Vowels
Stage 2 — the small marks above and below the letters that supply the vowels, the pause and the doubling.
Arabic writes the consonants. The short vowels are tiny marks — a stroke above, a stroke below, a little curl — and most newspapers leave them out entirely, because native readers don’t need them.
Learners do, and so does any carefully written text: children’s books, poetry, dictionaries and classical texts are fully vowelled. Learn these marks and every letter you met in stage 1 starts to speak.
- lesson 1الحَرَكَاتFatḥa, kasra, ḍamma
Three marks, three short vowels: a, i, u.
- lesson 2السُّكُون وَالشَّدَّةSukūn and shadda
A letter with no vowel, and a letter said twice.
- lesson 3المُدُودLong vowels
Alif, wāw and yāʾ stretch a vowel to two beats.
- lesson 4التَّنْوِينTanwīn
Doubled marks that end a word with an n.
Next stage: Reading.
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