How to READ ARABIC The alphabet Lesson 1 Arabic 101

hello everyone welcome to this lesson serie the first four lessons were going to focus on the Arabic alphabet and then we're going to talk about the Arabic vowels in this lesson we're going to talk about the first six letters Aleph bad that fat gene ha and ha okay so before we get started we need to understand that every single letter in the Arabic alphabet has four different positions and with positions mean where it comes in the word because all letters will be connected together in single word the letter will have different shape if it's used separately or the beginning the middle or at the end of the word so for each letter you're going to learn four different positions how to write them how you recognize them in the word so make sure you keep track of these four positions to make it easier decided to give each position separate letter or symbol so that makes it easier for us to understand for the remaining for the remaining of the lesson here I'm gonna give you an example with the letter bat so that you understand the concept say I'm send what mean so when use bat separately it's going to look like that the beginning is going to look little bit different in the middle bit different and at the end to look like that so you can use back in four different positions and four different types of bat when it comes to different positions in word alright so let's get started with the first group of letters now for today's lesson have divided the letters that we're going to talk about into two groups the first group will be made up of four letters Aleph bat tap and that and we're gonna start with the first letter of this group Aleph now Aleph is pronounced exactly the same way you pronounced in English so sound as in the word can't can't so Elif is and these are the four different positions of Elif if you see them and these are the four different positions of alpha as you can see of course some of them look exactly the same but that is the case with some letters some letters have similar positions when it comes to beginning or end so it differs for some letters that's why we're talking about each letter separately okay now let's move to the second letter and that is bad we talked about battle short while ago so it's not going to be lot different that's gonna basically be the same bat is pronounced like the sound in English like when you use it in the word bat so bat same pronunciation as bat and these are the four positions of the bat now moving to the third letter that is Ted notice how that is it looks so similar to bear but the exception of the two dots on the top of the letter ter is compared to like the word is that ten that's the sound that is used with Ted and the four positions of Ted will look exactly the same as the four positions of back but of course with the exception of the position of the two dots as you can see them another letter that looks very similar to the previous two that is letter number four and it's gonna be the last letter of this group and that is letter Fett you can see it's exactly the same symbol with the exception of the three dots on the top of the symbol fat is compared to th th or theta in in English that that's the sim that they phonetic symbol like the the sound you use when you say the word 3:3 so fat it is voiceless sound so you don't use the vocal cords while you are you using the letter fat it is voiceless sound and these are the four positions that look exactly the same as bad with exception of the three dots so what is the story with these three symbols or these three letters you can say that these three letters belong to the same family you did look exactly the same they behave exactly the same in the world with the exception of the dots under or above or two or three dots so that is and that is the only difference so so far we've covered four letters the alef-bet tap that and we're gonna have some examples to be able to read your very first words in Arabic I'm gonna make some simple words using these four letters like the word up up and this is how it is pronounced pronounced in English up and it means father AB means father another example is the word Bab Bab Bab means door Bab means door now there's something very interesting about the first two examples that are used here as you can see the letter has certain symbol on top of it and with the second word that is Bab this symbol is missing if you're wondering why this is happening they are the same letter they're definitely the same letter but there's just little bit of difference that will talk about later so don't worry about that now another example is Beth Beth Beth of course is going to look like bath when you try to write it in English but it's not bad it's Beth and it means broadcast so Beth means broadcast another example I'm gonna like you try to pronounce this one on your own I'm gonna give you some that give you chance here so Feb it Feb it did you get it right let's see Feb 'it means fix or fixed so the first group of letters the first four letters are now done should be able to try to write down this word on your own now want you to try this on your own how can you turn tab tab in arabic now the word tab clearly has three letters now now let's see what it looks like tab looks like that and it means repent alright let's move forward and this time we're going to go to the second set of letters of today they're gonna be three letters they belong to the same family too much like the first the first family which we talked about just now so the m-- hop and cut they belong to the same family meaning that they look the same how do you write the best way to write or to draw the symbol you should be able to say write is to start with the line on the top and then go like half circle downwards like you see on the screen now let's start talking about the first letter of this group of the second group the letter is said as and the sound is jet jet sound the jet sound like you see it in the dictionaries the jet like when you use it in the word like Jam Jam so jet so the letter is exactly the same as the one we use in Jam the first sound of course the four different positions like we talked about before separate beginning middle and end of course it will have the four different shapes two of these shapes will actually look so much like the like each other like middle and the beginning they look almost the same and the end and the separate they also look strikingly the same so the next sound that's gonna be tricky one because this sound doesn't exist in the English language or basically any other Germanic or romantic language but it comes so close to the sound of half in English but it is less deeper in your throat so you don't say ha but you say ha of course the four positions will look like the gene or that the one that we just talked about again the middle and the beginning look the same and intercept and the separate positions they also look very much alike now moving to the last letter of this group and that is the letter ha ha ha ha now the letter ha is exactly the same as the Scottish CH and it is always pronounced as ha - like the word law probably you've heard lawn so this is actually Scottish sound law and also bit of funny fact actually we used to have the sound in English long ago so laughs was which used to be pronounced as la so the gh used to be pronounced as ha in English but it was changed it was it was basically changed to or nothing like neighbour it doesn't it doesn't you don't pronounce the gh well that was supposed to be but it was changed now back to the point here is that ha is the last letter of this group and actually the last letter of today's lesson but before we go we're not finished so before we go we're going to have little bit of recap as to what we've done so far and little bit of an exercise so that you make sure that you understood what we have to discuss today so the seven letters we talked about today Alif back tap that m-- ha ha we're gonna have some examples to combine all these seven letters together and you're going to check if you can read them so first example is had had-had means pilgrim as you can see next word is hope hope hope and that means love now let's have look another at another set of examples the next example is bath bath bath means research next is hub hub hub remember the CH of the Scottish language and hub means failed failed now it's time for you to try it for yourself I'm going to give you some set of letters that you're going to try to combine them on your own using the using the rules that we've learned today now want you to try and leave your answers in the comments I'm gonna have look at them and I'll tell you my feedback if you want to have my feedback so there's gonna be the end of the first lesson and in the next lesson I'm going to continue with the rest of the set the other that the rest of the letters is gonna be the second group of the letters and will see you in lesson two