Improve Your Reading & Writing

Reading and Writing Arabic

·        Now you know how to identify and write the first 7 letters

·        But, depending on which other letters these 7 connect to, the script can look slightly different, as you may have noticed from some exercises


·        So let’s take a look at a few examples and try to figure out what letters we’re looking at and how to figure it out


كلا لا وزر

·        Sometimes the Aleph is curved like you see twice in the example above
This happens when the letter ل (Laam; English “L”) comes before it


با تا ثا جا حا خا

دا ذا را زا

سا شا صا ضا طا ظا عا غا فا قا كا

لا ما نا


ها يا

·        Here is the Aleph with each letter of the alphabet coming before it
Notice that not all letters connect to the letter following
There will be a small gap; notice the size of the gap


·        Also notice that two letters (ط and ظ) already have a line as part of their body
Careful not to confuse this for an Aleph




·        The bodies of Baa, Taa and THaa are sometimes written like a semicircle
Notice the THaa in the first word above
The second word is exactly the same except that the THaa has been written normally (we exaggerated the connection a bit, though)




·        The same goes for Baa and Taa
This semicircle style is optional
It looks nice, though
And it only happens when the following letter is م (Meem; English “M”)



·        Notice the last letter in the word above
It’s a Taa! Notice the two dots on top!
Taa is one of only 2 letters with 2 dots on top
The other letter is ق (Qaaf; English “Q”) and this is NOT a Qaaf


·        This is actually kind of complicated
This letter is both a Taa and a Haa (not the Haa we learned about in this lesson; another Haa)


·        Sometimes you pronounce it like Taa, and sometimes like Haa


·        We’ll talk more about this when we talk about Haa
But basically, a Taa can look like this
This only happens at the end of words
You’ll never see this in the beginning or middle of a word, guaranteed




·        Notice the beginnings of both of the above words
In the first one, everything looks normal
But in the second one, the Baa is stacked on top of the first Jeem


·        This can only happen with the letters Jeem, Haa, and KHaa
It happens when any letter comes before them in the beginning of a word


·        Let’s say we have a Haa as the first letter
Then we have a Jeem
You are allowed to stack the Haa on top of the Jeem


·        And if after the Jeem there’s another Jeem, for example
then you can even stack the first Jeem on the second one
to get 3 levels of stacking


·        This often looks nice
But usually one level is more than enough
And most Arabic computer fonts won’t let you do more than one level
And they only do stacking with certain letters before the Jeem, Haa or KHaa



·        In the example above, the dot of the stacked Baa is in the same line as the other dots in the word, roughly
But you are allowed to move the dot of this Baa up so it’s under the body of the Baa



·        Here’s another example with a م (Meem; English “M”)


·        This has been an overview of stacking
There’s not much more to it, actually
But there are some small rules that we didn’t cover here
But nobody follows them anyways


·        Stacking is taught in grade 8 in many Arab countries