Week 0: Read the Arabic script

Step 1 · The letters

Letters that share a shape (1)

Tap a letter to hear its name and its sound.

Step 2 · The letters

Letters that share a shape (2)

The rest of the alphabet. The “heavy” letters (ص ض ط ظ) are said with the back of the tongue raised, which gives them a deeper, fuller sound; the vowels next to them sound darker too. Don’t worry about getting them perfect yet: the teacher works on them in class.

Step 3 · The vowel marks

Short vowels and sukūn

Short vowels are small marks written above or below a letter. The letter is said first, then its vowel.

• بَFatḥa: a small stroke above. Says a, as in “cat”: ba.
• بِKasra: a small stroke below. Says i, as in “sit”: bi.
• بُḌamma: a little curl above. Says u, as in “put”: bu.
• بْSukūn: a small circle above. No vowel: the letter closes the syllable before it.

Tap each syllable

Sukūn in words

Step 4 · The vowel marks

Shadda and long vowels

• بّShadda: a small “w” above. The letter is doubled: said once to close one syllable and again to start the next. The vowel mark sits on the shadda (a kasra may sit just under it).
• بَاLong ā: alif after a fatḥa.
• بِيLong ī: yā’ after a kasra.
• بُوLong ū: wāw after a ḍamma.

Shadda in words

Short, then long: tap each one

Two vowels together

Yā’ or wāw with a sukūn after a fatḥa makes a glide: ay (as in “eye”) and aw (as in “cow”).

Step 5 · Word endings

Tanwīn and tā’ marbūṭa

Tanwīn is a doubled vowel mark at the end of a word. It adds an n:

• ـٌ-un: two ḍammas.
• ـٍ-in: two kasras.
• ـًا-an: two fatḥas, usually with an extra alif that is not said as a long ā.

At the very end of a sentence these endings are usually dropped, and -an becomes a long ā. Read them in full for now.

Tā’ marbūṭa: ة

It looks like hā’ (ه) with the two dots of tā’. At a pause it is said as a soft -a (often heard as -ah); when the word carries on into a vowel ending it is a t.

Step 6 · “The”

Alif waṣla, sun and moon letters

“The” in Arabic is الْ (al-), joined to the front of the word.

Moon letters: the l is said

Before these letters you hear al- clearly, and the lām carries a sukūn.

Sun letters: the l is silent

Before these letters the lām is not said; the next letter doubles instead, so it carries a shadda: as-salām, not al-salām.

Step 7 · Real words

Read the words of Week 1

These are the words you learn first in the course (Week 1: Greetings). Build each one up a syllable at a time, then read the whole word.

Syllable by syllable

Now read them whole

Read each word aloud first, then tap it to check yourself.

Step 8 · Your first sūrah

Read Al-Fātiḥah aloud

Al-Fātiḥah, the opening sūrah of the Qur’an, line by line. Read each line aloud yourself first, then tap it to hear it recited. The text is the Qur’an’s own spelling (the same as in our Qur’an reader), so look out for the three signs below.