correctly. Before taking the time to learn the Arabic vowels, let's highlight some basic facts about them to avoid any confusion

regarding the correct Arabic pronunciation:

 

 

-        The Arabic script is an abjad, and it has 28 letters that are mostly consonants.

-        Arabic vowels are called “harakat حركات” and they are used to give a sound to silent consonants.

-         Vowels are not part of the written alphabet. They rather look like dashes and symbols above or below the Arabic Letters indicating the sound a letter will make in a word.

-        There are two types of vowels in Arabic: the long vowels and the short vowels.

 

Short vowels:

 

Although they are not written on each word, it is very important to learn how to read Arabic using short vowels. There are 3 short vowels:

-        fat-haa فتحة    pronounced as the English letter (a)

-        Dham-ma ضمة    pronounced as the English letter (u)

-        Kas-ra كسرة        pronounced as the English letter (i)

 

 

a	i	u
َ	ِ	ُ

 

 

 

 

The letter "ب" which sounds like the letter "B" in English can be pronounced as "بَ Ba", "بُ Bu", and "بِ

 

 

Bi".

Vowels or Harakat in Arabic literally means movements as they depend on the position of the word in the sentence and grammar. Changing short vowels that accompanies the letter in the same Arabic word results in a new meaning. Check out the below table to see how the Arabic active verb “عَقَدَ to tie” generates multiple words when changing the didactical marks.

 

Note: There is a table attached to the file.

 

 

long vowels:

 

The long vowels are a prolongation of short vowels; they are called Harakaat Taweelah حَرَكَات طَوِيلَة.

There are 3 long vowels:

-        The letter (Alif أ ), functions as the long vowel (aa).

-        The letter (waw و), functions as the long vowel (ii).  

-        The letter (ya’a ي), functions as the long vowel (uu).

Each one of these letters has a double functionality, meaning that they sometimes are long vowels, and sometimes they are consonants.

In the following example, we'll explain the difference between short vowels and long vowels so you can see how they

work:

 

Short Vowels	Long Vowels
كَتَبَ   to write	كَاتَبَ   to write
رَقَصَ  to dance	رَاقَصَ  to dance with