Unlike most languages of the world, Arabic letters are written in "script", connecting in a word with each other. It doesn’t matter if the text is written by hand or printed. Another feature that beginners do not immediately get used to learning the Arabic language is spelling from right to left. Let's look at the features of writing and transcribing Arabic letters.
General principles of the Arabic language
Only the Koran, as well as scientific, children's and educational literature, are written using vowels, in other cases, words are written without vocalization. That is why when writing a transcription, the Arabic text is not transliterated, but written in the way it should be pronounced. Before you begin to write transcription, vocalization is made in words and sentences.
When writing texts with a vowel, damme, fatha and qasra (vowel signs), shadda (double sign) and tanvin (it is extremely rare and is a sign of nunation) are most often used.
Sometimes you can see in the text a sukun (a sign of the absence of a vowel) and waslu (a sign of the absence of a laryngeal bow), as well as a hamza (separates two vowels from one another).
Transcription Features
The presence of unique sounds (pharyngeal, emphatic, interdental), which are absent in most European languages, greatly complicate the task for a person who is trying to translate Arabic letters into transcription. After all, such a sound can be transmitted only approximately.
Today, there are two types of transcription. Scientific - with the most accurate pronunciation, and practical, allowing you to approximately reflect how the Arabic letters are pronounced. Translation, or rather, transliteration, is carried out using the symbols of the Russian or Latin alphabet. The most famous transcriptions, both practical and scientific, were developed by the Arabists Krachkovsky and Yushmanov.
Alphabet
The alphabet came from the Phoenicians to the Arabs. It includes not only all their letters, but also graphic images of sounds specific to a given language. These are Arabic letters such as “sa” (similar to the soft interdental English th), “ha” (the sound of exhalation, similar to the one that the dog makes when breathing), “hall” (the sonorous sound that will result if you put the tip of the tongue between teeth and pronounce “sa”), “dad” (it turns out if you pronounce the sound “d” and at the same time take your tongue back and slightly lower your jaw), “for” (an emphatic sound similar to “z”, but pronounced when you retract the tongue and a slight lowering of the lower jaw), “guinea” (similar in sound to the grassing French “p”).
It should be mentioned that all letters of the Arabic alphabet are consonants. To indicate vowels, special superscript or subscript vowels are used, which indicate the sounds "and", "y" and "a".
But if you listen to the speech of a person who speaks Arabic, then other vowels are heard. This is due to different pronunciation variations within consonant sounds. Depending on the consonant, the vowel sign may sound like an “e” (in most cases), and in the syllables-diphthongs and with strong consonants it acquires an “o” -shaped sound. With the sign “sukun” it is already pronounced with a pronounced sound “e”.
The vowel “and” can be transformed into “s” with strong consonants, but the vowel “y” rarely changes its sound to another in the classical Arabic language, but in some dialects there is a transition to the sound “o”.
How many letters are in the Arabic alphabet? There are 28 of them and they are all consonants (the first letter of the alphabet, “aliph,” is an exception). One letter is always comparable to one sound. For example, the letter "ba" (the second in the alphabet) is pronounced as a solid sound "b" in the word "ram", but at the end of the word it is never stunned (in Russian, the oak is pronounced as "dup", in Arabic this will not be).
Writing features
Arabic letters are quite difficult to write, especially for beginners. By the way, "ligature" is used not only by Arabs, but also by some Turkic peoples, as well as people who speak the language of Pashto or Urdu. Writing is carried out strictly from right to left.
The writing process itself looks like this:
- First, that part of the letters is written, when writing which you do not need to tear off the pen from the paper.
- Next, the parts that are included in the graphics of the letter are added, but they cannot be written without separation. These include points, sheer and oblique features.
- If necessary, arrange vocalizations.
The spelling of each letter itself depends on its location in the word. Arabic letters most often have four types of styles (freestanding, at the beginning or at the end of the word, middle). The exception is only 6 letters: "alif", which is always written separately, as well as "distance", "hall", "ra", "zayn" and "vav", which are not connected to the symbol following them.
Very often, many people who begin to study the Arabic language read words in transliteration. And this is the main mistake. To correctly pronounce Arabic words, you need to start with the study of the alphabet and the correct pronunciation of each letter. Only after having learned the alphabet well, one can proceed to the pronunciation of words and the construction of phrases.