Many of my visitors
do not know any Arabic
And therefore
also know no Arabic characters
So I decided to
give a little lesson so that all of you will
know the names
of the characters in the Arabic alfabet.
When you put your
mouse pointer (arrow) on the pictures, you are shown how to write
the character,
when you click the picture, you'll be taken to the "Writing
tips and tricks" page.
Since this page
is under construction, the pictures showing how to write the character
when you put your mouse on them will be marked (*)
(*)
The Alef is the
first character in the Arabic alfabet, it has 2 shapes only:
an initial and
single shape, which you can see on the left,
and a final and
middle shape, which is shown on the right, the Alef is
never attached
to its left.
(*)
The second is Ba`
it comes in 4 shapes, shown here from right to left:
initial-, middle-,
end-, and as a single character.
(*)
Next comes Ta`,
(hence the name alfabet),
again in 4 shapes.
(*)
The next is Tha`
As you can see
there is only one dot difference between them.
In origin the
Arab alfabet did not have any dots at all
(nor did the Hebrew,
Greek or Roman alfabets), you had to more or less
guess what was
written there.
The Persians adapted
the Arab alfabet for their own use by adding dots,
a fashion later
to be followed by both Arabs and Europeans (note i and j).
The usage of dots
to indicate different characters is called "naqt" or "i`jam".
(*)
The next 3 characters
have again only a single dot difference between them
First comes Jeem.
As you can see
there are two ways to connect it to its right hand neighbour:
over the top and
around the bottom, the one at the end has a swooping tail and is
almost allways
connected over its top.
(*)
The next is Ha`,
it has no dot.
(*)
The third is Kha`
with its dot on top.
(*)
Next, again two
characters that differ only a single dot, the first one
(above) is Dal,
the second one (below) is Thal.
(*)
As you can see
these have only 3 forms (well 2 really):
initial, end,
and single.
Of course this
means that Dal and Thal are never connected
to their left.
(*)
Again these next
two characters; Ra` (above) and
Zay (below) differ
only a single dot.
(*)
As you can guess,
they both are never connected to their left
and so they have
only two versions;
the initial and
"solo" version and the end version.
Tell us what you
think about this "course":
Do you like it?
Do you have any
questions regarding it?
Let me know through one of these:
