Mapping Arabic — The Arabic Alphabet

========== Lesson: Learn Arabic to understand Quran Mapping Arabic {L00-Part-1} for beginners Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjWaHXLskLg Cleaned: No ---------------------------------------------------------- CLEANING NOTES: correct Arabic terms, punctuation, remove fillers (um/uh), add [MM:SS] timestamps at section breaks, mark unclear passages with [?] ---------------------------------------------------------- Learn Arabic to understand Quran Mapping Arabic {L00-Part-1} for beginners

0:00 Asalaamu Alaikum, welcome to the language of Quran easier than English introductory session. The purpose behind this session is really to give you a map of the Arabic language. Now Arabic language like all other languages has letters of the alphabet, words and then words are put together in a basic set of rules which helps us to form sentences and phrases. Now this is common in all the languages. What we need to really appreciate in this session is the types of words and the types of sentences and

phrases that are most commonly used in the Quran and hence give us an overview of the key components of the Arabic language that we really need to know and learn the rules of and understand before we can begin to appreciate the Quran in Arabic. The Quran has been revealed in the Arabic language. The Arabic language of the time of the Prophet peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Allah says in many places in the Quran as an example in Surah Yusuf, Allah reminds us, he

says These are the ayat, signs, verses of the clear book. We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran. So the Quran has been revealed as an Arabic Quran so that you may understand. The purpose behind the sending the Quran in Arabic is so that we you and I can understand it. We can live according to its message, benefit from its message and of course invite humanity to it. So Allah sent it down in Arabic. Allah also reminds us in the Quran that he has not

only sent the Quran down for us as guidance but he has also made it easy for us to understand it. Allah says four times in Surah Al-Qamar And we have indeed made the Quran easy to understand and remember.

1:55 So it has been made easy by whom? By Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala himself. Is there anyone who will receive admonition? So the Quran ayah reminds us number one that Allah has made it easy for us to learn, to remember and of course to understand this message. Is there anyone who is going to receive admonition? This is the message for us that it is an obligation for us Muslims to try to make our sincerest effort to begin to understand the meaning and the message of Quran. The

Quran is a collection of ayat. Ayah singular, ayat plural. They are grouped together and into surahs. Surah singular, surah plural. Now there are 114 surahs in the Quran, 114 surahs in the Quran. The shortest have only three ayat. So only three. Surah Asr, Surah Nasr and Surah Kawthar. The longest surah of Quran is Surah Al-Baqarah which has 286 ayat.

2:55 So the surahs vary in the number of ayat they have. Also the ayah themselves can on some occasion can only be a few letters. For example Taha. We also have example of an ayah being only one word Ar-Rahman. Only one word Ar-Rahman. So you can see it can be few letters or an ayah or it can be a full page as in the standard Mus'haf we have ayah number 282 which is the longest ayah of the Quran.

3:21 Where the ayah begins, where it ends, these are based upon divine instruction as given to us through the Prophet ﷺ. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala revealed the Quran, the ayat, its context are all based upon divine revelation and this is an example of the longest ayah of Quran. In essence for us to study an ayah we can say generally an ayah in Arabic is one or more sentences. It may have many many sentences but generally we can say one or more sentences is the standard ayah.

So for us to begin to appreciate the Quran in Arabic we must know how to form Arabic sentences, phrases etc. Now as I mentioned 114 surahs the total number of ayat in the Quran 6236. What is amazing if we look into the structure of the Quran what we find is the standard Mus'haf for example the one that is by the Huffaz the book form has 600 pages and these have 15 lines each page has 15 lines. If we calculate the number of pages multiplied by number

of lines we get 9,000 lines in the Quran. Please remember this I'll be referring to this number quite frequently in the course. So it has 9,000 lines and in each line we can say on the average up and down about nine words per line nine words. If we look at the number of total words in the Quran we find approximately 78,000 according to the computer 77,779. So we say 78,000 words in the Quran. Now what is amazing and what is the miraculous nature of the Quran

Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala has made it so easy for us to understand that if we collate all the words of the Quran in a database or a sheet form and we then count the repeated words meaning the most frequently words coming at the top and then we work down we find 120 of the most frequently used words of Quran have been used in the Quran 39,160 times. That's more than 50% of the words of our Quran just from 120 words. Even though the words are 78,000, 120

words will enable us to recognise if we learnt them almost 50% of the words of our Quran meaning every line we should be able to recognise on the average every other word. Alhamdulillah that's how easy Allah has made it but look it is not about in Arabic learning words same as in English we need to know how the words are used. So in this course what I've done in level 1 I've collated 439 words which have been used in the Quran almost 57% of its words

46,000 times roughly 57% of the words of Quran just in the 15 lessons that you are going to learn. How? I'm not going to just give you a list which of course is available but what more importantly how to use these words or how are they used in forming basic sentence as well as phrases in Arabic. So this is the key to learning that Allah Subhan Allah has made it easy there is nothing really to fear all we need to do is a sacrifice a little

bit of time a little bit of energy a little bit of effort inshallah on a regular basis and we'll be able to make huge leap in our understanding of Quran. So our goal brothers and sisters is to begin to understand the 114 surahs of Quran the 6236 ayat the 78,000 words inshallah as I've already shown you it is not about learning 78,000 words it really is between 4 to 600 words will give you the bulk of the words of Quran that you need inshallah what is

the real challenge for us is to begin to understand the grammatical structures of the Arabic language and that Alhamdulillah Allah Subhan Allah has made it very easy as Arabic is the most structured language that you will ever come across. So this is the map of Arabic grammar that I have prepared for you which we are going to cover bulk of it in the 15 lessons that are proposed in book 1 of language of Quran easier than English. Inshallah I'm going to go through all of this

in the lessons coming but here in this session I'm going to give you a brief overview. In summary Arabic only has three types of words three types of words these words are put together to form meaningful constructs sentences and phrases and Arabic only has two types of sentences of course the phrases can be categorised in many different ways but these five are the most essential for you or most commonly used types of phrases in the Quran so two types of sentences five types of phrases and

only three types of words and that is the structure of the language that we are inshallah making intention to begin to learn so we can appreciate the Quran in Arabic. What will surprise anyone who begins to study Arabic is that it is the most structured language you will ever come across it is incredibly logical well structured and governed by rational rules. Rules are very easy to pick up through practise not through memorisation and it has as I mentioned only three types of words and two types

of sentences. What is even more amazing with the Arabic language and this is similar with other semantic languages is that most of the words in Arabic are derived from three root letters almost 99 plus percent of the words you're going to come across are all derived from three root letters and it's understanding how the derivation works from the standard of the three root letters inshallah will give you a huge yield in your understanding of Arabic words. So in Arabic really the wrong way to approach it

is to get a long list of words and try to memorise hundreds and hundreds of words. It is far easier for you to learn the basic rules of how the words are formed how the root has additions put onto it in terms of vowels as well as letters to combine together to form new scales of words and what these scales give additional meanings of. So this is inshallah what we are going to be covering in book one we're going to look at the basic structures and

book two inshallah that I'm going to look at verbs and we're going to look at in detail how the derivation from the three root letters into verbs and many common nouns occur in Arabic. So let's begin at the foundation we're going to take an overview of the Arabic letters the Arabic like all other languages will have alphabet and these will then be joined together to form words and words and then will come together to form sentences or phrases. So we're going to look at an overview

of the Arabic alphabet. In this course we assume of course that you know how to read Arabic already and I put on the screen for you the English alphabet. Don't worry I'm not going to go through the alphabet I'm sure you know this already better than me. What is important of the 26 letters of the English alphabet we need to know that there are two types of letters in the English alphabet. We have five of them which are vowels and I've highlighted them in red for

you A E I O and U. They're vowels, vowel letters. The others are actually consonant letters. Now 21 consonants and 5 vowels in the English alphabet and what is important and I'm sure you know that you can't actually make words without vowels and consonants combining together. For example I've got two letters here P and T. There's no way I can actually pronounce or make words from just two consonants or three or four or five. I will need to apply some vowel sounds. So here I have

P T they don't make any words but if I put the letter A in between I have pat as in pat somebody in the back. If I put P E T I end up with pet as in my pet cat or something like that. If I put P I T pit okay pit of fire P O T pot of rice P U T put it down. Now you can see here by using consonants and vowels I'm able to produce words and of course the word number

can be hundreds and thousands but I need to combine the two not only in writing but also in reading. What is important about the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet does not have any vowels. They're all consonant sounds. So all of these which are already I'm sure you're familiar with are all consonants. Now the word letters WAW and YA are used for long vowels. They themselves are not vowel sounds but they're used for long vowels. Apart from that they're all consonants and are used as consonants. If you

look at this list you will see I have ordered it slightly differently than when we were children we learned or when we first learned to read Arabic the alphabet ordering is slightly different. For example you'll see at the end LA MIM NUN WAW HA HAMZA YA. Now I put Hamza actually not on the list there but Hamza according to the dictionary is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet not at the end and there is a reason for that I'll explain it very briefly inshallah and

WAW and YA are the last two letters.

12:34 WAW and YA are also called weak letters in Arabic along with Alif and that's going to play a big role in your study of Arabic inshallah from lesson 16 onwards we will see how weak letters change and form into different words inshallah but for now but just to make a note they're all consonants. Alif, WAW and YA are used as long vowels but there is no vowel letters in the Arabic alphabet and according to some scholars of Arabic Hamza and Alif are the same thing they

don't count them separately those that counted separately count 29 letters those that don't count Alif and Hamza separately count 28 and there is a reason for this mainly there is a big difference between Alif and the other letters please note the following point about Alif and this will come very very play a very important role in your studies first of all note that Alif cannot be the first letter of a word if you ever see a word in Arabic that looks like has an Alif as

the first letter please note it is not Alif. Alif cannot be the first letter of a word it can come in the middle depends on what letter is attached to it'll be written like so or it can come in the end where it can be written like so or like this or even as a dotless YA. YA without dots so these are all different types of Alif that are written but never at the beginning of a word so Alif is not the first letter of any

word in the Arabic language second it does not take a vowel sign please note so if you see Dhamma Fatha Kasra Sukoon on an Alif it is not Alif it is something else so please note that very important Alif does not take a haraka it is used as a long vowel as I've already mentioned so kitabun so you have kitabun so elongation kitabun okay it's used for elongation it is also used as a chair for Hamza so for example here you see it as the first

letter of a word it is not Alif it is actually Hamza so you read this as Akbaru Akbaru meaning bigger or greater so it's a chair for Hamza so Alif cannot be or Kalif Alif is not a standard letter of the Arabic alphabet and as a result many scholars do not count it as a letter of the alphabet as for Hamza Hamza is like any other letter of the alphabet except it has slightly different writing rules number one Hamza can come at the beginning middle or

the end of a word so it can come as any other letter of the alphabet so it's a consonant like all the others but it is written four different ways please note whenever it is written as the first letter of a word it will always be written on a Alif so this is a u i okay and in some script the Hamza is written in others it is not so you're required to assume that you know this rule that at the beginning of a word Alif

is actually Hamza and if it has a vowel sign you read it as a u or e there's also another Hamza which is called Hamza tul wasl so there are two types of Hamza Hamza tul wasl only comes at the beginning of a word please note and in the Quranic symbol you see this sawd like symbol so Hamza at the beginning will be always written on an Alif Hamza in the middle of a word can be written by itself on an Alif on a Hamza at

the end of a word can also be written by itself on an Alif or a wow or a yeah it is there are some complex writing rules regarding Hamza inshallah cover them in more advanced lessons for now just note this point that Hamza can be written four different ways so there are two types of Hamza in Arabic one is called Hamza tul wasl the other is called Hamza tul Qat now Hamza tul wasl only appears at the beginning of a word you will never see it

in the middle or the end so this is the symbol again which you'll see in some Quranic script which is like a sawd like symbol written at the top of an Alif so this is Hamza tul wasl and again you will see it most commonly in the definite article which is T H E in Arabic the so which is al the first part of it is Hamza tul wasl and it can be seen on some isms nouns and these are the most likely examples that you're

able you're likely to come across in your Arabic study if Nani in rotin even a tune even on this moon this moon okay these are the most common nouns that you will come across there's only a few nouns that in the entire language that has Hamza tul wasl at the beginning there are a few scales of verbs that also has it and for example this one we read as unsur and then we have istaghfir so again some scales of verbs will have it inshallah we'll study

them in book two so Hamza tul wasl will appear throughout your studies almost 8,000 times as Al in the Quran I think is about 8,800 times so it's very important that you know this Alhamdulillah those of you familiar with Quran reading this is one of the rules that is taught during reading the most important thing to remember is Hamza tul wasl is only read if speech begins with it so for example here if I'm starting my speech and the first thing I'm going to read is

this I will read this as Al kitabu Al kitabu Al kitabu if I'm reading this one I read it as ij al ij al and if I'm reading this I will read it as unsur unsur now why a and e sound which one should I apply the rule is very simple whenever you see the definite article Al in Arabic it is always read Hamza tul wasl as with a fatha or a zabr Al kitabu Al kitabu otherwise you will always read it with the e the

default is e it'll be ij al ij al but if the third letter on the scales of verbs we have the third letter which is the first here the second is always sukoon but the third letter this one has a dhamma or a pesh you'll read it with a o sound so unsur unsur so these are the basic rules of reading most of you are familiar with but I do need to go through them because this is basic things that I'm not going to go through

repeat during the lesson but these things things that we should know one more additional important thing about Hamza tul wasl is that if something is written before it and you're going to read that part you do not read the Hamza tul wasl so here we have one kitabu I'm not reading the Hamza tul wasl anymore waj al I'm not reading the Hamza tul wasl anymore one sur so you can see the sound going straight from here to there and we're not even reading it we're ignoring

it and this is what happens in Arabic the Hamza tul wasl is only read at the beginning of a speech if it comes after it will not be read so please note that inshallah you're gonna come across it many many times so Hamza tul wasl is only read in some occasions the Hamza tul wasl is also not written I will go through them during the lessons inshallah as we come across them otherwise you will always write the Hamza tul wasl but only read it when it

is the beginning of a speech Hamza tul qat is the other one the standard one which is at the beginning middle at the end of a word it can be any different ways and of course it can be written by itself on a alif or a waw or a ya so you can see it here written by itself as an examples here just note them down for now we don't really need to worry you just need to be aware that the Hamza can be written for

different ways and the spelling rule for Hamza is quite complex and there's no need to introduce it at this stage because our purpose is to learn Quran inshallah and once we've gone to intermediate level we can look at that rule but on important thing to note about the Hamza in general it is always written always present pronounced so here qul huwallahu ahad the a will always be read whether it's at the beginning of speech middle of a speech it doesn't matter and then wa id again

id is always read e sound is always read wa id qala rabbuka and when your Lord said so these are the few points about the Hamza normal Hamza which is read and written throughout Hamza tul wasl has his own peculiar rules the Arabic alphabet is divided into two groups one group is called Kamari and the others called Shamsi there are 14 each exactly divided into two and basically all we need to know is when it come to reading with al and please note this is only

reading with al there is a special set of rules in Kamari letters we read this very clearly the lamb is pronounced we say we say al-amaru al-amaru or for example if you use another letter al-hajju or al-baytu al is pronounced very very clearly whichever one of these letters comes after the al it is always read clearly but it is one of these 14 letters for example we have here we read this one straight there a Shamsu we do not pronounce the lamb okay we do not

pronounce this lamb go straight there and these are called Shamsi letters and again that's a dal dal and so on the good news for you in the Quranic script of course you don't even have to worry about it you will see a shudder here straight after the al and this indicates to you that you have to read it as a Shamsi letter so you know the lamb in reading of course in modern standard Arabic this is not written they assume that you know this rule so

please note that sometimes you see a shudder after al and sometimes you will not and this is the reason for for that and again these are basic reading rules which I'm hoping that you're already familiar with this is just a reminder of what they are about the Arabic alphabet on the other hand if we have something before that we want to read so for example here we have wa we want to read this together we say wal exactly the same as a rule I mentioned before

wal wal qamaru and then here again if the wa comes you will see here we go straight there was Shamsu so here we are ignoring the lamb and the Hamzatul Wasl in reading here we are ignoring the Hamzatul Wasl in reading and these are Shamsi and Qamari letter rules now why is all of this is why all of this is important you and I need to be able to read Arabic in order to learn the language one thing important to note that Arabic language normally when

it comes to Arabic speakers they will not write vowel signs on the letter consonants and those who are fluent in the language they've studied it for years can read text without vowel sounds being applied so for example these are three letters of Arabic kaaf taa and baa I've taken this word from the Quran and number 183 in Surah Al-Baqarah now for us to read it is impossible even if we have the context we non Arabic speakers cannot read this because we do not know which vowel

sounds to apply in the Quran you will see this is written like so ootiba meaning written down or prescribed now we can read it because we've got vowel sounds and this is where a lot of us struggle when it comes to learning Arabic most of the books are without vowels and it's impossible to read it's impossible to do self-study without vowels being there and that is why almost always when people pick up books to do self-study they fail because the vowel sounds are not then you

don't even know how to pronounce the words so in order to facilitate the pronunciation of the word Arabic has what's called harakat and these are vowels that go above and below the letters please note without these we cannot read Arabic words so they are very very important and alhamdulillah as far as Quranic study is concerned everything's clearly marked so we can read it without making any mistakes so these are the vowels now the vowels in Arabic are fatha which is the first one we're looking at

fatha is a line that goes above the letter that you want to apply the vowel sound to and it provides a sound like a ah so above so al-muslimata al-muslimata so you can see the vowel fatha gives a ah sound equivalent to the a in the English language then we have the second which is dhamma now dhamma gives a rounding sound a rounding sound so if for example you end up with a ooh sound so we have here al-muslimatu al-muslimatu and this is the dhamma written

above a letter above the letter and it is gives us the ooh sound then we have the one kasra which is written underneath the letter so you have kasra which gives us a e or I sound if and we see it here al-muslimati al-muslimati we have the three vowels in Arabic ah ooh and e this is the only three vowels in the Arabic language of fatha dhamma kasra those of you are from the Indian subcontinent you call this one Zabr Pesh and Zer the Arabic names

for them is fatha dhamma kasra you can use whichever one you're familiar with but these are the proper Arabic names for them and lastly we have sukoon sukoon actually is not a vowel sound what it is it is actually the absence of a vowel sound so when you see sukoon it means there's no vowel being applied to that letter so you have here example we should all be familiar with bismillah so bis the theme now does not have any vowel being applied it's not sa su

or si it's bis bismillah so again you can see the sukoon now sukoon is written many different ways but in the Quranic script you'll see it either as a squeezed C looking like that on the top of a letter or it would be written as a circle both of these are commonly used again depends on the script that you're reading and sometimes on the screen is difficult to write I'm going to write it like so as an inverted V so it doesn't get confused with the

dhamma when I'm writing but generally speaking this is how the sukoon written so we get the Arabic letters we apply the vowels now we can read them and this is what the important role that the harakat play please know they're going to play a very important role again in our studies so I'm sure you are familiar with them already long vowels now we have the others we've seen fatha zabar dhamma pesh kasra zair they apply short vowel sounds for example a o e very short but

we have also commonly used in Arabic long vowels so in order to produce the longer version of ah we put an at ha followed by Ali please note this at ha followed by a leaf so fatha first the last letter will have fatha before it and it will be followed by an alif so for example we've seen this example already kita boon kita boon so this a bit is elongating the sound so it's not keep up the kita but it a boon okay and then we

have the second one which is the dhamma again please notice the dhamma followed by a waw not dhamma on its own followed by a waw so for example here we have muslimuna these two in combination elongate the sound it's not muslimuna muslimuna muslimuna and we have last vowel long vowel with a kasra followed by a ya so ya before it a kasra you elongate the sound so you have kareemun which means noble kareemun you can see here kasra followed by the ya so three short vowels

three long vowels which are a combination of letters preceded by a vowel sign along with the short and the long vowels there are other markings that are very very important for Quranic Arabic reading one of them of course is Tanween now Tanween is basically in terms of writing we have a doubling of the vowel mark dhamma so it is un so the first Tanween is un written with the double dhamma and gives the sound of un so for example we have muslimatun muslimatun by doubling of

the dhamma here and this is one of the Tanween and of course it is as if we are reading a noon sakin at the end noon with the sukoon muslimatun so Tanween with double dhamma then we have the Tanween with two fathas and again the sound it produces is un so we have muslimatan and you can see it is as if there is a noon with sukoon at the end which is read muslimatan and then we have the double kasra at the end which gives us

the sound of in muslimatin muslimatin and again with a noon with a sukoon at the end so Tanween produces a sound with an n sound at the end and that sound is called or this called nannation in the English grammar books so you see it n sound nannation and this is Tanween very very important symbol we're going to come across it again and again in our studies so again from your Quran reading you'll be familiar with the Tanween very important we have short vowels we have

long vowels we have Tanween which produces un, ann, in sound further to the vowels and Tanween we also have other symbols for example the Shadda is written above the letter and it really is representing the doubling of the letter so we have the first letter which has sukoon the second letter which has the vowel signed it could be Fatha, Dhamma or Kasra for example here we have Darrasa so instead of writing the Ra twice in Arabic they use the Shadda and you put the vowel on

top so for example you could have Alhajju, Alhajja, Alhajji with the jeem taking the Dhamma, Fatha or Kasra Zair, Zabor, Pesh whichever it is but it is doubling of the letter so first with the second with the vowel that you are applying so this is Shadda very very commonly used please make a note of this one also and then we also have Hamzatul Wasl symbol which you've already mentioned Hamzatul Wasl only appearing at the beginning of a word in Quranic script you will see it with

sword like symbol on the top. The Madda is again another symbol which is very commonly used in the Quran and you can see it as an example there and it is really is another way of writing Hamza with an Alif afterwards which indicates the elongation of the sound so you read this as Al-Qurano and the same here Al-Qurano again you can see the two different ways of writing the same thing but the impact is that's an elongation of the sound and then we have what looks

like an Alif is called Khara Zabar in the Indian subcontinent and it also has the in Arabic a name Alif Khinjaria or Dagger Alif it is often referred to it is very commonly used in the Quran it is not used in modern standard Arabic but mainly in the Quranic script so it is the same as writing here for example Mim with a Fatha followed by an Alif or you put the Mim with the Fatha just a dagger Alif afterwards the pronunciation is exactly the same Malik

or Malikun if you're reading this Malikun and again very commonly used and of course you'll have it in the Quran the first line Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahman the Alif here to indicate the elongation of the sound so again very commonly used markings in the Quran so the Arabic alphabet only has consonants and we need these markings above below the letters to know how to pronounce the words correctly how to read it correctly the purpose behind sharing this with you I'm sure you should be familiar with reading Arabic

but these are few points that are not always emphasised when we learn to read Arabic for the first time but in the learning of the language these symbols will become important because you will see you know Alif followed by before it a Fatha and so on and the words will change you need to make a note of these so as long as you're familiar with these diacritic marks that go above and below the letters and that you are able to read the Arabic letters inshallah that

you can follow the 15 lessons that are going to follow in this playlist please follow them one after the other in sequence and inshallah that's the only prerequisite and I wanted to introduce that to you so you're familiar with what's required as I will not be explaining Hamza Tulwasar repeatedly in the course as we come through it we will be mentioning the most important points or any of the other symbols will not go through just simply write it and I'm going to assume that you are

already familiar with this Alhamdulillah we reached the end of part one of the subject of mapping Arabic in this session all I've done Alhamdulillah has given you overview of the Arabic alphabet and the key some of the key aspects which are not usually covered when we begin to learn Arabic or learn to read Arabic inshallah so these points you'll find useful in your study in the next part I'm going to go through how words or the type of sentences and phrases that we need to learn

that these words form so we need the letters of the alphabet plus the signs and symbols like the vowel signs we need we I've mentioned to form words in Arabic so how do these words come together to form sentences and phrases that's it for now inshallah and see you in the next video may Allah subhan Allah reward you bless you with a very best in this world in the hereafter for your good intentions to learn Arabic to understand Quran may Allah subhan Allah bring us all

every single day of our life closer and closer to the Quran and make us give us the ability to learn to read it to understand this message and convey it to humanity until the next video Asalaamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu ---------------------------------------------------------- END OF TRANSCRIPT